Lonely Learning.
Is the human side of education only available in the classroom?
Some of the next posts in this series (see the bottom of this post for more information) will be exploring the debate du jour (or at least de la pandémie): which is better, classroom/face-to-face courses, or online/remote courses? To get into that I want to explore some of the criticisms about online learning that have emerged these past few months.
One of the better written critiques of online courses appeared in University Affairs just before colleges and universities were forced to pivot to remote teaching. Johanne Mednick Myles, an experienced online educator, took online courses to task in “The loneliness of the online learner.” (Why didn’t the editor call it “The loneliness of the long distance learner”? That would have been brilliant.) She describes helping a student who is dissatisfied with the peer learning assignments in her online psychology course - the feedback from her fellow students is inconsequential, and the online instructor’s availability clashes with her work schedule. The student is grateful to Mednick Myles for the assistance provided: “Thank you so, so much – it’s great to talk to a real person. You have really made my day.”
Photo by Iris Wang on Unsplash
Mednick Myles uses the story as a springboard for a critique of the claims one often hears in favour of online courses. While some students engage in online discussions and profit from that engagement, many others do not and learn less as a result. The “mirage of community” in online courses is just that, a concoction of the promoters of online education that ignores the lack of “honest, engaging commentary” in the online environment. Online platforms “disseminate subject matter through screens displaying colourful graphics and endless text”; their “manufactured simulations” and “pretend communities” cannot replicate “the human vibe.”
The essay’s main argument is derived from the story about a professor of Mednick Myles’ who “gripped the class with her superb storytelling.” We’ve probably all had instructors like that at some point, teachers who simply captured our attention and often our devotion. Mednick Myles makes the case for the humanity of teaching and learning, and she’s right to do so.
But the images of the classroom - both the physical ones and their virtual counterparts - presented in the article are mirages as well. What if an instructor is not a superb storyteller but an awkward or shy explainer of content? How helpful is the storytelling for the students who don’t attend class? How do we explain to people that online communities are a myth even though they participate in just such communities daily - on Facebook, Reddit, and newer platforms I’m too old to understand?
The problems that the student was having are not to be dismissed. But they are not confined to the online environment. In the Before Times I used to joke with other profs that the best thing about office hours was that you knew you’d get an hour of uninterrupted work done. Many of today’s students are more likely to email you than to visit you in person; they hate email, but they find one-on-one interactions even more intimidating. Being a classroom instructor does not make you immune from not having enough - or not providing enough - time to help students. Peer interaction in the classroom is not guaranteed to be any more engaging than interaction online, especially if that interaction is not intelligently structured.
I don’t object to Mednick Myles’ demand for a human element in education; I endorse it. But I reject the notion that it is only attainable in the classroom, or that classroom courses aren’t susceptible to many of the same defects and faults that one finds in online courses. We have to accept that learning can take many shapes, and that we can find real human enjoyment and connection outside the physical classroom.
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 15/60.
