Some Conclusions

As I've been writing about this class, I've spent a great deal of time thinking about what I would do differently next time.  What I've presented here is a fairly accurate picture of the semester's work, but I simply could not fulfill all the goals I set for the course, or for myself.  Ultimately the course was a success, and I acknowledge that one must be charitable about one's work, perhaps, and recognize that the first time any new course is offered, plenty of room for improvement exists.  The translation of this course to the internet was a monumental endeavor, however, and the list of needed improvements much longer than usual.  The technology itself, predictably, posed the most significant problems.  Software failures, internet outages, the lack of technical proficiency of the part of some students meant that I spent a great deal of time providing technical support—something above and beyond the job of teaching.  But other problems were equally significant.  I particularly regret that I didn't participate as actively in the discussions as I had planned—initially, I posted with regularity to the discussions.  As the papers and email multiplied, though, I began to skim through discussions, and in one case, I was unable to participate at all except for the initial posting of the discussion topic.  Modeling appropriate discussion is an important job for an instructor, and in that, at least, I didn't achieve what I had hoped.  I also regularly felt buried under papers, and was disappointed in my grading response time, as were my students, I am sure.  I have always been slow grading papers, but when the entire course is conducted by writing, the load certainly increases quite noticeably.  In graduate school, I remember reading How to Handle the Paper Load—clearly I will need to reinvent those strategies for the electronic paper load, when simply collecting or returning all the papers can take up to an hour.  These logistical details are crucial to resolve.

I am proud, however, that I maintained a classroom environment that my students felt was highly responsive—when a student emailed with a question, that student received a response promptly.  In creating that atmosphere, however, I also created a number of problems for myself, as well; my conviction that I would not simply send blanket email to students the entire semester, but give them as much personal and individual attention as possible meant that I spent hours online.  The fact that I could access the course anytime, from anyplace, initially seemed a wonderfully freeing thing.  But I had to reevaluate the benefits of a 24/7 classroom when I found myself on several evenings in a row tucked away in the room above the garage at my brother’s house, working nights to respond to student frantic student email about technology problems after spending the days in the hospital with a very dear aunt who died a few days later from lung cancer.  Even as I grew angry with myself for letting my work overwhelm the other aspects of my life, for my failure to set appropriate limits for how my students and I would use the technology, I felt a responsibility to my class that did not permit me to change the rules in midstream, so to speak.  Despite my sense of being overwhelmed by teaching in this way, however, I look forward to offering this course again as soon as possible.  I know now better how to establish expectations for my students, set reasonable limits for my own availability, and still take advantage of the elements of the technology that allowed for a successful course.

While a traditional classroom is the first choice for most professors and students, teaching this course has convinced me that the internet provides an excellent alternative when students aren’t able to be physically present in that classroom.  I hoped that working with students online would allow me to provide a highly interactive and collaborative learning environment that would encourage students to integrate their personal experiences into a critical framework of thought about the influence of gender in our lives and our culture.  When evaluating the course, then, I asked students a number of questions about the nature of their participation in the course.  When surveyed about the aspects of the course that they found most valuable, seven of nine students who provided discursive comments for that question focused on the interactive elements of the course, commenting that they enjoyed “hearing other people’s opinions and ideas” and found valuable the “ability to get feedback from other members in your group as well as the interaction between different people.”  I was also delighted by how students interpreted my role in the course; balancing an authoritative position in a classroom can be difficult enough in a traditional environment.  One student wrote that she valued the way that “the instructor allowed us to give our own opinions” but also “led us to material that would help curb any misunderstandings of concepts or ideas.”  This student’s conceptualization of instructor as guide was exactly the position I worked for, one that allowed me to convey information, but also to create a classroom in which each student’s interaction enhanced the learning of every other student.

To my way of thinking, the greatest success of this course was the fact that in we were able to use the technology to create an atmosphere in which active student participation in the classroom space enabled them to expand their learning.  One student explained that she enjoyed the personal reflection that the course required, noting that she “liked how the assignments were introspective of [her] own life.”  Another wrote that “my eyes were opened to many new ideas” by engaging in discussions with “both the teacher and other students.”  The technology, despite the many problems, ultimately functioned as I hoped it would; one student emailed me this comment early in the semester, when we were still working to form good working relationships as a class:  “I think if we were in a regular class setting, many people would be intimidated to say some of the stuff they are saying on the posts.”  Another wrote that the work was “very interactive and interesting even though we were not in a classroom, so to speak.”  The comment that, for me, provided the strongest evidence that the course succeeded in providing an interactive and engaging learning environment, was one student’s comment that she particularly enjoyed the fact that “we got to meet class members on a more personal basis,” despite the fact that these students never met in person.

Women's studies courses can offer a unique opportunity for students to explore the relationships in their culture between gender, class, and race, and to expand an analysis of these elements beyond the strictly academic to critical thinking about our own lives as well.  Moving this active classroom environment online presents problems unique to the mode of delivery—what about the student who can't afford a computer at home, and who can only work in a lab?  What about the fact that the access students need for completing a course such as this is clearly tied to social and economic class?  As Cynthia Selfe notes in Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century, "these two complex cultural formations, technology and literacy, have become linked in ways that exacerbate current educational and social inequities in the United States rather than addressing them productively" (7).  But by transferring these courses online, by making them available to a somewhat larger audience than they currently have, perhaps we can begin to address some of those inequities, and while doing so, provide an environment that will value the diverse experiences these students will bring to our classrooms.  As Ardeth Deay and Judith Stitzel write in "Reshaping the Introductory Women's Studies Course," beginning courses in gender studies can "ground our students in the present tense of their own lives, . . . encourage them to be responsible investigators, and . . . inspire them to use their experiences and evidence as one context" for their more formal academic work (90).  The classroom provides, in addition to course content, "lessons in power and authority, lessons in order and disorder, lessons in what counts as knowledge, who counts as a source of knowing" (Knowlton 185).  Making the student's knowledge a part of those lessons seems a necessary first step when moving those courses online, and while I don't offer this course as a model for how to accomplish that, I do believe that WOST J111 represents an important step in the right direction.