"Online" can mean many different things in different contexts.
Bunge’s article omits too much. It seems to explain how she tried to add an online component to a course, why that failed, and why she will “no longer teach online.” But her interpretations of students’ responses, her conclusions, and her implied recommendations are not supported by her article. Her experience was too narrow. She did not adequately answer the questions below. Clear answers to these questions would also provide useful context for a description of an experimental introduction of some online activities to improve any undergraduate course that has previously had none.
For other excerpts from Bunge’s article and my responses, see www.tlt.gs/bungeresponse
Also, see below for full citation/link for her article.
I share Bunge's hope that our colleagues will "keep evaluating technology's impact, perhaps they will eventually find a way to invest its processes with the sense of shared humanity that binds together students and teachers in successful classes." And I hope she shares mine that our colleagues will continue just as avidly to try to achieve those successful classes - with or without online activities...By using whatever available technologies, supporting resources, pedagogies, etc. that seem worthwhile and well-matched to their own abilities, to the characteristics of their students, and to the purposes of those classes.
QUESTIONS
1. How did online assignments differ from other assignments in the course?
• How were course assignments communicated?
• How was students' [text-only?] work examined, guided, structured and graded?
• Were students permitted, encouraged, or required to do their thinking and writing in any ways for the "online" assignments different from how they did their thinking and writing for other assignments?
• Were students permitted, encouraged, or required to read the passages for the online assignments in any ways that differed from other reading assignments?
• What was the nature of the online assignments, activities? The most common option would be to use the institution's Web-based course management system to enable and require students to participate in an asynchronous threaded text-only online discussion during which the instructor intervenes occasionally. That certainly wouldn't be my recommendation for achieving Bunge’s stated goals.
2. What was the course schedule and how did it change? Did the course usually include 3 face-to-face class meetings per week?
a. Was the schedule changed to include only two such weekly meetings with some kind of online activities provided instead of the third weekly meeting? or
b. Was some kind of online work added instead of substituted for class meetings?
3. What was the purpose of the online activities? In what ways, if any, were their purposes different from other course activities?
Above comments, questions, refer to: "Why I No Longer Teach Online," by Nancy Bunge, "...professor of writing, rhetoric, and American culture at Michigan State University." The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 6, 2011-Part of:Online Learning: The Chronicle's 2011 Special Report
BROWSE THE FULL ISSUE: News, Commentary, and Data
IMAGE
Photo of "Laundry hanging on clotheslines between buildings, New York City" ca. 1900
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/A_Monday_washing%2C_New_York_City%2C_1900.jpg/500px-A_Monday_washing%2C_New_York_City%2C_1900.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/A_Monday_washing%2C_New_York_City%2C_1900.jpg
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.
By Detroit Publishing Co. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Photochrom print by the Detroit Photographic Co., copyrighted 1900.
From the Photochrom Prints Collection at the Library of Congress
THIS IMAGE is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g04167.
No comments:
Post a Comment