XplanaZine

When we were talking with the Math Adjuncts here at OU the other day, there was a clear sense that using the Internet to do teaching was something “impersonal.” There was a strongly voiced fear that any efforts to teach online - either in conjunction with a regularly scheduled class or in a fully online environment - would result in something impersonal. This was exactly the word used (and used over and over again): impersonal.
I’m no longer even sure how to start to respond to a criticism like that. Since I started teaching fully online courses, I feel that I know my students far better than I ever did in the classroom situation. This perception is very strong, but it is deeply based in my own experience teaching online - an experience that most of my colleagues have not shared.
But think about it: in the classroom, I would have a class with 30 students in the room, for 150 minutes per week. And that was about the extent of my contact with them, except for the few who came to office hours. It would take me weeks even to learn their names. I would bring in index cards and make sure that I randomly called on every student at least once per week. Once per week - what kind of contact is that really? My individual contact - my truly personal contact - with the students was very limited when I was teaching in the classroom.
Now, in my online classes, I have individual contact with each of the students several times every week - for example, in the Online Folklore-Mythology class, I check in with them when they do their Starting Assumptions at the beginning of each unit, when they write their creative Storytelling each week, when they answer the Discussion Questions, and when they publish a new chapter in their Storybook. Lots of contact - and unforgettable contact, especially with the Storytelling and the Storybook. These creative interpretations come from a personal place - sometimes humorous, or profound, or both - and I learn important things about my students this way every week.
The difference, of course, is that I do not know what they look like. I actually meet them “in person” on odd occasions. So, for example, this week, one of my students was involved in dropping the “Sooner Lunar Schooner” from a five-story height in order to simulate the dropping of an exploratory probe on the lunar surface. How cool! The student knew I was excited about what he was doing in that class, so he invited me to come. I showed up in the early morning, and there were various Engineering students and Engineering faculty milling around… and even though I really do know this student, I could not pick him out of the crowd. I had to ask somebody to introduce us. What a strange feeling it was to meet him! So we chatted for a bit, but he was very busy of course - and then they dropped the lunar module, and it survived the drop! That was so exciting! And I was so glad to have been able to see that. And then … the student and I went back to happily emailing one another that evening! Did I feel deprived that we were back to emailing? No, not at all.
Think about this: books might also be dismissed as impersonal. Indeed. But does it matter that Nathaniel Hawthorne is not physically present in class in order to commune with us in person? Does anybody say that we should give up books because they are so impersonal…? Of course not. Books are not really impersonal - they are just strangely disembodied.
Because that’s what it comes down to. Bodies. And voices. Books are disembodied voices. And we don’t have a problem with that, right?
To me, voices matter much more than bodies. You can have a classroom full of bodies but no voice at all. Or perhaps only the voice of the teacher. Reading the Powerpoint slides out loud.
As one student wrote to me this week

I came into this course after a long stint of scantron classes. I hadn’t written but a couple papers in the last year or so! I was feeling very insecure about my ability to write a story every week, and I think I spent 2 1/2 hours trying to write my Gilgamesh story! lol But, throughout the semester I relaxed and got into the groove. Not only have I learned tons in here, but I think the constant writing has improved my paper scores in other classes!
Scantron classes. Powerpoint classes. We know they are out there: in the classrooms. And they are also out there online: Scantron online, Powerpoint online. Of course. Many teachers are going to reproduce online what they do in their classrooms. And if it is bodies in the classroom, not voices, that give those teachers a feeling of reassurance, they are not going to like teaching online. Because there are no bodies. There are only voices.
And to hear voices: you have to listen.
For me, going online has meant getting far beyond the classroom. It has meant less body, but more voice. I remain as thrilled as ever by the Cluetrain Manifesto…

• Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
• The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

So whenever someone speaks to me with great concern about how online teaching is so impersonal, I’m strangely at a loss for words.
I guess you have to be there - online - to see just how personal online teaching can be.