For the Negative: Not So Fast Here, Mister: Four Reasons to Slow Down
Steve Krause, Eastern Michigan University

I must begin my presentation with a confession that might hurt my credibility a bit but that I feel is nonetheless necessary. I’ve never taught a course that could be classified as "distance learning" or one that was completely online. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to teach a completely online class, and the inability of this desire to be satisfied to date in my academic career certainly ties into my argument here. However, I recognize how this lack of experience might figure into how my affirmative colleagues and our audience might evaluate at least my part of the negative case.

I also think it’s important to say at the outset that I am certainly not against online courses. I know that Trish feels the same way. Rather, I think folks interested in the possible benefits in teaching distance education and other classes exclusively online ought to take a more cautious approach than what is being advocated by the affirmative. I have four reasons for this.

First, the widespread practice of teaching courses completely online is logistically impossible at most schools because universities and colleges (particularly those of us not working at research 1 schools) don't have the infrastructure, students and teachers don't have the necessary basic computer skills, and there are inequalities regarding access. To advocate rapid change to online courses would simply make the distance between "haves" and "have nots" worse. I think computer and writing specialists are becoming increasingly aware of the access problems as discussed by folks like Charles Moran and Cindy Selfe, and I find myself persuaded by them.

But beyond the issues of who does and doesn’t have computers and an understanding of technological literacy, I think the problem of access I’m talking about here also has to do with what I still see as a literal lack of understanding of the hardware and software necessary to teach online classes. Simply put, not enough teachers understand the "nuts and bolts" of listservs or other discussion forums, web publishing, MOOs, or other Internet-based technologies to adequately facilitate online classes. Students are usually not much better off. The impact of this is two-fold. First, teachers are forced into a very steep learning curve that takes time and energy away from other projects and activities. Second, too many students rely on teachers to help them learn the nuts and bolts of the technology they need to succeed in the course, yet another drain on teacher resources. And when students don’t get the help they need, they drop the course. In other words, before we can think about a rapid growth in online courses, we have got to have better solutions to the many problems of access.

My second argument is that 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.

Again, my lack of hands-on experiences with teaching purely online classes is a bit of a limitation here, but I am somewhat familiar with the various products like Blackboard and WebCT. These and other configurations make things a lot easier for the techno-newbie teacher and student, but from what I can tell, they also re-inscribe the brick and mortar classroom electronically in a fashion where it is as easy to teach a "current-traditional" and problematic version of writing online. Students are still expected to do distinct and finite papers, there are functions for giving and collecting quizzes, there are ways for teachers to calculate grades down the last possible point, etc. One of the folks I asked about teaching online who actually had taught an online course before put it to me this way: "I would argue that my on-line class was considerably more traditional than my off-line classes are because I couldn't work with students to play around with conventions of writing in the same way that I can face to face." So what I’m getting at is if we move too quickly with online composition courses, we won’t be effecting a move away from a product-oriented, "current-traditional" pedagogy. Just the opposite. In my way of thinking, this is merely rearranging the deck chairs into a virtual space.

Third, if we move too quickly toward online teaching, we risk ignoring a history of innovations with technology and the teaching of writing that have been introduced in the promising and euphoric language of the affirmative only to see those technologies fail. We've seen it with the use of film and radio in teaching, with the use of TV, arguably with the use of computers (note the increasing turn in scholarship and practice to a more clear focus on the problems of teaching with computers). This enthusiasm is problematic for a variety of reasons, but I think one of them is it doesn’t acknowledge the roles of teachers and the actual work they do in the process of teaching. David Tyack and Larry Cuban tell us in Tinkering Toward Utopia that technology has historically been incorporated into teaching only as a means of enhancing accepted pedagogical approaches, not as a means of transforming pedagogy. It seems to me that if this is true, then those of us who ignore the history of previous technical innovations and who are working too quickly toward things like online teaching risk putting the proverbial computer cart before the pedagogy horse.

Last but not least, I am concerned about the labor issues involved in online classroom teaching practices. Simply put, a greater shift to more online classes I think would mean even more disenfranchised and poorly paid part-time instructors. I know for certain that this is the case where I teach. I asked to teach an online course as part of my regular teaching load, but I was told by my department head that the administration’s policy was that they wouldn’t allow tenure-track faculty to teach online classes, unless they taught it as an overload or if they taught it the rate paid by the continuing education program, which is considerably less than what I would normally make. In other words, the only way I could teach an online class is if I took a considerable pay-cut. I suspect that this is a situation that will change at EMU in the near future, but I think this policy speaks rather clearly about how my university’s administration views online courses.

In closing, let me be clear about this: I’m not against online courses or distance education in general, and I think I would agree with the affirmative in that we will see more and more online classes in the future. I think our point of contention is when that "future" should and will arrive.