| Have you already had experience teaching distance education courses?
If so, your attitude toward distance education has likely been shaped by
the variety of distance education that has touched you and the degree to
which you and your students were ready for that version of distance
education. If you are one of the few professors or graduate students who
have not been affected by distance education or online teaching and
learning initiatives, be prepared. A distance education wave is
sweeping the country, and if you are ready for it, you'll be able to tap
the potential it brings rather than drown in the tidal wave.
Some are more concerned than excited about the momentum that has been gathering. Chris Anson, in "Distant Voices, Distant Visions" has sounded an alarum. He fears that the move toward distance education will affect the quality of composition as it is currently taught. I understand and value the kind of instruction Anson describes. But I question the degree to which composition is currently taught as well as he thinks it is taught. In my experience teaching at many different institutions across the country, I have discovered that few instructors have been adequately immersed in composition pedgagoy to be able to know how to create the kind of lively classroom Anson describes. Classes where students are involved in "rich face-to-face social interaction--fueled by active learning, busy with small groups, energized by writers reading each other's work, powered by the forces of revision and response" are rare, and where they flourish, should indeed be preserved at all costs. Why the rarety of effective traditional composition classrooms? One reason may be that few faculty have had opportunities to visit one another's traditional classes to see the possibilities. But distance education courses (or courses with online components) can make pedagogy visible and thus, if well-designed, can have a powerful impact on instruction. A professor who wants to learn how to conduct peer response groups in a traditional classroom can learn by observing an experienced colleague teach in an online environment. Colleagues who observe online teaching can also prepare themselves to add online components to their courses or they can get ready for totally online distance education courses by monitoring the progress of a course and seeing the possibilities, in particular the ways that effective online courses engage students in discussion and interaction that is the equal of face-to-face discussions. My department head "visited" my classroom last year and noted that the comments students made about one another's drafts in student groups in my online course were more productive than the kinds of responses he had observed in face-to-face classrooms. Even though I would argue that interaction in my own face-to-face classrooms is at least as good as in my online classes, I am glad he appreciated what he saw. For it took me years to develop the ability to design the kinds of online interactions I now can choreograph in online courses. And I welcome online visitors who are interested in exploring peer group possibilities. Distance Education does not have to threaten face-to-face instruction.
We can and should have it both ways. We should maintain and improve
traditional teaching as we transform it for online environments. I welcome
the move toward distance education, in spite of the problems it may cause.
Below I explain why, if not rushed, the move toward Distance Education can
be a productive one for faculty. As long as institutions provide
considerable faculty development and sufficient time, instructors will be
able to do it all--continue to teach effectively in traditional classrooms
and, at least occasionally, design or develop powerful distance education
pedagogies. What I Don't Like About the Distance Education MovementI don't like the rush to distance education, the push at many institutions to offer distance education courses, whether through interactive video or the Web. It is pointless to ask faculty to "put their courses" into WebCT or Blackboard or another course management system before faculty have had the time to learn how to use the ingredients of these systems--web pages, bulletin boards, interactive quizzes and exercises, and chat spaces. One doesn't just put traditional courses into a new container. Effective Distance Education, no matter what shape or form, takes time to develop.When Anson wrote his article, the trend in Distance Education was to add interactive video courses to a department's offerings. I taught a course using interactive video at that time and, although I created a pedagogy of which I am still proud, I am the kind of faculty member who enjoys exploring new territory even if the support structure and the professional development isn't in place yet. (See "Models of Distance Education for Composition Courses" in Kairos.) When Anson wrote "Distant Visions," schools were rushing to interactive video teaching as they are now rushing to Web-based Distance Education, and they had not taken the time to prepare faculty to teach effectively in these new environments.In online courses, so much appears simple--students share drafts, comment on each others' writing, and engage in lively discussions. Appearances are deceptive, however; for to learn how to pull off quality online instruction, an instructor can't just add a bulletin board to his or her course and tell students to use that space for conversations and for sharing drafts. As Joyce Johnson's notes in "Weaving a Syllaweb," her presentation at the "Trends and Issues in Online Instruction Conference," the process of moving to an online environment is multi-faceted, and necessitates a change in both the teacher and the students' ways of approaching learning. Johnson maintains that "in a webbed environment, the students' role too will be transformed," especially if teachers take the time to "build into their curricula requirements for computer conferencing or participation in bulletin boards or discussion groups which will maintain an educational conversation around some shared object, be it only a thought-provoking strand initiated by the instructor." Faculty Development and Transitions to Distance EducationIf administrators want faculty to integrate some elements of online teaching into their courses, then they should provide quality professional development programs or other teaching opportunities that help faculty develop the skills and understandings that prepare them for a range of possibilities. Faculty need quality professional development workshops, such as the model described by Dagmar Corrigan and Isidro Grau in a recent issue of Kairos or the online courses offered by the University of Illinois if they are expected to integrate listservs, e-mail, and threaded discussions into their teaching. Faculty should be encouraged to take their time, and they should be rewarded for making strides in enhancing their traditional classroom courses, the best of which, even if they are already abuzz with activity, can nonetheless be enhanced by Web Syllabi with bulletin boards that keep students connected outside of class.Some faculty have opportunities to make the transition to totally online teaching by first teaching in computer classrooms, rich, technologically enhanced learning environments where students work on their writing in an energizing atmosphere (much like the traditional classroom atmosphere Anson describes)--an atmposphere that resembles an artist's studio. As students write, the teacher circulates, conducts conferences, and helps students shape their emerging drafts. In such classrooms, faculty often have the time they need to develop pedagogies that will migrate seamlessly to online teaching. But computer classrooms are expensive, and thus some institutions are exploring "mixed-mode" teaching. That is, they are encouraging faculty to meet with their students face-to-face only occasionally, and then supplement that instruction with synchronous or asynchronous online meetings. (See the Instructor's Manual for TOPIC, for an explanation of how a program developed by Fred Kemp for use by Texas Technological University faculty works.) The advantage of this mixed-mode situation is that students can use lab, dorm, or home computers some of the time. Whether the students meet each day, face-to-face, in computer rich-environments, or whether they use the tools of these environments remotely does not matter. What matters is that faculty continue to teach interactively, whether face-to-face or online. In all cases, teachers who have sufficient training to use Web tools can orchestrate high quality student interactions in their courses. As I have argued in "The Importance of Teaching Dialogically With Technology," in the move to distance education on our campuses, small, interactive classes should not be phased out, for some students will continue to need them, and they also serve as a training ground for faculty who are learning how to integrate technological tools, including the Web, into face-to-face classroom instruction before teaching totally online courses. Student and Faculty ReadinessBut some students are not and will never be ready for online teaching. Some students' learning styles may not be at all suited for distance education courses. When designing online courses, faculty should consider using learning activities that are suitable for distance education (See "A Review of Learning Styles that are Suitable for Distance Education.") Students should be encouraged to explore their learning styles and to take a quiz such as "Should You Take an English or Literature Course Online?" before taking an online course.If they are ready for distance education courses, I still think that the mix of course-types in their program of study should be a balanced one. If students have some courses that include at least desktop video conferences with an instructor and with a small group of students, then the students' programs are more balanced than programs that include an array of courses that rely on computer-assisted tutorials with multiple choice answers or courses that have been dumped into a courseware management system without concern for the quality of teaching and learning. And what about faculty? Although experimenting with online teaching is valuable, even faculty who think they are going to love the experience may discover that they wouldn't want to teach too many courses online. In my case, I do indeed miss the face-to-face experiences and don't want to teach online courses unless I have a parallel course that meets in a traditional classroom. That way, the immediacy of interaction can help me think through the issues and the assignments that my totally online students are dealing with. When I have no face-to-face class, I find it much harder to get into the same mindset as my students, for the course has already been created and I am not working my way through the material in the same way that I do in a classroom. And some faculty may discover that they do not like being on call via e-mail all day, every day, including weekends. I'm not happy with that situation either, but as long as I only have one online class, it is tolerable. ConclusionIs Distance Education a vision or a spectre? In either case, what should we do about Distance Learning as it approaches our campuses? Like Anson, I would encourage faculty to "make decisions about the worth of each innovation, about ways to put it to good use, or about reasons why it should be rejected out of hand" (275-276). But unlike Anson, I would encourage faculty to embrace the opportunities to integrate online instruction into their teaching, even to explore teaching totally online courses. Why? The best critics of technology are those who have been there, tried it, and emerged with a more complete understanding as a result of their experience.Works Cited Anson, Chris. "Distant Voices, Teaching and Writing in a Culture of
Technology." College Cole, Peggy. "Should You Take an English or a Literature Course
Online?" 17 Aug. 1998. 15 June 2000
Corrigan, Dagmar and Isidro Grau. "Beyond Computer Literacy: Developing
Effective Workshops to Empower
Copernicus Team. "A Review of Learning Styles that are Suitable for
Distance Education." Computers
and
Johnson, Joyce. "Weaving a Syllaweb: Considerations Before Constructing
an Online Syllabus." Trends and
Issues Kemp, Fred. "Instructional Manual for Topic." 15 June 2000
"Making the Online Classroom a Reality: An Online Training Series for
Educators." University of
"A Review of Learning Styles that are Suitable for Distance Education."
Computers and Information Technologies
Rodrigues, Dawn. "Models of Distance Education for Composition."
Kairos 3.2 (Fall 1998). June 2000
____. "The Importance of Teaching Dialogically With Technology." In
Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw,
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