XplanaZine

The course development process had not been pretty, but at least it was over. My course was uploaded onto Blackboard, and I was ready to “go live” with the 52 students who had enrolled in my “Road Trip of the Mind” creative writing course. I went into it jazzed to do a great job. I was blind to my own greed, narcissism, and perverse arrogance. But, hey, isn’t that the essence of hubris?

Problems emerged immediately. I was completely unprepared for the 100% online format, perhaps because my hybrid (or, rather “hybrid”) “Road Trip of the Mind” course (with companion website located at http://www.beyondutopia.com/frameworks) had been a very smoothly running machine. If people had problems in class, they could go online for help, plus communicate with other students.

The first problem was with logistics. Managing 52 students in threaded discussion boards was a nightmare, made worse by Blackboard, which did not allow for sorting by person making the post. Another Blackboard-exacerbated problem was the online gradebook. Updating grades took hours. It was completely unproductive time which would have been better spent reading student papers.

There were many other problems that emerged due to the sheer enormity of the class size. What did people do in the mammoth sections taught on campus? I could see some serious economies of scale issues emerging.

I couldn’t say I hadn’t been warned. The department chair was not too thrilled by my having accepted so many students over the recommended course size of 25. I would take all I could get, though. At the $300 they were paying me per student, the $15,100 I would receive would fund the research I wanted to do next summer at Oxford. Such mercenary soldiering was a sign of the times. The department was forced to do “self-support” for most of their courses after losing federal and state tax funding. Research travel funding had also been cut. So they also looked at my course as a potential revenue stream. I did, too.

I wasn’t a complete novice to online elearning. In fact, I was familiar with WebCT 2.0, but apparently that was about 4 years out of date. In the meantime, the college had moved to Blackboard (to my annoyance). I had spent an entire summer learning how to do WebCT, and even attended workshops organized by my department (with a laptop being the pay-off). After hounding the instructional technologist support staff, I finally figured out how to get the different parts of Blackboard to do my bidding.

“When we hire a faculty member, we assume that he or she knows how to teach, and we allow complete academic freedom.” The chair’s words echoed in my head. Did that apply to online? Do people really know what goes on in the classroom, much less online?

I looked at some “sample” online courses and was unimpressed. It was a syllabus and a reading list anchoring a constellation of lecture notes, links to readings, professor “live” lectures filmed by some sort of spy-cam or security camera, and a powerpoint synched with the droning voice of a person reading material in a monotone. The “work required” tended to be fairly tedious and mindless – multiple choice tests predominated. I looked at other universities’ online courses. They were remarkably similar.

“Why so dull? The courses look sort of canned,” I said.

“Maybe so, but the tendency is to move toward a “national curriculum” at the freshman and sophomore levels for core courses.”

“Why?” I asked.

“There are a number of reasons. More students are transferring from one university to another, and so standardization is helpful. More students are taking CLEP and Advanced Placement tests. That also necessitates standardization,” responded the chair.

“This is horrible! We teach people to read the same things, think the same thoughts, and then we wonder why we are having to teach people how to “think outside the box” !! What happened to critical thinking skills?” I asked.

“It’s assumed that you will incorporate that in your courses,” the chair looked at me with concern on her face. She leaned toward me. “Look, you can’t fight it. You have to provide clients the education they want and need. Who are you to dictate to them?”

“I’m not saying that – I’m just saying that academic and intellectual freedom are at stake here…”

That was all I needed. I would make my course “fun” and also relevant, exciting, and meaningful. My “Road Trip of the Mind” would be an awakening! I had tested the course content onsite in a semester-long creative writing course. My online course would expand upon the companion site I had developed for Road Trip of the Mind. It would also include discussion boards, group projects, etc.

I also managed to get it approved as a way to satisfy GenEd requirements.

I have to say that the number of students surprised me. I would like to say that it was all due to my scintillating course and the intellectual sparks that flamed into glorious human fires.

The pragmatic reality was that most students signed up because it was the only course offered that summer that satisfied general education requirements.

Other than sheer overwork, what else went wrong?

–Student privacy: although it is important to provide feedback to student comments on the discussion board, how many times does the instructor start to violate FERPA laws? When do you unwittingly reveal confidential information?

–Student weirdness in the discussion board: a few students took the whole “road trip of the mind” thing way, way too far. They invented identities for themselves on the discussion board and suddenly we were channeling Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Alan Ginsberg. Crazy stuff. It was fun, but I have to admit I was glad I wasn’t teaching a criminal justice or social deviancy class.

–Group project smut: One group project took artistic freedom to the absolute limit by creating a graphic novel of sorts based on the Marquis de Sade’s Justine. (Note to self: NEVER require or even recommend that people watch the film, Quills, based on the life of the Marquis de Sade!). What was most creepy was that the images featured ME, dressed up in a cute little outfit. The mental patients took over the mental institution – the doctors were locked up as patients. And, their “dear teacher” happened to pay a visit. Of course, she had to be “disciplined.” It was disconcerting, to say the least. I kept wondering how the artist knew what I looked like. Then, I started wishing I looked that good – “anime” is very flattering! Scary, scary ground to tread. I’m just glad that class is over.

–e-mail ping-pong: Students routinely refused to check their university e-mail account via the university popmail server. They insisted upon having everything mailed to their regular email address. Well, anyone who has taught in an online course knows that this is simply not practical. The course management software pulls in the university e-mail address – NOT hotmail, etc. I tried to accommodate the students, but it was not a success. I still got hung up in people’s spam-guard programs because I was mailing to more than 5 students at a time. At least the university e-mail program does not assume that multi-destination e-mails are spam! The students who forwarded university e-mail traffic to their personal e-mail addresses had problems, too. The forwarded mail was routinely discarded by AOL and other providers because it was immediately tagged as spam. Students! Don’t try to customize! Conform! Be happy! (Note to self: Doesn’t this set up cognitive dissonance for the professor who is asking students to deal with reality in a new way?)

end-of-semester avoidance: Why will so few students fill out evaluations? I think that it should be explained that you can’t graduate unless you fill out an evaluation form for each and every one of your courses.

This ending is an anticlimax to a topic I find to be enthralling and perplexing. If most universities make the faculty member the person ultimately responsible for the course, what are the implications? I think that it’s the only way to go in universities where faculty-driven teaching, curriculum, and course development is the model. In practical terms, what department can fund an entire team of instructional designers to act as the individuals who build content destined for distributed learning? On the other hand, the journey is fraught with peril, particularly in today’s climate, where more functions are viewed as self-funding.

At the end of the day, I have to admit that I enjoyed my experience, although parts of it were an unmitigated disaster.

Live and learn, right? My next course will be much more structured.

I will limit the number of students. It probably won’t be as much fun – there’s the irony of it all. I received some absolutely riveting work – work that was clearly based on the student’s own “road trip of the mind” and explorations of self and psyche. If I put in the safeguards, or standardize, will I lose that? Who knows.