By Susan Quarrell and Mary Carroll
Perhaps what we do now is look closely at what we have, how students learn and how teachers teach online. Despite results that some have seen as muddled and inconclusive, the meta-study by the Department of Education study asks three cogent questions: a) How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with face- to-face instruction? b) What practices are associated with more effective online learning? c) What conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning?
Online learning forces us to reevaluate student learning models and extant pedagogy. We move away from the idea of teacher centered learning towards a student centered model. Learning online is simply a more thoughtful process, and, as such, it is an asset better than conventional face-to-face. Students in most instances write to learn; this activity is inherently more self–reflective because students spend more time working with the course material inculcating more thoughtful responses to the material. We use multiple technologies from blogs and wikis to iTunesU and other websites to audio/visual lectures, films and YouTube to name a few of the tools now available to us—all of which actively engage the student in a way that chalk and blackboard simply do not.
Admittedly, some applications work better than others and as we progress these applications will be refined or shelved. But just look around you, our students are already so familiar with the digital world. They can download and play educational content in much the same way they may already do with music, videos and, dare I say it, games.
Involvement with technology is changing the way brains function. We are not simply talking about hand-eye coordination, but cognitive changes and the way we learn. Online instructors are at the forefront of this change. To deliver course content in a method that the student is already using and comfortable with surely makes for more efficacious pedagogy. Our focus now should be on refining the ways in which course content is delivered that best suits this student and this medium.
Data from Institutional Research at our institution shows virtually no student involvement in student government or intramural activities. Students at a college such as ours have many outside obligations that impede their ability to participate in university activities. Often, they are running from classroom to job to home, and many have children.
In a blended learning environment, students who take some of their courses online work together in a cooperative. In the Discussion Board (DB) area, interaction among students becomes the nexus, the very heart of learning. The teacher becomes a facilitator and sometimes mediator to keep the discussions on topic, to encourage the self-reflection and initiative that students begin to take, all of which helps to create a community of learners, which somewhat paradoxically, may not always occur as naturally in a face-to-face classroom. In the classroom, it is easy to call on the students who raise their hands, and often the quieter, perhaps shyer ones can be overlooked. In an online environment, all students are required to participate, and moreover, for many its relative anonymity provides a safe place for them to join in.
We need to look at the disinterest by some department heads and some faculty. Those of us who have been at the forefront of teaching with technology know only too well the departmental resistance there is in some quarters to this “new fangled” approach to instruction. Usually those who think it pedagogically unsound, in my experience, tend to have limited computer skills and have formed an opinion based on no research. They simply cannot imagine pedagogy that is not teacher centered—the sage on the stage.
What is needed now is a CUNY-wide initiative that calls for a general review of existing coverage of online courses and parity across disciplines. Those courses that are offered online are consistently filled and students want more, and yet, still, there are some departments that only offer a handful of courses each semester. Furthermore, we need to look more closely at how we are creating and implementing our course content with the technology that is out there, and not worry about the slowdown in new technology. We are at a juncture where CUNY needs to really pause and assess what kind of teaching and learning is taking place at its various institutions. Online learning is not a fad. We are at the beginning of a paradigm shift to a more complex multi-dimensional style of pedagogy.
