[The Montana Professor 23.2, Spring 2013 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Henry Gonshak
Professor of English
Montana Tech of the University of Montana
Some years ago, I attended a Montana Professor editorial board meeting with the then-Commissioner of Higher Education in Montana, who laid out his plan in great detail for the future of our state's university system. In a nutshell, his proposal was that the entire system should go exclusively online. He argued that in our computer age, online learning was the future of higher education in America, because it allowed students to learn on their own schedules, without having to set aside specific times to attend class, an arrangement that worked particularly well for non-traditional students, the fastest growing segment of the student population, who were often saddled with jobs and families. He said Montana was in an ideal situation to lead the nation in this online endeavor, because we were a sparsely populated state covering a large geographical area, and therefore it was especially burdensome for Montana students to make the often long trips required to attend a traditional class. In the commissioner's re-envisioned online classroom, teachers would go from being, in the lingo he adopted, no longer the "sage on the stage" but now the "guide on the side." In other words, rather than lecturing to a group of students in a classroom, teachers would facilitate students' computer searches as they cruised around in cyberspace accessing the wealth of information available.
I sat there at the board meeting, listening to the commissioner expound his grandiose scheme, my jaw dropping quietly to the floor, imagining spending the rest of my professorial career holed up in my office, hunched over my computer screen, never actually meeting a flesh and blood student. I felt like I'd rather be digging in the mines of Butte, contracting consumption. Fortunately, somebody in the administration of higher education in Montana—whether the Board of Regents, or the Assistant Commissioner, or the legislature, or the governor—succeeded in thwarting the Commissioner's dystopian stratagem, because during his singularly mediocre tenure as commissioner, online education may have increased to some degree, but it never attained the massive proportions he envisioned.
One can see the temptations of online education, however, especially to administrators. For one thing, it's a cash cow. So long as it's unnecessary to corral a given number of students in a physical room, the number of students who can be serviced by a single professor is literally infinite. I heard about a Penn State English professor who's offering a Modern Poetry MOOC that includes literally thousands of students from all over the world. When I heard the professor interviewed on National Public Radio, he insisted that his hordes of students were not paying tuition, just a nominal computer fee, and also that they were not receiving college credit for the class. But who's to say that a future teacher taking over the class will observe this professor's moral scruples, especially since the Penn State administration must be drooling onto its bottom line at the thought of all those millions of tuition dollars rolling in?
If online education did as good a job as traditional education, I would be all for it. But it doesn't. There is simply no substitute for the in-person, face-to-face interaction between a teacher and a group of students in the classroom. Traditional education is remarkably low-tech. In my class, we have a bunch of desks arranged in a circle, a copy of a book on each of those desks, and that's it. We could be holding class in a cave in the Himalayas, and things wouldn't be essentially changed. Traditional education hasn't fundamentally altered in thousands of years. There isn't much real difference between my literature class at Montana Tech in 2013, and Socrates traipsing over the hills of ancient Athens centuries ago with his disciples discussing the meaning of life. I think it's the fact that traditional education, especially in the humanities, is so low-tech that makes it immediately suspect to a good percentage of our technologically-obsessed culture, including our elected representatives. What, no computers, no cell phones, no iPods, no cameras, no power-point presentations? No, nothing except the magic that can transpire when fertile minds interact about the things that matter in life.
Of course, one might argue that meaningful intellectual discourse can be achieved just as easily via computer, through online chat rooms or the other venues computers offer for dialogue. Given how much time people today spend communicating through the computer, whether via Facebook or email or web sites, it would seem that computer chatting is fast becoming the dominate mode of communication in our culture. But I wonder if something hasn't been lost in the decline of face-to-face conversation. I like to be able to actually see the person I'm talking to. After all, don't the psychologists tell us that the most important part of communication is non-verbal? There's something inexpressibly wonderful about seeing the twinkle in a student's eye or the smile that crosses her face when that student suddenly hits upon an interesting idea. Or the roar of laughter that rolls across a classroom when someone says something funny. One of the best experiences I've ever had as a teacher was when I'd assigned Dostoevsky's novella, Notes from Underground. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and only the best students were in attendance. I confess that when I'd read this complex novella I hadn't really understood it, and I came into class unsure what we'd discuss. So, I mostly just sat there and listened to my students, one by one, with considerable eloquence, explain to me Notes From Underground. By the time the period was over, it seemed like the entire class was convinced that not only was Dostoevsky's novella a literary masterpiece, but that it was also the saddest story any of us had ever heard. We sat there looking at each other, on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by the poignancy and tragedy of the novella. I am convinced that this experience could not have been duplicated on a computer.
I've heard the argument that online education is a boon to shy students, because such students might not be willing to speak in front of a group in class, but they do have the courage to post a response online. To those students I say, why not use the traditional classroom as an opportunity to learn how to speak in front of a group (a key skill no matter what one's career path)? After all, a patient, sensitive teacher, who creates a relaxed, comfortable in-class environment, can usually coax a response out of even the most introverted student. Who wants to go through life bubbling over with ideas but never having the guts to express them in public? Public communication is one of the things that defines our humanity. I know I have had students who told me they never spoke in another class who in my class were downright verbose.
I am not a Luddite. I am not anti-computer. When I was a Fulbright scholar in Poland, my lap-top was my sole connection to my native land. I even have a Facebook Page, and every once in a blue moon I check it and am invariably enlightened to discover what my friends have had for breakfast or what their favorite TV shows are. And I think online learning can be valuable as a supplement—but never as a substitute—for traditional education. If someone desiring an education is holed up deep in the mountains of Montana and has no way to travel to a traditional classroom, by all means have him or her take a class online. By the same token, if someone else is working a full-time job, and raising a family, and only has time to do schoolwork late at night, after the kids are in bed, yes, he or she, too, is an ideal candidate for online education. But none of these people should be under the illusion that the education they are receiving is equivalent to what transpires in a traditional classroom. Nor, with all due respect to that former Commissioner of Higher Education in Montana, should anyone tout the foolish proposition that exclusively online learning represents the future of education in America.
[The Montana Professor 23.2, Spring 2013 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]