Who's the boss?


Over the years I've worked with a number of online lecturers who have, within the framework of their online courses, felt quite comfortable simply linking to materials that they think the students enrolled in their course should read. Some have even made the not totally illogical claim that their understanding of what an online course is includes using materials that are available online. These same lecturers, in their face-to-face courses, assign reading materials, so linking to online articles or sites certainly makes sense. But in those face-to-face courses these lecturers usually explain a bit about those reading materials before they expect their students to read them - they emphasize certain points, give some background on the authors, place them within a historical context, and more. And yet, instead of doing this in their online courses, for some reason (and I doubt that it's laziness) they feel that this is unnecessary, and they're convinced that simply linking is sufficient. At least one lecturer very honestly reasoned with me that if it's there already, it makes "internet sense" not to devote additional time to "another version" of the same thing.

In cases such as this I've agreed - up to a certain point. But I've also tried to explain that when all we do is establish links, we're removing the element of "teacher presence" from the learning environment. These teachers have probably devoted quite a bit of time searching for the links they assign, and to filtering the various sources they've found in order to decide what should be included in their courses and what shouldn't. But a student who sees only a link doesn't sense this, isn't aware of the work that preceded placing that link on the page. This student may rather logically assume that the lecturer hasn't done any real preparatory work at all, and won't feel compelled to devote much effort to studying. If the teacher really is no more than a simple conduit to already readily available material, a student can probably reach the logical conclusion that this conduit isn't really necessary, that there's no need for a go-between. He or she can justifiably claim that he or she wants the real thing, and doesn't need the "teacher".

Perhaps it's precisely because the vast amount of similar materials on the web makes it so easy to circumvent the teacher (and for the teacher to inadvertently circumvent him or herself), perhaps it's because so many others have already said (and often said well) what we want to express, that the teacher's voice becomes, paradoxically, the truly important part of the course.



Go to: Inventing wheels in cyberspace.