CLIFFORD ORWIN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012 2:00AM EDT
Last updated Friday, Aug. 17, 2012 6:36PM EDT
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/theres-no-online-substitute-for-a-real-
university-classroom/article4487214/
You hear a lot of talk about how universities and teachers are expensive
dinosaurs and how the future of teaching lies online. Don’t believe a word of
it. The classroom experience – live – remains the heart of real education.
Online education of this sort may sound good – false economies often do. One
professor and a zillion students – there’s a ratio to cheer the heart of a
university administrator. And that all those students can remain isolated in
their cubicles, from Saskatoon to Shanghai, not even having to spring for bus
fare to get to the campus? And can tell everyone they got to study with a
famous professor (as the headliners of such courses often are)? How awesome
is that?
Still, don’t mistake what’s better than nothing for what’s best. Real education
requires real teachers and students, not disembodied electronic wraiths. Once
that condition has been met, by all means bring in the Web, too. Especially
where courses are too large (as is common in our universities), an electronic
component can be very useful. But so-called education without live dialogue
between teacher and student should excite no one.
The New York Times of July 19 contained an excellent column by the University
of Virginia’s Mark Edmundson. He explained why teaching requires the
physical presence of the students. Prof. Edmundson likens good teaching to
jazz. It is inherently responsive and improvisational. You revise your
presentation as it goes, incorporating the students’ evolving reception of it. In
response to their response, as individuals and as a group, you devise new
variations on your theme. You don’t address students in the abstract or as
some anonymous throng scattered throughout cyberspace. You always teach
these students, in this room, at this time.
It’s equally important to the students that I’m there. They need a real person
with whom to engage. Someone to interrogate. Someone to persuade them.
Someone to resist. Someone with whom they can identify or refuse to identify.
Because education addresses the whole person, it requires a real person to
model it. It matters to the students not just to hearwhat I say but to hear the
voice in which I say it – the hesitations as well as the certainties. They need
an example of someone who, like them, is learning as he goes along – but
just happens to be further along than they are.
Live education is expensive, you say? The best things in life tend to be.