Mike’s Doc Blog

I subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus Blog RSS Feed. A recent post, Out of Patience Online, highlights the myopia of some educators.

Online courses are supposed to be a boon for commuters who don’t have time to trek to classrooms and for students living on the campus who’d like to work on their own time. But can colleges go too far in exchanging classrooms for computer screens?

LaGuan Fuse, a senior at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, certainly thinks so. In The Current, the campus newspaper, Mr. Fuse castigates the university for offering requisite courses for some degree programs only on the Internet. “This semester, 75 percent of my classes are online,” the student writes, “and 100 percent of that is not by choice.”

So here we have a student who has made a choice to attend a school that is offering courses in a format that is not his choice. Yet, seemingly chose to stay enrolled. Online is not for everyone; make a different choice in school or program.

The article continues.

Mr. Fuse writes that he arrived at college “expecting lectures, late-night cram sessions, and running late for midterms,” and he argues that the glut of online courses is helping to rob him of that experience. Should colleges worry about alienating people like Mr. Fuse, or are students who demand bricks-and-mortar lecture sessions now a dwindling minority?

This is my biggest point of contention. We certainly understand the typical college experience. Heck, we can even be nostalgic for “late-night cram sessions” and the like. I attended college the first time expecting that but was met with a very traditional school devoid of such activities. I was a commuter and thus, absent from much of the stereotypical college experiences like quad parties, fraternities, cram sessions, etc. What I got plenty of was lectures. Ugh! Where do I begin?

Anyone that feels lectures are the best format for learning is wrong. While it is the most prevalent style of course in colleges across the nation, most of my students report that they learn most effectively through interactive discussion, project-based learning, and experiences.

Simply put, if lectures are what this student wants, he can have them and in later life he will not remember anything from them. Truth is that I don’t remember a single lecture I sat through (or slept through). What I do recall are the engaging discussions, experiences in the class, projects, papers, etc.

Online learning puts the burden of learning where it belongs, on the learner. When I hear students say they want lectures and classroom time, I hear them shirking the responsibility of turning on their own brain and learning. To this article and this student, I say, find a school that bests suits your preferences for learning. Online is not for everyone, and clearly not for you. It does not mean online “goes too far” or is bad. It means that people learn differently and need to be accountable to their own preferences and responsible enough to make the changes needed to find the most effective modality.

On a related aside, I find the Chronicle irresponsibly bias against online learning. This blog post is one example but the journal is wrought with articles that are absent of balance and fair reporting. Rather than expand awareness and advance knowledge in the field, The Chronicle provides nay-sayers with more fear-based rhetoric to further irresponsible dialogue in academe.

Why do I read it? Because keeping current means reading everything with a critical mind.

Your comments are welcome.