Week 10 Post 2-Face to online face
I have to imagine that whenever someone starts to pursue a career in education and starts taking higher education courses to their degree they grapple to some extent with their own education that they experienced growing up. Because necessarily there will probably be a gap of 15-20 years, and especially since the rise of digital technologies the differences in what the student experienced in school and the techniques they are studying in pursuit of their degree must be vast.
It’s certainly something that is on my mind, studying in this course and the rest of my courses as I pursue my certificate and reflect not only on my elementary and high school education, but also much more relevantly on the online coursework I took from 2002-3 in pursuit of my Library Science Masters. In the interim of those 16 years from then to now, online education has become so different they might as well not even be classified as the same thing. They aren’t, really, with current coursework being called “asynchronous”, while my Masters was for all intents and purposes a regular face to face class, complete with meeting times when the class would gather for chats. It was just online.
Reading the Watson et al (2016). “Small data, online learning and assessment practices in higher education: a case study of failure?”article brought these concerns to mind especially this week. The article details the failure of a student in an online class, and I mostly wonder if the same would’ve happened in a face to face class? The student is described as having more success when she met with her online peers face to face for group projects. The issue mostly revolved around a failure on the student’s part to understand peer reviewed journals, but perhaps a face to face conversation would’ve clued in the tutor/instructor on the nature of the problem immediately rather than the slower method of an emailed conversation. I think the issue was that the student didn’t understand the problem they were having, so they were unable to articulate it- the instructor would've been able to read the body language (I hope) and figured out where the confusion is.
The primacy online education has placed on student discussions has been surprising to me. Especially as someone who was pretty reticent in classes throughout my schooling, the required nature of it online was initially off putting. Eventually the nature of it being so different from face to face class discussions became apparent and I was put more at ease. In a classroom setting, I definitely would have problems freezing, and I sometimes like to thin too much before saying anything. Online interactiosn afforded me the ability to take my time, consider the topic, and post as necessary when I was ready. It helped that I’ve been visiting online message boards for my hobbies for a long time, so it felt similar (even though I’m fairly reticent even on those forums, too.)
But getting back to the primacy of online discussions and peer review, it seems funny that it is taking technology to place the emphasis on classroom discussion. In a classroom setting, with a teacher led discussion, the teacher would necessarily be the focus of conversation and moderating. While very vocal students would become known in the course, quieter students would fade to the background, and many students wouldn’t even really know each other. We wouldn’t really get to know each other’s thoughts on the subject matter, or work together.
It’s the technology that has enabled students to interact more. Blown out from the confines of a few hours a week, asynchronicity has enabled students to have the time to engage and hear each other’s thoughts. But I wonder, just like often heard stories of virtual friends and loves finally meeting in a physical location and finding their interactive spark lacking, if an online class was suddenly shifted to a physical environment if the discussion would necessarily be the same.
It probably wouldn’t, because for better or worse, I think most people have an online self and a physical self, two ways they carry each other in the different online and physical realms. (There are surely other realms- a personal and business realm, etc.). It’s interesting to think, the same way that there’s a dissociation effect with car drivers that leads to things like road rage, ie not recognizing the humanity of your fellow car drivers because you are in the bubble of your car, that there is also a dissociative effect to posting online. This is talked about frequently when it comes to toxicity in online forums, or Twitter etc, with bad posts that would probably never be said in the real world without facing consequence.
So the same might be true of online class discussions. The online student might be enabled or freed to post, or articulate, in ways they wouldn’t think possible if a discussion were occurring face to face.
It’s certainly something that is on my mind, studying in this course and the rest of my courses as I pursue my certificate and reflect not only on my elementary and high school education, but also much more relevantly on the online coursework I took from 2002-3 in pursuit of my Library Science Masters. In the interim of those 16 years from then to now, online education has become so different they might as well not even be classified as the same thing. They aren’t, really, with current coursework being called “asynchronous”, while my Masters was for all intents and purposes a regular face to face class, complete with meeting times when the class would gather for chats. It was just online.
Reading the Watson et al (2016). “Small data, online learning and assessment practices in higher education: a case study of failure?”article brought these concerns to mind especially this week. The article details the failure of a student in an online class, and I mostly wonder if the same would’ve happened in a face to face class? The student is described as having more success when she met with her online peers face to face for group projects. The issue mostly revolved around a failure on the student’s part to understand peer reviewed journals, but perhaps a face to face conversation would’ve clued in the tutor/instructor on the nature of the problem immediately rather than the slower method of an emailed conversation. I think the issue was that the student didn’t understand the problem they were having, so they were unable to articulate it- the instructor would've been able to read the body language (I hope) and figured out where the confusion is.
The primacy online education has placed on student discussions has been surprising to me. Especially as someone who was pretty reticent in classes throughout my schooling, the required nature of it online was initially off putting. Eventually the nature of it being so different from face to face class discussions became apparent and I was put more at ease. In a classroom setting, I definitely would have problems freezing, and I sometimes like to thin too much before saying anything. Online interactiosn afforded me the ability to take my time, consider the topic, and post as necessary when I was ready. It helped that I’ve been visiting online message boards for my hobbies for a long time, so it felt similar (even though I’m fairly reticent even on those forums, too.)
But getting back to the primacy of online discussions and peer review, it seems funny that it is taking technology to place the emphasis on classroom discussion. In a classroom setting, with a teacher led discussion, the teacher would necessarily be the focus of conversation and moderating. While very vocal students would become known in the course, quieter students would fade to the background, and many students wouldn’t even really know each other. We wouldn’t really get to know each other’s thoughts on the subject matter, or work together.
It’s the technology that has enabled students to interact more. Blown out from the confines of a few hours a week, asynchronicity has enabled students to have the time to engage and hear each other’s thoughts. But I wonder, just like often heard stories of virtual friends and loves finally meeting in a physical location and finding their interactive spark lacking, if an online class was suddenly shifted to a physical environment if the discussion would necessarily be the same.
It probably wouldn’t, because for better or worse, I think most people have an online self and a physical self, two ways they carry each other in the different online and physical realms. (There are surely other realms- a personal and business realm, etc.). It’s interesting to think, the same way that there’s a dissociation effect with car drivers that leads to things like road rage, ie not recognizing the humanity of your fellow car drivers because you are in the bubble of your car, that there is also a dissociative effect to posting online. This is talked about frequently when it comes to toxicity in online forums, or Twitter etc, with bad posts that would probably never be said in the real world without facing consequence.
So the same might be true of online class discussions. The online student might be enabled or freed to post, or articulate, in ways they wouldn’t think possible if a discussion were occurring face to face.
I share a lot of the same insights regarding the nature of discussions in online classes. It took me some time to acclimate to them, but I agree that they are particularly useful in the sense that they are a platform through which shyer students can articulate their thoughts and interact with their peers. Honestly, in my opinion the biggest drawback to these asynchronous discussion boards is the lack of spontaneity and immediate feedback that happens in a face-to-face setting. That being said, I think this could be remedied if more instructors occasionally used less static forums than those offered in LMSs, like a Twitter chat. I think that online classes sometimes too heavily rely on this one form of class interaction, so this class has been refreshing in the sense that we are interacting with one another and building knowledge collectively across different platforms!
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