The article titled “There’s no online substitute for a real university classroom” is written by Clifford Orwin who is a strong non-believer of, as is clear from the title, online education. According to him, the live dialogue that comes from classroom experience is the heart of “real” education which he says is the formation of a whole person. He argues in the article that good teaching requires being responsive to ideas and improvisational to the evolving reception of the theme being presented. He places a huge emphasis on the effect of interaction on both students and professors. He says that for profs, just seeing students being physically present, seeing their faces, hearing their voices makes a big difference as it allows the professors to observe students’ absorption of the information and helps them know their audience. As for students, having someone to listen to, engage with, interrogate helps incredibly with the learning process.
In his article, Orwin definitely hits on some good points. I agree that having a person present and deliver content is a very different experience for students when compared to getting that same content from a textbook. The ideas in a textbook are almost solely presented as facts and don’t offer an intuitive application to real life — even a well-written, updated book can’t do as good a job as a professor can with weaving in current events that are relevant to the concept being taught.
However, not every kind of course needs the interaction and engagement that Orwin places such a huge emphasis on in his article. For example, math courses can be learnt straight from a book or a manual that goes through problems and solutions step-by-step. For courses similar to these — courses that are logic and theory based, with a right or wrong answer and almost no grey area — an instructor basically adds no value. What’s more is that most of these courses already require students to purchase textbooks and other materials such as workbooks. The students are expected to use these resources to learn the content themselves because they have it at hand. This is evident from how evaluation works for these course. The students are tested heavily based on what chapters or sections they covered in the book, not based on what the prof was able to cover in the lectures alone. Or at least, so was the case in my experience.
Another thing to note is that while Orwin makes a good point about the fluidity of the lecturer’s lessons and how his presentation is tailored to the people in the audience itself and evolves bases on how they react and respond to the material, their perceptions and inflections, it must be noted that not all professors are as well-aware or engaging with their students. Having experienced this firsthand multiple times, I find it hard to see this as a good argument for in-person education. There are far too many profs out there who only care about the number of slides they can get through within the span of 50 or 80 minutes. Sure, they’ll answer any questions they get but won’t put in the effort to determine whether the class is keeping up with their pace. Sadly.
And he makes a good point that online education is great for those who lack access to in-person lectures, even though he says so in a very negative tone.
Overall, I respect the author of the article in his belief that education is the formation of the whole person. It is a good thought but it doesn’t translate so well in the real world. There is definitely a change in experience between online and offline education but online education cannot be discarded as not being “real” since the main goal is present in both. Also, not all instructors have the same amount of enthusiasm for teaching that the author expresses. Furthermore, in many courses, having an instructor present doesn’t add value since students are required to use other course materials regardless. Having an instructor increases the cost but provides no benefit. The author ends the article by remarking on the cost of live education saying “the best things in life tend to be [expensive]” but I’d like to argue that the textbooks we are required to buy cost quite enough money themselves, thank you very much. In summary, a live lecture is not required for it to be a “real education”.
Rumsha Rafi CP373 Blog 