Lisa Lane’s Insidious Pedagogy
“The fact that each technology had a specific purpose implies a goal in its design, an objective that limited or even determined its use. Today’s online technologies are no different, and create serious impacts on our teaching.” The implications of this statement are huge. Technology has a goal, just like the bomb and the microwave, we cannot get around the fact that online web sources and teaching each have their own specific purpose, for better or worse.
Lane makes the important point that many teachers teaching online are novices, maybe not in teaching and maybe not in their subject, but a lot of them are teaching novices when it comes to teaching online (not Steve of course J) but this can be bad because they may not be setting up their classrooms to the best means possible like Kevin DePew and Heather Lettner-Rust’s article pointed out. Like Lane says, we need to help guide these novice instructors in ways that a typical face-to-face instructor doesn’t necessarily need. Maybe online courses in each department should hire an online department head to make sure online courses are meeting rigorous departmental requirements and are challenging students to the same extent as in-class instructors are expected to.
Combating Myths About Distance Education
By Todd Gilman
I think it’s interesting that he points out that even teachers today still look down on distance education as “not as good as” meeting in a classroom so many days a week. Everything in our society is such a hierarchy! I think my online course this semester has been by far my hardest and most demanding, and in fact, most stressful. How can any informed teacher not know the difficulties of taking an online course??
I like his point that meeting in person isn’t always a good thing either. Students can be unresponsive, unprepared, rude, etc. more so than they can be online. When it comes to distance education, students have to respond a certain number of times and in such an intelligent fashion that isn’t required in the classroom setting. Each way of teaching has its own challenges, but they also have great benefits as well.
He says that the online course design and environment can be a lot less forgiving than a face-to-face classroom, and I agree. A student really has to stay on top of every last post and assignment and lecture and discussion and you name it, in order to feel prepared to move ahead in the class and its content. Online courses require a discipline other classes just don’t.
Online-Education Study Reaffirms Value of Good Teaching, Experts Say
By David Glenn
I think it’s interesting that he points out that the medium isn’t the important factor here, it’s the strategies used to teach the lessons to be learned. If online classes happen to be more effective than face-to-face meetings, then perhaps it is because teachers are breaking out of their old, ineffective ruts and teaching through better means. My recent book report talked about this and how teachers need to try out new means of teaching rather than sticking with the old and ineffective things they’ve been doing for the past 20 years or so. I also like that he points out that the new methods aren’t that different from the old ones. Email or video conferencing is pretty much the same as when a students comes to your office and you tell him or her to shape up or risk failing.
They Thought Globally, but Now Colleges Push Online Programs Locally
By Marc Parry
Wow, the idea of a global campus is pretty cool. I mean, I guess that’s what a lot of online classes are anyways, but to think on a global level seems like it’s way more than what EMU and other institutions have been doing. Like I said, I think it’s important for students who are working adults with families like Joel Kohlberg to be able to go to school and work fulltime, but I think schools need to make sure they are doing what they’re doing to benefit students and not just their own pocket books. If an institution is just going online to make money then the program will fizzle like they mentioned, it won’t have to same quality instructors or instruction that many universities demand. Distance education should be to benefit students who want to better themselves, not be taken advantage of.
