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MY college teaching career began when the epitome of high tech in the classroom was an overhead projector and a pull-down projection screen. By the time it ended, several decades later, I could teach my classes from home, if I wanted, and never lay eyes on an actual student outside of a computer screen.
But I never wanted to. I had nothing particular against online education, nor do I gainsay colleagues who eagerly embraced it during my last years of teaching.
Nevertheless, I declined to move my classes online. My field, writing, involves skill and even a little art. The techniques that I used to help students develop more writing competence did not seem as easily transferrable to an online classroom as those used in a large lecture-based course. Or so I thought.
But my real reasons for resisting the shift online had less to do with pedagogy than with people. A traditional college class is all about people. It’s a unique social situation that coalesces almost randomly semester by semester around a convenient meeting time and the requirements of individual degree plans.
For 16 weeks, 25 or so students meet two or three times a week with a teacher who eventually will have to make decisions about how much they have learned. Because I taught in a large community college my students represented a broad range of humanity, diversified by race, age, educational background, innate ability and life experiences. Some were fresh from high school; others had families and even grandchildren. Some had been in the Army and seen combat in Iraq or Afghanistan; others had been in prison and were trying to put their lives back together.
Some students were diligent and dedicated, never missing class and always doing their assignments; some students were good-natured and funny, and others, surly and taciturn, slouched in the classroom’s back row. Some students could have succeeded at any college or university; others were lucky to have survived high school. During some semesters, I could see a light flash on brightly in the minds of some students; others maintained a modest dim glow.
Over time, leaders and followers emerged. Friendships developed, and sometimes romances. Occasionally a single mom would ask if her child could sit quietly in the back of the room. One semester two students were killed in separate car crashes; I recall how one of them, a tired, petite young woman, fought to stay awake in the front row on the day she lost control of her car on the way home.
There were successes, disappointments, competition, complaints, discouragement, occasional enlightenment and sometimes some real laughs. We learned, I hope, about writing, and we also learned about each other. In short, the in-person college classroom is an extraordinarily rich amalgam of humanity, and I found it endlessly fascinating.
Unfortunately, the traditional classroom was under some threat before Pandemic 2020 struck. Online education offers economies of scale that colleges and universities - always hard pressed for funds - find attractive. Online classes are convenient for working students and parents, and many offer opportunities for self-pacing that may help some students learn.
Still, as the pandemic is forcing more colleges to resort to online classes this fall, students are beginning to demand tuition discounts. According to an Associated Press story last week, students are arguing that “online classes fail to deliver the same experience they get on campus. Video lectures are stilted and awkward, they say, and there’s little personal connection with professors or classmates.”
Precisely. American students understand this inherently: Whatever the virtues of online education, many students crave, and benefit from, a personal connection. And so do their teachers. They find a “classroom” conducted online about as satisfying as a funeral staged on Zoom. But COVID-19 is calling the shots, and the experiences of this fall will likely affect higher education after the pandemic is under reasonable control. May one of its lessons not be that online education can provide all of the learning experiences of the traditional classroom. It can’t.
(John M Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, lives
in Georgetown, Texas)
But I never wanted to. I had nothing particular against online education, nor do I gainsay colleagues who eagerly embraced it during my last years of teaching.
Nevertheless, I declined to move my classes online. My field, writing, involves skill and even a little art. The techniques that I used to help students develop more writing competence did not seem as easily transferrable to an online classroom as those used in a large lecture-based course. Or so I thought.
But my real reasons for resisting the shift online had less to do with pedagogy than with people. A traditional college class is all about people. It’s a unique social situation that coalesces almost randomly semester by semester around a convenient meeting time and the requirements of individual degree plans.
For 16 weeks, 25 or so students meet two or three times a week with a teacher who eventually will have to make decisions about how much they have learned. Because I taught in a large community college my students represented a broad range of humanity, diversified by race, age, educational background, innate ability and life experiences. Some were fresh from high school; others had families and even grandchildren. Some had been in the Army and seen combat in Iraq or Afghanistan; others had been in prison and were trying to put their lives back together.
Some students were diligent and dedicated, never missing class and always doing their assignments; some students were good-natured and funny, and others, surly and taciturn, slouched in the classroom’s back row. Some students could have succeeded at any college or university; others were lucky to have survived high school. During some semesters, I could see a light flash on brightly in the minds of some students; others maintained a modest dim glow.
Over time, leaders and followers emerged. Friendships developed, and sometimes romances. Occasionally a single mom would ask if her child could sit quietly in the back of the room. One semester two students were killed in separate car crashes; I recall how one of them, a tired, petite young woman, fought to stay awake in the front row on the day she lost control of her car on the way home.
There were successes, disappointments, competition, complaints, discouragement, occasional enlightenment and sometimes some real laughs. We learned, I hope, about writing, and we also learned about each other. In short, the in-person college classroom is an extraordinarily rich amalgam of humanity, and I found it endlessly fascinating.
Unfortunately, the traditional classroom was under some threat before Pandemic 2020 struck. Online education offers economies of scale that colleges and universities - always hard pressed for funds - find attractive. Online classes are convenient for working students and parents, and many offer opportunities for self-pacing that may help some students learn.
Still, as the pandemic is forcing more colleges to resort to online classes this fall, students are beginning to demand tuition discounts. According to an Associated Press story last week, students are arguing that “online classes fail to deliver the same experience they get on campus. Video lectures are stilted and awkward, they say, and there’s little personal connection with professors or classmates.”
Precisely. American students understand this inherently: Whatever the virtues of online education, many students crave, and benefit from, a personal connection. And so do their teachers. They find a “classroom” conducted online about as satisfying as a funeral staged on Zoom. But COVID-19 is calling the shots, and the experiences of this fall will likely affect higher education after the pandemic is under reasonable control. May one of its lessons not be that online education can provide all of the learning experiences of the traditional classroom. It can’t.
(John M Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, lives
in Georgetown, Texas)
