You can't have a close-knit community in a distance relationship...
BELIEVE:
Distance Education (DE)/E-pedagogy is a relatively new concept for me. When I started undergrad, it was not yet strongly in practice. All my classes were face-to-face. In the following years, I was never in need of taking an online course for my daily job or outside interests, so the subject of DE was not one I thought about. After entering the online composition program this semester, DE is now at the forefront of my thoughts. Is it effective? Does it teach the students all they desire and fulfill their needs for community and interaction? I think yes, definitely. Although face-to-face interaction is taken away, except for the weekly class meetings, there is still a different kind of interaction that occurs online. Chat rooms, instant messaging and peer reviews (as was noted in Kurlioff's article) can replace face-to-face interaction and still provide the familiarity and camaraderie students crave. Also, often times, NOT being face-to-face with someone, but instead, chatting through a computer, will empower students who are shy or lack social skills to interact more openly than they normally would feel comfortable doing.
Distance Education also provides endless opportunities for self-expression. Students are encouraged to interact openly and find their voice. Techniques can be practiced and improved on with each on-line class exercise.
Another very important aspect of DE is the exploitation of time. When students are not restricted to hours of classroom time a week, they can work at their own pace. This encourages individual responsibility and often improves work. Many students need time to think, research and reflect on their ideas before putting them to paper (or computer). The open community of DE allows for this need.
DOUBT:
The future of college classrooms is steadily moving towards Distance Education/E-pedagogy. Is this good? Bad? How does it affect the students of tomorrow? I think, overall, they will not benefit from DE, but rather it will hinder them by not meeting the classroom needs they have come to expect. By moving a classroom online, social interaction is taken away. Although students can chat online, the face-to-face interaction and human contact they have come to rely on is taken away. This is most troublesome from the teaching aspect. If students are working online with minimal classroom time, an instructor cannot gage the attitudes, emotional states or understanding levels of their students. It is not as if instructors desire this decrease in interaction, but once it occurs, empathy levels tend to decrease. The impersonality of the internet has been a problem since its beginning. Formality is taken away when the writing environment is a blank screen and immediate consequences of improper correspondence are nonexistent or slow in coming. This informality bleeds into the students work and interactions as the semester progresses, hindering the students ability to interact effectively and appropriately.
Another major concern when face-to-face interaction is taken away is the progressive learning ability. Many students NEED someone there, at all times, to guide them through the learning process. They need, in a sense, someone to hold their hand. Now, this is in no way a good thing, and at some point, the student will have to learn to let go, but what about in the beginning. By introducing them to an online community, with little instructor interaction, and tell them to "just go for it," it is basically like pushing them off a dock and seeing if they sink or swim. Is this really how we, as educators, want to teach the students of the future?
BELIEVE:
Distance Education (DE)/E-pedagogy is a relatively new concept for me. When I started undergrad, it was not yet strongly in practice. All my classes were face-to-face. In the following years, I was never in need of taking an online course for my daily job or outside interests, so the subject of DE was not one I thought about. After entering the online composition program this semester, DE is now at the forefront of my thoughts. Is it effective? Does it teach the students all they desire and fulfill their needs for community and interaction? I think yes, definitely. Although face-to-face interaction is taken away, except for the weekly class meetings, there is still a different kind of interaction that occurs online. Chat rooms, instant messaging and peer reviews (as was noted in Kurlioff's article) can replace face-to-face interaction and still provide the familiarity and camaraderie students crave. Also, often times, NOT being face-to-face with someone, but instead, chatting through a computer, will empower students who are shy or lack social skills to interact more openly than they normally would feel comfortable doing.
Distance Education also provides endless opportunities for self-expression. Students are encouraged to interact openly and find their voice. Techniques can be practiced and improved on with each on-line class exercise.
Another very important aspect of DE is the exploitation of time. When students are not restricted to hours of classroom time a week, they can work at their own pace. This encourages individual responsibility and often improves work. Many students need time to think, research and reflect on their ideas before putting them to paper (or computer). The open community of DE allows for this need.
DOUBT:
The future of college classrooms is steadily moving towards Distance Education/E-pedagogy. Is this good? Bad? How does it affect the students of tomorrow? I think, overall, they will not benefit from DE, but rather it will hinder them by not meeting the classroom needs they have come to expect. By moving a classroom online, social interaction is taken away. Although students can chat online, the face-to-face interaction and human contact they have come to rely on is taken away. This is most troublesome from the teaching aspect. If students are working online with minimal classroom time, an instructor cannot gage the attitudes, emotional states or understanding levels of their students. It is not as if instructors desire this decrease in interaction, but once it occurs, empathy levels tend to decrease. The impersonality of the internet has been a problem since its beginning. Formality is taken away when the writing environment is a blank screen and immediate consequences of improper correspondence are nonexistent or slow in coming. This informality bleeds into the students work and interactions as the semester progresses, hindering the students ability to interact effectively and appropriately.
Another major concern when face-to-face interaction is taken away is the progressive learning ability. Many students NEED someone there, at all times, to guide them through the learning process. They need, in a sense, someone to hold their hand. Now, this is in no way a good thing, and at some point, the student will have to learn to let go, but what about in the beginning. By introducing them to an online community, with little instructor interaction, and tell them to "just go for it," it is basically like pushing them off a dock and seeing if they sink or swim. Is this really how we, as educators, want to teach the students of the future?
posted by JulieS at 12:56 PM
2 Comments:
Julie,
Your post was so well done. I think you did a great job of illustrating both the strengths and weaknesses of online education.
I have taken several online classes as an undergraduate. They were all with the same instructor and with the same format. The system was capable of so much more than we used for my classes, online chats,and other features. I did interview one of my classmates for one class, and we used an online chat room. Other classmates just conducted their interviews via email or on the phone.
The online setup had its advantages and disadvantages. For someone like me, who still remembers when color tv's were new, it was a learning experience. I prefer the classroom, where I can see my peers and my instructor. I like to hear people's voices. and whether or notit is fair, several of us who were physically on campus would get together and talk about the class, and about other people in the class. Regardless, distance education is here to stay, at least until a solar flare or meteor knocks us back into the dark ages!
Good job starting to unravel the ideas that underlie the positive and negative views of e-pedagogy. I would love for you to go even further--will preparation/training help make the transition easier? What about the differences in literacies required online vs. f2f? and so forth.
And, given what Lesley noted, what do we do if distance ed is a given--how do we prepare for it, make it better, and so forth?
Post a Comment
<< Home