While I like to identify and combine puzzle pieces, I don’t rest easy for long with what I’ve constructed. I tend to get the fidgets pretty quickly and start deconstructing almost before I’ve finished. As a feminist professor explicitly committed to social justice, part of how I’ve pieced together my rationalization for online teaching is for its potential to support students who might otherwise miss out on college.
And to some extent, online classes do this. At the mid-tier public university where I work, many students have full-time jobs and must also care for their families. They squeeze in their class work at the end of a full day on the job, after the kids have gone to bed. There’s no doubt that, for some, getting a traditional college education would be a logistical hardship, one requiring transportation access, travel time and hours of investment that just just don’t exist.
So far, so good. We online teachers provide an invaluable service, propping open the heavy door to higher ed so that these unfortunate folks too may have access. We aren’t just teachers, but noble activists!
Except that when I look at the students who are actually taking my online classes, I find that very few actually fall into this category. Many, it turns out, are probably pajama-clad in their off-campus apartments, mere blocks away, skimming classmates’ discussion posts as they gnaw on Rice Crispy Treats.
My carefully constructed rationalizing can’t change the fact that some students picked my class, not from anything resembling necessity, but because of its apparent ease and convenience, like watching Netflix rather than gong to the movies. And while there may be nothing clearly wrong with this — my online course is of very high quality, after all, not less demanding than the face-to-face version — that they are evidently choosing the online class for trivial convenience doesn’t sit well with me.
Though I’m an enthusiastic online teacher and exert myself to create excellent classes in the virtual space, I’m not uncritical of it. Rather, I see online ed as an inevitability and as a potentially effective alternative for some students. But I’m not persuaded that online classes are generally better, or even as good, as the face-to-face experience, at least not for many students. At the very least, I would say that there are strengths and weaknesses of each modality that are incommensurable. Though convenience alone may in fact dictate most students’ choice of modality, it isn’t a very inspiring reason.
And I’m also confident that basic logistical convenience is only part of what makes online classes more attractive to some students. Online classes are often felt to be “easier,” sometimes because of the workload, but also because of the lack of social demand. Certainly, one need not be immediately accountable for one’s expressed views or feel the discomfort of hearing others’ opposing, or just plain boring, perspectives. We are told that this is why shy students can really shine in online classes — and I don’t doubt this — but I also want my students to practice weathering these difficult, sometimes unpleasant, social exchanges.
Of course these two learning modalities bring trade-offs and I don’t mean to merely rehearse the pros and cons of online ed for developing students’ social skills. I am, rather, bent on reminding myself to be honest about the true costs of the online work I am doing. I can build elaborate rationalizations that make me feel better, or I can reckon and wrestle with the double-edged nature of the path I’ve chosen. And as far as I can tell, there are no unambiguous heroes or villains in sight.
The Virtual Pedagogue 