Can Online Instruction be as Effective as Face-to-Face?
Intended to be a debate between those who advocate completely online instruction and those who resist it, the title is a bit of a misnomer. The question, really, is how quickly and how completely technological change should be embraced and put to use. The 'Affirmative' position argues that rapid development is not only preferrable, but essential; the 'Negative' position argues that critical reflection is a necessary tool for the integration of new technologies.
The following position statements are available:
- For the Affirmative: Online Means Engagement
- Fred Kemp, Texas Tech University
I speak for the affirmative. Online interaction for instructional purposes can be fully as effective as traditional face-to-face, and eventually, of course, it will be more effective. The reasons for this eventual effectiveness will extend far beyond the now presumed benefits of breaking time and space barriers and bringing instruction to those souls not able to drag themselves to the nearest learning of higher education. The sheer interactivity of digital communication takes writing instruction, especially that instruction based on developing critical thinking capabilities from peer critiquing, into a different learning realm. The face-to-face classroom privileges instructor management and control, a dynamic deadly to individual learning. Online learning activities, once they have matured beyond their crude present state, will provide a kind of shared writing experience as a minute-by-minute activity incomprehensible to those steeped in the teacher-centered, discourse-centered learning environment of the face-to-face classroom. I will bring to this debate 13 years of experience developing computer-based classroom software and directing significant computer-based writing programs, including the development of a recent web-based support application that is migrating into the large first-year composition program I also direct. I will present these ideas in the debate and will confront the challenges of the Negative position.
- For the Affirmative: The Value of 'Blowing Out the Walls'
- Ted Nellen, Murry Bergtraum High School
I also speak for the affirmative. I don't believe that technology is ruining the classroom, but that it is the classroom which is ruining education. If possible I want to raze the classroom and use technology to raise education. As a high school teacher of many years, I don't think reform is about teachers anymore. It is about the texts and the tests, the two things which have a strangle hold on the advancement of education. Teachers are between the rock and the hard place. Eliminate the text and the test and then something will happen. The Internet has great possibilities of helping us hold the textbook makers and the test makers accountable and to offer alternatives to the status quo. I want to put the teacher back in control and remove the outsiders who are messing up education. The Internet is a way this can be done, although the presumption is always the opposite. The current mess of texts and tests is vertically driven, commercially and politically controlled, with standards offered as the goal. But the standards of the elite and a way to control the pecking order and classrooms lend themselves to this too easily. The classroom does not offer freedom; it is the dangerous place. Change that and then education will happen. After many years of teaching I strongly believe that the classroom is the box, the coffin, the 2 dimensional, the limited, the cage, the cell that has outlived its usefulness. The affirmative position in this debate offers me the opportunity to present my point of view as an experienced high school teacher in a large metropolitan area.
- For the Negative: Questioning the Wisdom of the Means
- Steve Krause, Eastern Michigan University
I speak for the negative, but I would hardly call it negative. I think that those who push technology communications on classroom instruction are promoting the negative, the negative idea that classrooms are and must be a failure. My position is that the resolution for our debate is not so much a complete negation of its goals as it is a questioning of the wisdom of its means. While I agree that there are very good reasons for teaching writing in computr mediated environments, and while I think that there are some advantages to the online classroom over the face-to-face experience, I am concerned about the motivation for change (the "pressures of modern society") and I am worried about the implications of a move to the online classroom "as quickly as possible." In the course of my statement and debate in the roundtable, I hope to focus my concerns around two related points: First, completely online classrooms -- regardless of benefits, motivations, or anything else -- are logistically impossible at many (if not most) institutions. Advocating such rapid change without answering the 'access question' that has been asked by many, including Cindy Selfe in her 1998 CCCC's keynote address, is dangerous. It holds the potential of simply widening the already too wide gap between the "halves" and "have nots." Second, online writing classes in and of themselves will not make the writing classroom a more viable and useful teaching space. Indeed, I would argue that in the quest of making teaching with computers "easier" and more accessible to more teachers, we are forgetting the pedagogical challenges of teaching with computers. In other words, the position about rapid change to the online classroom being advocated by the affirmative here isn't really a radical departure in the way we teach and learn how to write, but rather a computerized version of the way composition is taught now. I would like to suggest that a more careful and thoughtful approach regarding the role of computers in the writing classroom can lead to more significant change in the way that composition is actually taught.
- For the Negative: The So-Called 'Inevitable' is Dangerous
- Trish Harris, Johns Hopkins University
The assumption that the move from traditional classroom to web-based or web-enhanced classrooms is inevitable dangerously invalidates what we know works for learners: face-to-face instruction, hands-on manipulation of tools, real-time group discussion. The web can be a valuable research tool, and it provides a valuable window on our popular culture. But should we allow its constructs and assumptions to dominate the way learning happens? The best learning situations are tied to the personal interaction of teacher and student. Proponents of web integration claim that the web enhances certain kinds of interaction, but that interaction is cold-blooded and distant. Learners require a flesh and blood "content facilitator" who ably models a deep regard for the field of study and can, through innovative curriculum, learning situations, and personal interaction, stimulate and encourage the learner's growth. That sense of the importance of individual learning cannot always be as successfully transmitted over the Internet, no matter how clever the software. I plan to repeatedly challenge the affirmative on the often-repeated assumption that the face-to-face model is controlling and inherently passive. I will claim precisely the opposite: that without face-to-face interaction the entire instructional situation is objectifying and even degrading to personal motivation to learn.
You are invited to contribute to the debate as well; the post debate discussion at the Computers and Writing Conference raised many issues not addressed by the debaters' position statements. If you would like to problematize a position, agree with the affirmative or with the negative (aka affirmative-lite) please join us!
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