The Skillful Teacher

Concerns About Online Teaching and Learning
Online teaching has tremendous potential for accessing hard-to-
reach students whose geographical, social, and occupational loca-
tions make it impossible for them to attend regular college classes.
It provides opportunities for introverted learners to participate in
discussions that deepen their engagement with complex questions
and challenging topics. It is also well suited to those students who
prefer self-paced learning formats and who dislike the theatrical
aspects of face-to-face learning. However, online formats, like face-
to-face ones, are far from perfect. I dislike entire degree programs
done online since the spontaneity of live instruction can contribute
so richly to student learning. Also, given the importance to learners
of trusting in a teacher’s authenticity, a learning format in which the
other person is rarely, if ever, glimpsed face-to-face does raise prob-
lems. As people have discovered to their cost, cyberspace is a place
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where identities can be easily falsified. Online courses can also be
abused by institutions wanting to capitalize on their cost effectiveness
and convenience for students. Also, students invariably suffer when
instructors who are not interested in, or comfortable doing, online
teaching are increasingly pressured—some would say frog-marched—
to create web-based courses, as such courses appear to be so advanta-
geous to their home institutions.
There are also problems posed for instructors engaged in online
teaching. Instructors who teach online often have less time to chat
informally with their students and may therefore overlook the per-
sonal and professional challenges they are experiencing. Also, since
instructors cannot physically see how students are reacting to what
they say online, they may ignore the impact of the tone or choice
of their words on students. Furthermore, because there is so much
preparation that goes into an online course, there is a tendency to
believe that, once the course design is in place, that the bulk of the
work has been done. This may cause the teacher to think that her
frequent participation is unnecessary.
Other problems with online courses are largely logistical. It is,
for instance, very difficulty to ascertain exactly who is actually
assuming responsibility for doing students’ work in cyberspace.
There is virtually no way to know when students designate some-
one else to do a particular assignment for them or even to take the
entire course in their place. Additionally, online courses are not a
good environment to develop the ability to think spontaneously on
one’s feet or to practice and hone oral communication skills. For
someone who likes to use films in teaching, the online environment
remains technologically ill-equipped for such media, and securing
copyright permission for videostreaming films continues to be pro-
hibitively expensive.
None of these problems are, however, insurmountable. Teaching
online is not qualitatively different from teaching in more traditional
face-to-face classrooms. Online teaching certainly exhibits its own