Online Teaching
In my humble opinion people are predisposed to employ an “in-person” or “online” bias when judging the 2020-2021 academic year, and really remote learning in general. “In-person” people point to the “lost year,” with things like an article from Brookings Report showing dramatic declines in the quality of education and attainment (and media that is more mainstream citing such data to press their own case, like this Salon article). Views about the efficacy of remote learning have been overly influenced by the abrupt shift to online learning during this time. I started teaching college composition online the year before the pandemic, and even with the support of my distance education committee, that first year is ROUGH. You have to build the modules, gain fluency in your learning management system, learn about distribution, the calendar, to-do lists, grading, the assignments tab, multimedia design so your course isn’t text-heavy, Zoom meetings, and a whole lot more. So when you force everyone, abruptly, into an online environment with no training and a lot of the teachers and students not wanting to do it, of course you’re going to have a decline in education quality.
But I think more and more, students and teachers are getting used to it. In our school, when given the choice, about 75% of our first year writing students [English 1A, 1B, or 1C] chose online courses in the fall and spring semesters of the 2021-2022 year. I asked my online students if they could take any percentage of their courses online, how much would it be? 2/3 of students answered 100%. But as for my in-person students? Zero of them said that. So not everyone wants it, but for our school’s comp courses at least, most do, and I think at the two-year level, especially in economically impoverished communities, it makes sense for a lot of reasons.
But is it equitable? Depends on who you ask. The equity argument is employed by both “Team Online” and “Team In-Person.” Team Online says, our students have work obligations, family obligations, transportation issues, and other obstacles – it is therefore *more equitable* to offer remote learning. Team In-Person says, our low-income students lack connectivity, appropriate digital tools and the digital literacy to take courses online, therefore it is *more equitable* to offer more in-person instruction. And, at our rural two-year school, the eternal tug-of-war over resources continues. Personally I think if we’re student-centered at the two-year level we offer writing classes in formats that the students want, assuming quality instruction can be delivered for that particular course.
And it’s an enrollment thing. At the high school level, and high school students make up a huge portion of online enrollment at community colleges in California, if students can’t get online writing classes at their local two-year school they go right to their counselor, who opens up a website that shows them all the community colleges in California offering the same course. So we lose those students, and drive enrollment down. If they want to take the class online they’re going to, one way or another.
It’s beyond my expertise to address online learning at the K-12 or the university level, but speaking to the former, it does, to me, seem impossible for a teacher to run a class five days a week for 5-6 hours a day. That said, in a lot of these environments students are in classrooms where they are bullied, where the teacher can’t control the room, where the quality of instruction is poor, where the student might just prefer more online courses. I think, assuming a place to take the classes, on-campus or off, quality instruction, and higher levels of education accepting the coursework as legitimate is occurring, the online option might be beneficial for many. I had a student who was being home-schooled tell me her parents pulled her from high school because of how bad the instruction was. Are they stuck with their crappy in-person teachers, under the rationale that “in-person is better”? Doesn’t seem fair – certainly doesn’t seem student-centered.
And consider this scenario: you’re an instructor of color in, say, Alabama. You get paid a low salary and can’t teach social justice or critical race theory. So you go to a blue territory in America, where you’ll make more and have the freedom to teach these things. But what about the students of color in the red territory? Might online education be a way for these students to connect with teachers of shared backgrounds? Jarvis Givens has written about the benefits of having a teacher from your own background, as have others. Of course, in Alabama, leadership might accuse students of getting brainwashed from afar by radical Marxists and not accept the coursework as legitimate, maybe even try to ban it.
I think in 40-50 years there will be megawebsites, like the Amazon or Netflix or Google of online education, with thousands of course offerings. Students could take a Spanish class run by a teacher in Mexico City, a class in Irish literature by a teacher in Dublin, a class in Caribbean history by a professor in Barbados. Colleges will have extensive checklists for how to compile a competitive application through remote learning. It will be seen as a way for students to pursue learning that is superior to the local option. I think, like a lot of society, we’re in the early stages of remote stuff swallowing up in-person stuff because, at the end of the day, it’s what people want, and often it’s better, or more practical, or the lesser of several evils.
Opinions on the efficacy of online instruction are all over the place. It isn’t hard to find examples of the varying points of view, often in the same text. One is North Carolina State’s Industry Expansion Solutions’ text titled “Pros and Cons of Online Education.” You see a lot of the same pros here as in other texts (convenient, less travel constraints, less learning pace constraints, no pressure to participate verbally, good for people with social anxiety) and cons (limited social interaction, most communication must be put into writing, no campus atmosphere, not everyone has digital literacy or is able to afford more sophisticated technology that may be required, slow response time from teachers).
I will often ask students about the pros and cons of online education. The pros more or less fell into three categories: 1. Pace, 2. Schedule flexibility, 3. Less commuting. I’ve also heard students talk about social anxiety and negative attitudes toward being in a classroom; some have reported problems with bullying, or facilities, teachers and commutes that make going to class a nightmare. A lot just hate being in a little room for hours and hours.
Around half of our students live in Yuba City, which is only five miles away from our main campus in Marysville but a bad commute; you have two shoddy bridges to choose from to get over the Feather River and at the wrong time of day it can take an hour. Some students take the bus, which can be more than an hour each way. That city grid is not built to accommodate the number of people who live there now – try to do that drive and you’ll see what I mean. And then the price of gas now. See all the reasons they’d rather not come down starting to accumulate?
Here’s a sampling of some common responses to the pros and cons of remote instruction, in students’ own words:
Pace
“you get to go at your own pace”
“you can go at your own pace”
“You have a long amout of time to actually do your assignment and not rush it”
“you can do it at your own pace”
“we have more time to do our work”
“you can do everything at your own pace. You don’t have to rush doing the assignments”
“I get to work at my own pace”
“you can go on your own pace and have more responsibility”
“students works at their own paste” [yes, paste, and “works”]
Schedule
“By taking online courses I can spend more time with my daughter, and have the chance to get more hours at work”
“it enables students to have flexibility with their assignments, fitting best into their schedule”
“for those who are busy with work they can have a flexible schedule”
“you have a flexible schedule”
Transportation
“ease off transportation or distance from commuting”
“I don’t have to commutate anymore”
“some don’t have to be stressed as much because of transportation or even getting ready”
“no travel cost/time spent commute to classes”
As for the cons? Results are a little more scattered; let me start with the most common answers, and work my way down.
Lack of Clarity
“I think some classes are hard to understand online”
“lacking hands-on experience they would normally receive”
“lack of explanation on assignments”
“sometimes it is hard to understand the material or ask questions”
“You may not understand what a professor may be asking on an assignment”
“its harder for people that are visual learners and they need that teacher, in-class environment in order to learn”
Laziness
“you can procrastinate way easier now”
“being lazy”
“we are college students and we can [s]lack on work, turning it in late, doing something else instead of completely the assignment and so on”
“have to plenty of self discipline to keep up with assignments without a weekly schedule”
Digital Issues
“Some students might be limited to computer access and knowledge on the online system”
“not everyone has access to learning online”
“some people don’t have either computer access or internet access at home”
“people have trouble with conferences or any online things (like i do)”
Slow Responses
“some professors take a long time to respond”
“students not get questions answered by professors as promptly as they are in classroom”
“you have a question about it and they don’t always respond back”
A lot of students lack access to resources that would help them complete an online course. The counterpoint to this might be, if you elect to take a class online there are certain expectations regarding access and digital literacy. That’s true. But what about remote learning they were forced into? And also, what about students who have transportation problems? Family issues, a need to work? It might be wise for teachers to consider how much digital wizardry they want to throw at students. How much is necessary to achieve the course goals? Who might you be leaving behind? Who is more or less “forced” to take an online class even if it’s technically optional? This type of minimization is a feature of a new type of teaching called “Universal Course Design,” which is about making the course as clear, manageable, and inclusive as possible for students.
Regarding the building blocks: on Friday of a given week I will outline a module for the upcoming week, Saturday I prep the first course, Sunday the second course. I go asynchronously. I don’t like Zoom meetings and prefer to give the students flexibility. Usually I’ll assign a text for them to read, or videos for them to watch, and give them a series of writing tasks, which they email to me. I will mark them up and return.
Also, I find you need to be very specific about how to format and send files. Students will send you all kinds of things. Online file conversion has come a long way but I generally want everything in Word.
I do how-to tutorials for reading and writing tasks, sometimes to explain a text, sometimes how to number pages or do citations and so on, and have optional Zoom office hours where students can visit. I make myself available via text, face time, phone calls, or email. Students tend to be working on stuff when they have questions so they want responses right away.
Online learning is better for “Confucius-Style” education (see my “What School Should Be” slideshow), which can be a structured way to incorporate soft skills. Confucius believed education for young people should start with the self, then expand outward to relationships with people, then expand outward again to knowledge of one’s society, then expand outward yet again to knowledge of the larger world, then someone chooses a profession. With regard to the final step, an organization titled Big Picture Learning, which embeds its program at high schools, emphasizes individualized education plans centered in a student’s interests. I think without connectivity, it is very difficult to actualize this type of individualized tailoring, but in an online environment all these things are achievable, and I think they can make a writing course more appealing to a student and more reflective perhaps of what education is supposed to be about.
What is the future of this type of instruction? In my area, I think at the end of the day effective instruction is achievable [first-year writing at the two-year level]. It has the added bonuses of being compatible with their busy lives or those living far away from campus, and students are getting more and more tech savvy [during the pandemic our school’s enrollment was actually up in the “under 18” demographic, the only area where this was so. To me that speaks to younger students’ relative comfort with online education]. At the two-year level, we are not like a four-year university, which every year accepts a certain number of students and then goes about the business of giving them an education [with the grand on-campus experience a big driver of the cost], or the K-12 level, which opens their doors to the community, works with what comes in, and serves as surrogate child care several hours per weekday so parents and guardians can go to work. The two-year level is a little more like the private sector in that we need customers. Whatever gets us the best enrollment figures, that is what we should do. If more online courses are good for enrollment, assuming quality instruction, we should be doing a lot to make these effective places of learning.