Picture this: you wake up at 5:30 a.m. for a long commute to school from Tigard, Vancouver, wherever…. You wait in the cold for the bus, and then endure an almost hour-and-a-half ride with rude, somewhat smelly people. You drag yourself into class, half-cocked from the rancid coffee you picked up from Starbucks. And then, after you plunk down in a desk that was built for elementary school children, the teacher tells you that all the material you need for the course is online. (Insert expletive of your choice here.)
It’s true that the Internet is a great resource for information, and an invaluable supplemental tool for many courses. The problem is the complete dependence on the Web in classes that are not set up to be online.
Numerous courses have incorporated the World Wide Web as their sole instructional force. Many factors, such as cost to students, inertia on the part of instructors and the excuse not to have to attend class make this a bad idea. The Internet should be used to compliment classes, not to substitute for in-class instruction and participation.
If you sign up for an online course, the obvious expectation is that the entire course will be conducted online. By taking an online course you are not expected to come into classes, or meet with the teacher personally, because it is an online class.
When a student signs up for a course that will be held in a classroom, there are expectations as well. Many students choose this format because it is a better learning experience for them. Not everyone is a read-this-and-understand learner, some are visual, some are auditory and others are hands-on.
Then there is the benefit of having the professor there in person so you can ask questions and receive more personal attention for your needs in the course. Otherwise, what are the benefits of taking a classroom-based course if everything is online?
Many students ask, “What is wrong with the teacher putting up everything on Blackboard? That means I never have to attend class!” That assumption is generally incorrect. Most professors have caught on to this theory, and they implement attendance grades to ensure class turnout.
In some modules, attendance can count for up to 50 percent of your grade! After all, it would be awfully suspicious if PSU were paying teachers to head a class where no one showed up. Since many of these courses are lecture-based, students lose out. They attend a class for at least an hour where the instructor basically talks or just reads what the students can already see online.
Cost is a factor, not only just with money but also with time. If you commute to campus, you are paying to travel to a course where you aren’t getting anything extra out of it. Even if you walk from an on-campus room to class in your sweatpants, you are wasting your time sitting in a classroom if you aren’t getting anything out of it.
In most of these classes where everything is online, you spend a lot of money on “required” texts that you will never read. Not to mention that reading online is generally not as effective as reading out of a book. The Internet is a huge temptation, and come on, how many students are really just checking their MySpace instead of reading a research article on a dusty library Web site? Some students also have to pay to access certain Web sites, which is in addition to textbooks they have purchased for the course.
When an instructor is apathetic enough just to post some power-point slides online and refers students to Blackboard or other sites, they have clearly lost their zeal for teaching, if it ever was there. Any topic can be interesting if the professor is creative and passionate about the subject matter. Isn’t that what we are paying for?
If learning could be done entirely online, the classroom would be obsolete. It seems that if instructors really care about retaining students and teaching them, they would do a little more to make the topic worthy of note. Using media such as the Internet certainly isn’t a bad idea. Neither are video clips, musical supplements, discussion and lectures. However, leaning too heavily on one may make some professors lazy and unimaginative. It also makes the lesson dry up quick.
The Internet must not entirely replace classroom instruction. Don’t Americans spend enough time in front of their glowing screens? I implore instructors to please think of the Web as a tool to enhance learning, not as a crutch to replace face-to-face teaching.