Interaction.
Can it be spontaneous online?
In their book Online Teaching at its Best, Linda Nilson and Ludwika Goodson devote a chapter to “Developing Interactivity, Social Connections and Community.” Near the beginning of the chapter they write:
In a face-to-face classroom, interactions usually occur spontaneously, but in an online class, you must design productive interactions in advance. Student interactions with content and the instructor matter most.
Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash
They cite a number of sources to back up their claims about why interaction with the content and the instructor matters most to students. This statement contradicts to some extent what Darby and Young argue in Small Learning (and about which I wrote here) regarding the importance of students interacting with other students to foster community and therefore learning. We can at any rate agree: students need to interact. What they should interact with - be it themselves, the instructor, or the content - may be less certain on the face of it.
When you think about it, what else can students interact with other than those three constituencies? With the advent of mobile technology, I suppose we could add TikTok or Instagram, but learners have always had things to distract them from their lessons. It’s the technology of distraction that has changed (and the intensity of that technology).
In the quotation above I’m more intrigued by the question of spontaneity in the classroom and its online opposite: constraint. There’s a hint here that form is more important than content in these interactions: it’s not what the interaction between the learner and instructor is about that matters, but rather the way in which the interaction occurs. Which brings us back to the question as to how online instruction could possibly replace the supposedly better form of face-to-face instruction.
The notion that online education depends on “design[ing] productive interaction in advance” doesn’t do much to entice instructors to commit to teaching online. It sounds very dry, this lack of spontaneity, almost corporate (“remember, sales people, be sure to design productive interactions with your clients in advance . . . . “). It’s true that with online instruction, you need to plan more in advance. Many advocate having the whole course prepared and packaged before the term begins, a constraint for any instructor who wants to adjust their teaching during term.
Perhaps we need to pose a different question. Even if we can agree there are ways of increasing the presence of spontaneity in an online course, we have to ask ourselves why we value spontaneity in learning. We don’t value it in learning materials or assessment - it would likely lead to disorganized or ill-conceived tasks and assignments.
I actually don’t think we’re looking for spontaneity as much as we are for the human or humanizing element. By being spontaneous we avoid mechanistic, non-human interactions. This may not be as productive as more rigorous approaches, but it’s likely more refreshing for students and instructors alike. Luckily, the increased use of synchronous video chat in online education has created more space for spontaneity, even if it is heavily mediated by a sometimes awkward technology.
For Fall Term 2020 this blog will be exploring issues informing education during a pandemic. It is appearing as part of a graduate seminar on online teaching and learning. You can read more about the seminar or see the other posts.
Post 26/60.