For the Negative: Revising our Roles in Learning Situations, Remembering Ourselves as Teachers

Like many here, I’ve witnessed, and taken part in, quite a range of computer-mediated learning situations. I tutored in a computer-assisted university writing center in the mid-80’s. I first taught a computer-augmented comp course in the fall of 1989. Unlike Steve, I’ve developed and taught virtual freshman comp courses, developed and supported a virtual community of middle-school writers, and tutored hundreds of web-based students I never saw. Like many here, I have an endless curiosity about the nature of learning, and I have a teacher’s heart.

But do these experiences mean I’m sold on wholesale adoption of computer-mediated instruction? And if I am not sold on it, does that mean I offered my virtual students less than they deserved? For me, these are tough questions. Because I’m not sold on wholesale adoption, for reasons I’ll describe in a minute. And because I did offer my students less than I felt they deserved, as all innovative teachers miss their own mark. If we’re honest about it, we admit that we frequently fall short of our aims as teachers; emerging technologies simply offer us new ways to fall short.

My caution follows this thread of possibility; with technology—assisted instruction, our choices are more varied, and our potential failings increase accordingly. It is not the technology that helps us fail as much as it is our faith in something other than our teacher’s heart that fails us. This misplaced faith in the positive power of technology, and our attendant embrace of its electronic pedagogies, have led us to mistrust our faith in the transformative power of our own teaching and experience. And this misplaced faith negatively impacts the way our institutions conduct business, the way we conduct our careers, and the way learning happens (or doesn’t happen) in our writing classrooms.

Note that earlier I mentioned computer-mediated learning situations. I did not say "f2f courses translated directly to the web" or "using a specific piece of courseware for the sake of using that piece of courseware." I used the term "learning situation," and I think that’s key; we must emphasize LEARNING, and we need to construct a SITUATION most suited to/for learning a particular set of skills or information.

In my current role, I work with faculty who want to teach augmented or virtual courses. And one of their first questions is almost always, "do I have to use everything the courseware offers?" With, as follow-up, "I don’t know if I can really fill up everything there; I really don’t do that much in my class." What’s troubling is that they enter the text of their new pedagogy from the frame of their institution’s adopted software. They question the authority of their own experience as teachers of writing, and they devalue the teaching of writing as a practice limited in range (as framed by courseware). So the questions are not "what can the software do for me?" but rather "how can I possibly make my course sophisticated enough for this software?"

So the first thing we learn together is to back away from the software and get to the heart of the course itself. "What do you want your students to learn?" I ask. "And what do you do right now that, in your estimation, helps them learn that? And if you could do anything you could imagine to help them learn that, what would that imagining look like?" The focus is, and must be, learning; once we’ve found that center, we can begin to find uses for the available digital technology.

So my concerns are these, and my other fears and noticings grow from these central concerns: that we have embraced tools and forgotten what it is we want our students to learn. We teach them tool use at the expense of actual course content and skill building. Writing. Isn’t that what it needs to be about?

The good news is that we’ve created and made possible many successful, viable computer-mediated learning situations. Students who might’ve otherwise dropped the class have stayed enrolled, partly because of an online course’s inherent flexibility. Students who might never have uttered a word in a face-to-face class have become engaged, empowered participants in chats, MOOs, and discussion lists. Students who needed one on one support and guidance in developing their writing process and skills, in finding their own voice, got it. Reluctant writers have become confident writers. Successes are everywhere you can find a dedicated, well-trained (which usually means self-taught) teacher. Which raises again my central issue: rethinking.

Steve urges us to slow down and stop rearranging deck chairs; I would extend that to say: let’s rethink what we are doing with this thing we call "teaching." Our institutional embrace of emerging technologies provides a gift, an impetus for re-evaluating our activity in our classrooms, for re-evaluating our relationship to our students and their learning, for re-evaluating our concept of what a classroom or learning situation might encompass or include, and even for re-evaluating our place(s) within our profession. A clearer view of our intentions and intended outcomes, and a fresh practice built from that view, will transform what is possible in the learning situations we construct, with or without computers. Why not allow our evolving teacher’s heart to become our greatest emerging technology?

Steve urges us to slow down, and that’s a legitimate stance. Listen to him. Build your infrastructures, train your faculty, and do these things thoughtfully. But at the same time, ask yourselves what you want students to learn and how your tools can help construct the learning situation you feel is necessary and best.