Don't worry, I will not insult your intelligence by attempting to explain the obvious. We all know why college administrators are enamored of online teaching, and there is no need to reiterate their reasons to force the teaching faculty into offering a growing number of such Internet-based courses. What I want to discuss today is why college professors might be tempted to teach such courses even when it is self-evident that they are immeasurably less efficient than traditional classroom teaching.
Online teaching is attractive to the college professors for a variety of reasons. For one, it's easy. You can unload a bunch of PowerPoints on Blackboard, set up several multiple-choice mini-quizzes on one of those websites that will even calculate the grade for you, and forget about the whole thing. It is very easy to organize such a course technologically so that it will practically run itself. Of course, not everybody who does online teaching ends up doing it this way. Some educators work very hard to salvage whatever they can even in the anti-intellectual online format. The temptation, however, is there. Also, the administrators tend to push forcefully towards the PowerPoints combined with online mini-quizzes version of online teaching.
Another reason that one might be tempted to move a significant part of one's teaching load online is that it will liberate one from the necessity to be on campus. For those of us who hate the bureaucratic aspect of our profession this might be a godsend. Whenever you come to campus, you tend to get sucked into the insanity of endless - and endlessly useless - meetings, repetitive discussions apropos of nothing, and paper-pushing activities of the completely useless variety. Many people thrive in this environment of mushrooming red tape. There are those of us, however, who hate wasting time on such activities while we could be spending it doing our research instead. As I mentioned before, keeping the office door closed is one of the best thing a beginning academic could do to boost their research career. The problem with that strategy, however, is that people will figure out that you are hiding in there and will find a way to extract you from the office and place you in the midst of yet another useless meeting.
Eventually, the idea of going to the campus as little as possible as the only way of getting any significant research done will occur to many a professor. And it's a very short road from there to the idea of taking up online teaching. Currently, the only two ways of achieving any tangible degree of success in our profession are either producing a lot of research or, if you turn out to be a complete failure at that but still want to have some job security and control over your life, becoming an administrator. As you can see, teaching simply doesn't make the list. As I was told by a pretty high-ranking college administrator at a place "the name of which I have no desire to call to mind": "Nobody cares about your teaching. As long as you can drag yourself to class most of the time in a marginally sober state, nobody gives a damn how your teaching goes. All you need to do is publish and forget about everything else." Since then, I have heard this sentiment reiterated by another high-ranking administrator at another place the name of which I also have no desire to recall. If you hear such statements often enough, you are quite likely to reduce your teaching to a bunch of online courses and dedicate yourself to the only thing that matters, which is research.
10 comments:
The one non-sucky reason I've heard was the one my chair gave: to allow students on branch campuses to take courses that would otherwise be unavailable to them. We have a main campus, and then several far-flung branches located in various nooks of the surround Appalachian countryside. The branches are somewhere between a community college and a 4-year institution, and they do reach historically underrepresented people, so it's a socially worthy cause.
I taught feminist theory online, and it involved being on the discussion board many hours per week. Even with that, we still couldn't approach Judith Butler. I had to strike her from the syllabus. And I worked my tush off for that class. The folks who say online courses can be every bit as good as bricks and mortar are kidding themselves - but they are not fooling me.
You are absolutely right. Nothing can substitute a real, in-class discussion between a teacher and students.
Being online also gives room to interpretation. You can't try to interpret facial expressions or react quickly enough--your responses must be thought out ahead of time. At least in class, I can see my fellow classmates, make my point, and elaborate on it. I feel it's much easier to discuss things in a person-to-person environment.
Also, when interacting in forums, kids don't always read everything. (They also don't always take it seriously enough.) So entire discussions can go unnoticed. In a classroom, this would never happen.
Perhaps a distinction needs to be made, particularly related to class size. My freshman classes in Computer Science, Chemistry, Law, Physics, Political Science and English Lit were all a minimum of 150 students. I can assure you - I got nothing out of those classes. There was no discussion. There was a professor or an idiot TA who would stand at the front of the class and drone on in a mono-tone voice showing powerpoint slides. Sorry - I can see that online just as easily, and on my own schedule.
It's still not the same. No matter how huge a class is, an online experience lacks scores of ingredients that are present in the traditional teaching format.
How do you deal with the changing demographics of students? When I completed my degree, I was married with a child and two jobs. I COULD NOT attend regular university classes. The online/correspondence options were the only viable means for me to complete my education. Not everyone attending university is a 19yr old kid just out of their parents basement. It took me nine years to get a 4 yr B.A.
Yes - I know I missed some important intangible aspects of University education. But should I be relegated to the scrap heap of humanity because I don't fit your narrow definition of what a student experience should entail?
People who take online courses are simply getting robbed. It's more honest to tell them that, to tell them that they are wasting their money than to take their money and offer nothing in return. I have studied the topic, Patrick, and very recently. The dropout rates in online courses are extremely huge. The absolute majority of the students who take them realize that they are wasting their time and have wasted their money.
Nobody, however, tells them about that before they enroll. Because all they are needed for is to pay and go away.
Are graduation rates significantly better for on-campus students? I stand to be corrected, but as I understand it, Canadian Universities expect to graduate approximately 55% of the first year class. So, nearly half the students entering the 'traditional' university are also wasting their money and not getting an education.
That was precisely the reason I switched to an online/correspondence model. I spent 2 years in the 'traditional' model - I was sinking enormously in debt, and I was not learning anything. The alternative was a godsend.
Regardless of the model used - the quality can be poor. Assuming all university professors are as engaged as you are is faulty projection.
I should clarify - I'm not trying to bash the traditional university model. I believe it has a valuable and essential place in society. I'm simply trying to advocate that alternative models shouldn't be discounted simply because they are different. With effort, they can be effective. The same way the traditional classroom can be ineffective if no effort is put into it.
If you don't mind, I'll write a separate post about this because this is a very important topic.
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