Back to the Future:
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Gary Poole
VOL. 12, No. 1/2, 9-13
Debates regarding the pros and cons of online course delivery have revealed fundamental values that faculty hold in terms of teaching. This paper discusses contact with students and sanctity of place which are the two values that surfaced most vehemently. The paper argues that online course delivery will not undermine either the contact we value or sanctity of place if we use the technology wisely and continue our dialogue with these basic pedagogical values in mind.
Les débats autour des avantages et des inconvénients de cours offerts en ligne ont révélé les valeurs fondamentales défendues par les enseignants par rapport à leur profession. Cet article met l'accent sur deux valeurs qui se manifestent avec le plus de conviction : le contact avec les étudiants et l'importance du lieu. Cet article soutient que les cours en ligne ne menaceront aucunement ces deux valeurs, à condition que l'on fasse preuve de sagesse en abordant l'utilisation des technologies et que le débat à ce sujet tienne compte des valeurs pédagogiques de base que sont le contact et le lieu.
Shaken and stirred. This twist on the famous Bond martini seems to capture our current reaction to educational technology. Some are shaken by its potential to render traditional pedagogy obsolete. Some are stirred by its potential to create more connections between learners and more opportunities to be learners in the first place.
At Simon Fraser University, the Centre for University Teaching, in conjunction with the LohnLab and the Senate Committee on University Teaching and Learning (SCUTL), recently hosted a roundtable discussion on educational technology. More specifically, the discussion was framed in terms of its costs and gains, both human and educational.
This was one of many discussions on this topic here at Simon Fraser University and elsewhere. Perhaps you have followed them on e-mail or read commentaries in Change (“Making the Most of a Slow Revolution,” by Steven Gilbert) or University Manager (“Implications of the Virtual University for Academic Leadership,” by Robin Farquhar).
As a rule, these discussions are passionate, more than most others related to higher education, and certainly more than other discussions of educational technology that I can remember in my 24 years of teaching. The talk is not just of technology. It may start there, but it quickly moves to sociology, philosophy, economics, and learning theory. Nowhere is this more the case than with online course delivery.
Were we anywhere near this shaken up by the overhead projector? Videocassettes? Laser disks? Teleconferencing? No. These innovations, as pervasive as they have become in many teaching circles, were not judged to have the force to change universities as we know them.
People who know more than I do about the history of higher education and written communication tell me that a similar furor accompanied the advent of the textbook. Lecturers predicted that widely available books would be the death of their profession. That this did not happen can be attributed, in part, to learners’ apparent need for contact with teachers (and, perhaps, that we write texts that are too complicated to stand alone).
It is this notion of “contact” that is at the heart of current discussions regarding educational technology. With each technological innovation in teaching, “contact” is redefined-sometimes in small ways, as with the overhead projector that lets us face the class more often, or, in larger ways, as with teleconferencing.
One of the things that I have taken away from all these recent passionate discussions about technology is that “contact” is a highly valued element of many people’s pedagogy. I have worked in instructional development at SFU for 10 years, and for the first 8 of them I cannot remember any impassioned statements at the University about the value of contact in teaching. Nor can I remember any from that time about the sanctity of place. But such statements are frequent now when we talk about potential developments in educational technology.
Of course, there will be those who say that contact and sanctity of place have become important topics because technological developments now threaten them. Will current trends in online course delivery here and elsewhere make “bricks and mortar” obsolete? (Or, more to the point, make us as faculty obsolete?) I think not.
Why? In my experience, prophesies of cataclysm due to educational change have always been overstated. But that, in and of itself, is not a reason. Here, then, are two.
First, universities generate knowledge, and much of that has to be done some place. The synergy created by having colleagues in close proximity facilitates discovery. I know that we can use technology to communicate with colleagues around the world. This, of course, also facilitates discovery, but it has not replaced face-to-face interaction for us as faculty. Conferences are still well attended. Departments offer colloquia. As long as we have this activity on university campuses, there will be students who will want to be there, and not just virtually.
Second, in sociological terms, the process involved in attaining a post-secondary education is still a rite of passage for a certain segment of our population. Twice a year, friends and family fill Convocation Mall, take photos of graduates in SFU colours, buy flowers, and order the video. I believe this rite of passage is even more pronounced in the United States. As of yet, this rite cannot be maintained in an exclusively virtual environment.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am venturing out of my discipline with this analysis. I am a psychologist, not a sociologist. And I am certainly not a futurist. I invite other analyses. They are, indeed, what this publication is for. For example, there may be those who would argue that it is economic forces not educational ones that are driving us toward virtual campuses.
However, all this speculation about the sociological implications of educational technology skirts a vital question: To what extent does it facilitate learning? If, for example, online delivery constitutes a significant improvement in learning and access to learning, then maybe we should rethink our values in terms of contact and sanctity of place.
In our roundtable discussion, some faculty members reported major increases in various forms of contact as facilitated by online environments. Students are talking to other students in rich and impressive ways. Tutor-markers and teaching assistants are engaged in more dialogue with students than is the case in traditional tutorials, seminars, and lectures. Students are developing co-operative learning strategies and independent research skills. These personal success stories are informative, but even the faculty who tell them recognize the need for systematic research into the efficacy of online teaching and learning. Much of the encouraging data is presented either as testimonial or without carefully matched control groups. Indeed, in terms of methodology, it is often difficult to construct such a control group.
On the other hand, detractors of online delivery cite the immediacy of face-to-face environments as a reason for their potential to inspire. This may well be true, but just as the proponents often do not have a control group, the detractors do not have an experimental group. This is sometimes the way it is with passionate discussion-lots of debate but little data. But the data will come. And this is, after all, a university, where reason might not always prevail, but at least it has a decent chance.
Just as I am optimistic regarding the retention of the things we hold near and dear about universities, I also believe that online environments can be very exciting and effective places to learn. I also believe that they will get even better in short order. It may well be that ideal online environments are superior to anything that has come before them for certain types of learning. I use the word “ideal” purposefully here. From our roundtable discussion, it became apparent that, when it comes to things like contact, online environments are not only good, they can be too good. By this I mean that so much communication is generated that the task of monitoring it becomes overwhelming. Online courses may reduce instructors’ workloads. Indeed, SCUTL is currently trying to get some sense of just how much work such courses entail.
We could probably do a better job of teaching writing skills at SFU if we had the resources to have our students write a paper a week and to provide detailed and skilled one-to-one feedback to them for each paper. If there is a faculty member doing this, I would love to hear how he or she manages it.
Instead, we devise clever and reasonably effective compromises. Students write fewer papers, or they submit fewer for feedback, or they provide feedback to one another in workshop settings. From our roundtable discussion, I got the impression that, when it comes to online learning, we are still searching for some of these clever compromises.
So, is it possible to reap the benefits of online delivery without sacrificing human contact and a sense of place? I think so. Having said this, I must also say that our roundtable discussion convinced me that this happy balance will not happen without careful planning by all of us in the University community.
To be generally critical of educational technology or, more pointedly, online delivery ignores its tremendous potential to increase access for students unable to attend university in person, to facilitate collaborative learning, and to take students on virtual field trips that we simply could not provide otherwise. Conversely, if we proceed without a firm grasp of what we currently value in more traditional teaching, we may well lose it. The Centre for University Teaching restricts enrolment in its roundtable discussions to 30 participants so that all can take an active part. For our recent discussion of educational technology, we had 30 registrants in short order. (It is worth noting that technology, in particular e-mail, has streamlined our registration measurably.)
We had to put a number of people on a waiting list with the promise that we would soon have another roundtable of technology-related topics. Herein lies my greatest source of optimism. People want to talk about technology and teaching. It is through this dialogue that we will move forward most thoughtfully, combining the wisdom of our teaching experience with the courage to innovate.
Gary Poole, Ph.D.
Director, Centre for University Teaching
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
Phone: (604) 291-3910
Fax: (604) 291-3851
E-mail: poole@sfu.ca
http://www.sfu.ca/centre-teaching