Online Classes

[Devin Feeney]

   I think online classes are a great idea for new media and literacy classrooms because it only reiterates the importance of technology in the classroom. I used to get excited when I was told that my classes were "online" because I thought the work would be easier for some reason. I realized that once I got in the zone for the class I ended up doing more work and did a better job on whatever project/discussion I was participating in because I had the use of my computer at my finger tips. Although it's not possible for high school students to be able to stay home for an online class, it is possible to make the class online. If an entire class had access to a computer lab they could blog, have discussion, work on projects, and other technology related things for the class period.
   When I was in high school we went to a private computer lab that me teacher had rented out for that day and we learned how to use a smart board, creative websites, and for those who were unfamiliar with computers she taught us the basic skills of blogging and webcasting. Unfortunately not every school can afford private computer labs like mine could and because of that, those students are lacking knowledge that could be useful outside of school in the work force. For those schools who the ability to sit down for a class should really take advantage of it.

[Cassandra C. Leggio]

I'm a believer, a strong supporter, of online classes. Although I have never taken one, I feel as if we are partially involved in the activity most online students engage in? The NING for us is just a continuation of what goes on in class; it's like an add on, which has proven to be most beneficial. So to connect this to what we have been reading is that in the article that we are going to read for next tuesday's class explains that some schools curricula have adopted the use of iPods as an educational instrument. This allows the students to follow up with the knowledge they have been exposed to, in hope that they lean/acquire it. I think I said in a previous discussion/post that creating an environment that students feel at ease in will help them open up and interact more.

Last week one of my classes were canceled, and it was rescheduled to be help online later that evening. I was not about to skip out on the gym, so I went to the gym, came back to my house, went on my laptop, and chatted online with my colleagues and professor. Mind you, I was not presentable at all, my hair was pulled back in a messy bun and I was wearing gym clothes, which are not meant to be impressive. I was so glad that no one from class saw what I looked like during that time. All in all, online classes are great simply because you do not have to look your best!

[Ciara Bellevue]

Cassandra, you just made me laugh! But I completely agree that the convenience of an online class is an appealing feature. Some people are more comfortable in their own environment to think and express themselves. When engaging in online chats with classmates, we are able to think our answers through before sending them to others. Also, there are no awkward silences or pauses between online discussions.

However, we lose human contact and interaction with others when we have online classes. Conversations always seem more meaningful and memorable when we engage in face-to-face discussions. Eye contact, hand gestures, tone of voice, sarcasm, etc are all lost when classrooms move online. Questions are more quickly answered in the classroom, whereas clarity is sometimes lost in online classes. I took an online class once over the summer and while the convenience of the class (being able to do my work whenever I wanted) was amazing, I felt so isolated and alone the entire time. I never saw my teacher and to this day have no idea what he looks like or who else was in that class.

Therefore, I think that online classes are the most beneficial when they are conducted only a percentage of the time. For example, say that a class met once a week online and once a week in the classroom than we’d be satisfying both benefits of learning (students would engage in human contact in the classroom to resolve confusion, ask questions, and give important information one day, and they'd be learning to use new technologies and programs online the next day).

[Katelyn Maroney]

Like the three of you I do like and enjoy online classes for the main purpose of not having to leave my room. Call me lazy if you must but like you all have stated online classes is a way to manage your own time around what it is you have to do. With that being said, I have to admit that I would much rather prefer face to face, classroom time. Education is something I believe we should all motivate ourselves for, to wake up for everyday, get ready, look presentable (although half the time I am wearing sweat pants and a sweat shirt) and constantly be in tune with what it is the professor is saying. Online, you are able to wear and be however you want. I read in an article last semester that the more professional you dress, the better you feel about yourself therefore I would rather be dressed. Also online, you have the time to ponder and not answer right away (which at many times could be a positive thing), however in most cases, in the real world, you will not have the opportunity to thoroughly think things out and be allowed time to answer a question. For example, say you went in for a teaching job and the principal asked you, what is your teaching philosophy?? If you sat there for 20 minutes thinking about it, the principal would probably dismiss you from his/her office and ask for the next person applying for the job.

In my opinion, online classes have both pros and cons to them. My own personal opinion however is that I rather stick to face to face meetings. Being physically present in my class gives me the opportunity to truly grasp the lesson my professor is teaching, communicate with my colleges (face to face) and allow myself to adapt to the environment. I am not saying that my opinion is correct or incorrect I am simply suggesting my opinion because this is the best way for me to learn and grow as a student. :)

[Mark Green]

I kind of have mixed feelings about online classes. I have done my fair share of them from my community college. I took four different online classes that included health, history, english and spanish. The pro's for online classes in my opinion include conveniance and makes a student become more responsible for their work. You never have to be worried about being late and you can do the work at your own pace. Also, online classrooms allow students to become familiar with a new source of technology.

Ok the cons to online classes are a little more than the pro's. In my opinion online classrooms contain no face to face interactions with other students or your professor. You really don't have to do any real hard work because with online discussions you can simply go off of someone else's post. You don't have to do the reading you can simply just read other students responses and get an idea of what the reading was about. When you take a test you can always look up the answers or even stop during the test and go back to it on another day. Same goes with finals. Plus taking a foreign language class online is a huge mistake in my opinion. For one it was very easy and two it was easy because I didn't really speak spanish. Then I took spanish again here at Cortland and I was almost overwhelmed by how poor my spanish speaking capabilities were. These are just experiences I have had it could be different for other people but I feel that taking online courses has a lot of drawbacks.

[Cody Fish]

I also have mixed feelings about online classes. I (As you've all said) enjoy the convenience of never having to leave my chair/bed/couch/wherever I happened to plop to go to class. I also however, don't think I get as much out of an online class. Sometimes I can, but I think I just need real people and real face-to-face interaction to get more out of it. And the whole, asking questions and getting answers in real time is much better in my opinion. Not to mention, in text, it's much easier to misinterpret meaning and tone. SO although I do enjoy online classes now and then, I can't imagine taking a fully online course. I just wouldn't get into what I was doing as much without the personal attention that I can get from a flesh and blood class.

[Abigail Perry]

What all of you have said seems true to me. I find that it really depends on the class and how much you are willing to put into it. I can see how, like Mark said, it would be nearly impossible to take a language class online and expect to learn anything from it. I took a history class online at a local college when I was 16 and I put a lot of time and effort into the class discussions, I was usually the one who started them so I did do the readings:). Being young and naïve, I thought it would be cheating if I used the book on the test so I struggled through the tests solo and was probably the wiser for it. I didn't do as well in that class as I had hoped (scraped a B) but I did learn an awful lot and felt like it was a good experience. I also felt that having an online course was beneficial for me at that age because then no one would know that I was still such a youngster so they wouldn't treat me as such. BUT on the whole, I am a pro-classroom person, when I like the class.

[Justine Sinprasith]

I agree with Mark and Cody about having mixed feelings about online classes. While the benefits of sitting in one's pajamas are very convenient (and awesome), I still feel like I'm missing that personal element of learning that an actual classroom gives me. I'm taking an online Psychology course now and it consists of reading hundreds of pages of chapters at a time and taking a twenty question quiz at the end of each chapter, along with research and reflective papers. Though I'm learning in the moment while I read, it seems that I forget a lot of it by the time I have to start the next chapter. From my experience, it seems that online classes only touch upon the surface of the material, and students aren't really challenged to think beyond what is presented. I have, however, learned to manage time a bit better than I used to, which is a pro of online classes. I like being responsible for my work and being able to work at my own pace. But as I said, I do miss the personal connection or interaction a teacher provides.

[Elisha Dixon]

I think the idea of an online class is a bit scary to me; even though I've grown up around technology, it's sometimes difficult to 'get the hang of.' I know when i was first introduced to a NING last semester, i was so overwhelmed! It was very daunting and scary, to be honest. I wanted to give up, but eventually managed to figure it out. I think our students, on the other hand, will be much more technologically advanced then we are. They will mature in a society that relies almost entirely on technology--computers, ipods, and video games are things that are a part of their daily lives. So i think that, although it will be difficult for us as teachers to deal with technologically advanced concepts (such as online classes), we should attempt it because it would be fun and engaging for our students.

[Cynthia Sarver]

My two cents on online courses: I would like to teach one sometime because I think that when you have only available to you the tools of the internet to communicate effectively, collaborate, and learn, you potentially learn more, or should I say, different -- and more valuable -- lessons and habits of mind than those that are usually emphasized in traditional classrooms today.

Imagine participating in the Flat Classroom Project. You have to make a video (or whatever) with people you've never met before, many of whom are from different cultures (and timezones). No matter WHAT you focus on, think about the "habits of mind" you learn: the classroom is no longer about merely the content or the grade, it's now about learning about others and ourselves in order to find out what is meaningful to all parties, so that we can collaboratively construct something. It's about considering their points of view alongside ours, even though they may be very different. Ultimately, it's about learning that there are other ways to see the world.

If we're reading Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat (as they do in the FCP), for example, we learn that there are other ways to read this book. Which is not at all to say that people from different cultures experience reading differently in a cognitive sense (though they may), but rather that a person from the US and a person from India, for example, are likely to react in a completely different way to Friedman's point that the flattening of the world is sending many jobs formerly done in the US to countries such as India, where labor is cheaper. From what I hear, many Indians are delighted to see their economy booming from this "flattening"; a lot of Americans, on the other hand, tend to complain about "outsourcing." If you're a highschooler who has only ever heard one side of this argument -- on the radio and from your unemployed uncle who blames his situation on "outsourcing," how eye-opening might it be to hear the perspective of someone from India that does not come to you pre-filtered through the lens of US economic interests?

Working with people we've never met before, people who we may be very different from, makes us much more keenly aware of ourselves, of how we look from outside, which, according to Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, is a sign of intelligence (see their "6 facets of understanding"). The ability to scan our ideas and beliefs is what educational theorists and cognitive psychologists call "metacognition." And teaching kids metacognition, or how to think about the way they think, is THE principal goal of all educators; teaching kids to think about how they think through reading and writing, the principal goal of literacy educators. For example, consider how the goal of writing instructors is to teach students not how to write about ______ topic or even how to write in ____ genre, but rather to understand their own process of writing....so that they can transfer that understanding to any new situation that they encounter OUTSIDE of their English class, be it to a paper for history class or a letter to their congressman.

Similarly with reading: our goal is to help students develop an understanding of understanding how they read, or, in other words, how to read different types of texts by practicing with a few in our classes (they will "transfer" their learning to all situations, presumably). For example, I want to teach kids to be able to anwer this question with confidence, the way we -- their English teachers,and skilled readers all, can: When I encounter a very difficult text, how do I make sense of it? Like I say, as highly skilled readers, teachers tend to take this skill take for granted (if we even realize that we possess it).

But the skills of reading metacognitively (e.g., knowing that we need to stop periodically to paraphrase a difficult text, and perhaps read footnotes and look up challenging words or concepts) are what give us the confidence to tackle nearly any text we encounter. Building such well-founded confidence should be our goal for all of our students. And this focus on metacognition doesn't happen only in English class: just as English teachers teach students how to think about how they think through reading and writing, I would imagine that biology teachers teach students how to think about their thinking about the natural world in terms of systems (bodies, symbiosis/parasiti, ecosystems, etc.). Math teachers, about the way numbers organize our world, etc.

And as we know, if we remember, say, Galileo, paradigm shifts, or different views of the same thing, are usually, when you get down to the place where beliefs begin to determine reality (and power and economics) are not politically neutral. Often there are whole institutions (like the Church in Galileo's case) that are built upon maintaining a certain view, and people will often fight (sometimes violently) to ensure that their view remains the worldview or the "received" or "accepted" point of view.

A fancy word for describing all of this is "ideology." We all have "ideologies" -- or belief systems that we buy into; they manifest in our assumptions. Assumptions are beliefs that shape our thinking and world that we often are not aware of, and that we usually share in common with others in our "in-groups." For example, if I host a Superbowl party where the guys watch the game and the gals serve the food and gather in the kitchen and nobody thinks twice about the situation (i.e., it seems "normal"), then we all buy into the same (sexist) ideology.

Taking stock of what we each think is "normal" and "abnormal" is usually a great way to begin getting to the bottom of what ideologies we ascribe to (or the belief systems that we buy into, systems that by their very nature, value one thing while devaluing another, thus giving power to one thing or group while disempowering or devaluing another).

And coming "face to face" with someone from a "foreign" culture -- someone who has a completely different view of things, so that what seems "normal" to them might seem abnormal to us -- is a great place from which to begin questioning our beliefs, especially when we begin to realize that they probably feel the same way how "weird" we are when they hearing what we believe.

This could be as seemingly innocent as Norwegians thinking that Americans are disgusting for liking peanut butter, which, I was surprised to learn on my first trip to Norway, is a distinctly American thing. On the other hand, I found their "normal" way of eating spaghetti back then (in the 1970s) - spaghetti noodles doused in ketchup -- yuk! -- to be certifiably gross. But these types of beliefs can also extend to the political. For example, it feels natural to believe that our views of, say, women's rights are correct and that "the veil" that many women wear in Islamic cultures is oppressive. But what if they choose to wear their veil, even when they are given the option not to? Who are we to impose our views on them? On the other hand, think about what people from countries like Britain, Norway, Canada, France, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Guyana -- all nations among the many more who have had female prime ministers (i.e., presidents) -- think of the US given the fact that we've never had a woman in charge in the White House.

This is not to say that the goal of education is to get us to change all of our beliefs. Rather, it is to say that changing our beliefs can be a very good thing, and that one hallmark of a highly intelligent (and evolved) person is the openness to questioning their beliefs, and the willingness, upon realizing that there is a better way of seeing things, to change them.

And guess what that is called?

Yup. Learning.

I guess that in a nutshell I'm saying that whereas the physical space of many of today's classrooms seem to emphasize mastery of ideas and information in a vacuum, the "space" of an online classroom seems like it could potentially be more conducive to learning in the sense of the term that I describe here. One important caveat though: this is only the case IF AND ONLY IF the learning environment is deliberately constructed to allow students to reflect upon their learning (i.e., focus on their thinking about thinking -- and/or in an English classroom, their thinking about their learning and thinking through reflecting upon their reading and writing processes).

But metacognition is just one benefit of online classes. There are many others, which I'd be interested to hear you say more about.

And since online classes are quickly becoming a very popular way of delivering higher education, I suppose that it would be in my best interests to think about teaching one and soon! But I would never trade the environment of the physical classroom for an online one altogether. The palpable sense of community and presence that comes from creating a physical space together is irreplaceable. I'm just suggesting here that perhaps the online "extension" can help us reinvigorate and re-imagine those physical spaces. And perhaps that the online ones are not so devoid of the experiential qualities we are so quick to ascribe to the seemingly polar opposite of the physical classroom.

Food for thought...

[cross-posted on Teachers are Radicals]