As a student, I understand how rigorous and fulfilling online learning can be. I have had online courses full of rigorous requirements, which led to deeper understanding of the material, but I have also participated in online courses that were merely fill-in-the-blank/bubble, no thinking required, all answers found in the textbook work. The difference in the classes was astounding and led me to choose where to get my Master’s degree very carefully.

As a teacher, I have used online tutoring programs that are basically standardized testing on the computer. I have also taught courses where I was merely a study hall monitor. I have watched kids, both successful and at-risk kids, flounder with this online curriculum that is touted as being “individualized” but offers no real individualization. All kids are working through all the same material, with the same quizzes/assessments and assignments, but may work through it at a different pace. Allowing to work at your own pace is a grand ideal, but when faced with students who cannot SET their own pace, they tend to flounder and end up not accomplishing anything.

I have also taught for a completely online school that allows for some individualization–through the use of differentiated assignments for some units, but also requires virtual contact between students and teachers. However, there was no way I could force students to show up to our virtual sessions, so some fell by the wayside or struggled until the end.

What online learning should be is an option–an option for students who can work through the online curriculum at their own pace and within their abilities. Not necessarily on their own, because as you pointed out, we are teachers because we should have mastered our content. Students can only learn so much by reading about something and then having to self-process it. Even with courses that include online discussion, if you can’t get the students to participate in online discussions, it does no good.

I guess it brings up the point of “where does differentiation start?” Is the distance learning option a form of classroom differentiation? Or, is the fact that once you participate in the online class, and the information is delivered in a standardized fashion, that it is not differentiated?

You know, the real place for online classes isn’t going to be as standardized delivery or automated scoring. It’s going to be with a teacher acting as moderator for a group of diverse learners who never would have had the opportunity to gather in a room face2face otherwise.

There is a future of light and a future of gray before us. Which path will we take and still call it innovation?

Thanks for your comments. Ever think of writing your own blog? I’d be a groupie!

-Heather WG

1. I used to “teach” at a “learning” center called Score! The children would come in, log into a computer, and work through an “individualized” program of math and reading. However, all the child was really doing was clicking on the letters instead of bubbling them in. And the number of correct or wrong led the learner down different paths, but the paths were already written into the computer program. They were not specifically created for that one learner. I was to “help” students figure out how to solve the problems, but I was not teaching.

And,

2. In my high school, we use Holt, Reinhart, & Winston textbooks. The adoption comes with a subscription to an online essay program. When I first heard of this program, I was absolutely estatic. The thought of not having to read all of those hundreds upon hundreds of essays made me completely euphoric. However, my hopes were dashed when I took my kids to actually use the program. It wasn’t really “reading” the essays. Some of my students who actually wrote decent, creative, and insightful persuasive essays received low scores because they did not included the certain standardized markers that the program was checking for. The only way that the students could get a good grade was if they followed the format provided by the textbook. That typical 5-paragraph essay was all that they wanted.

This is where we are headed. From the outside, it appears that students are receiving individualized attention and education, but in all reality we are going to force them to conform to whatever the computer program has been formatted to check for. It is standardized testing in sheeps’ clothing. Creativity is discouraged because a computer cannot check for that. And if a real person is going to be doing all of these online classes, and reading/grading all of this work, then what is the point in the first place? Why should a student log onto a computer to work with a teacher on the other side of the country when that student could be going to see a teacher right here in his/her own school? I kind of see the point if there is not a qualified teacher available to teach that specific course. Like if a student lived in a small community where they didn’t offer Japanese (or a unique course, like that), then I could see the purpose of taking Japanese in an online forum, but for common subjects, like history, math, English, etc. what is the benefit of sitting at a computer instead of sitting with a person. If kids could learn everything on their own, we wouldn’t need school in the first place. Instead of individualized education at a computer, they should make smaller class sizes and allow teachers to have enough time to spend 1-on-1 time with the kids!

When my husband, Angel, studied to become a welder, he started out working under a master welder as an apprentice. At first he watched the master welder. Then they did it together. Then slowly, Angel was given more an more responsiblity and independence, but he still had to check in with the master welder to make sure that he was doing everything correctly. The master welder knew all of these little tricks-of-the-trade that had been learned over time through trial-and-error: those little skills that could not be found in any welding textbook. That’s what we do in education. We are “masters” of our subject (hence the Master’s degree). Our students are our apprentices, and our job is to introduce the content, teach them the tricks of the trade, and then slowly release them to independence. A computer will never be able to gauge what a student truly needs. And a person across the country will not be able to gauge it either.

I realize that we are probably heading to online education, and while I am intrigued by the thought of students being able to take whatever they want, I fear that it will become more standardized because programs only have so many variations and have a difficult time grading creativity and originality.

Also, I fear that this is going to create a divide between the advanced/regular student and the at-risk student. Even if we provide computer labs with overpaid supervisors, even if we allow students to choose their schedules (which might increase interest), at-risk kids are not self-starters; they often have a difficult time staying focused; and they need a human there to scaffold the material and encourage/nag them to do it. The computer lab supervisor is not going to be able to help these at-risk kids in every subject. I taught study lab to at-risk kids: I could help them with their English work, but when it came to math or science, my knowledge was limited, and I wasn’t able to help them as much as they needed. I often had to send them to a neighboring teacher to get help in those other areas. So if an at-risk student is suppose to sit at a computer and complete their work all alone, I think they will be left behind, so that we will create a dichotomy of the haves & the have-nots.

I have so many thoughts and questions on this topic that I could go on and on. But I guess my ultimate concern is that as bright and shiny as it may appear, in the end, learning happens best with others, and a computer shouldn’t count as an “other.”

Keep me posted on what you hear as your ear is closer to the techonological ground then mine is. Thanks for keeping us informed.