Online Education

In the wake of the recent UVA scandal, a UVA English professor, Mark Edmundson, considers whether or not online education can be "education of the very best sort." He argues that teaching ought to be responsive to the particular students in front of you, in a way that online education can never be:

Teaching, even when you have a group of a hundred students on hand, is a matter of dialogue.
...
Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition. There is the basic melody that you work with. It is defined by the syllabus. But there is also a considerable measure of improvisation against that disciplining background.  

In addition, classes allow for intellectual community--discussions about the classes outside of the classroom with others who are present.

What's wrong with online education?

Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. ... This is particularly true of online courses for which the lectures are already filmed and in the can. It doesn’t matter who is sitting out there on the Internet watching; the course is what it is. 

 ...

A truly memorable college class, even a large one, is a collaboration between teacher and students. It’s a one-time-only event. Learning at its best is a collective enterprise, something we’ve known since Socrates. You can get knowledge from an Internet course if you’re highly motivated to learn. But in real courses the students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning. ... Internet learning promises to make intellectual life more sterile and abstract than it already is — and also, for teachers and for students alike, far more lonely. 

Gosh, there's a lot to say here from the perspective of Tocqueville on associations--the classroom provides a physical community in which we are drawn out of our isolation and can connect with other people who share our interest or goals. But what I want to focus on is a small point that Edmundson makes and which I think is the crux of the matter: "In fact there was nothing you could get from that course that you couldn’t get from a good book on the subject."

Everyone totes online education as a good way to widely disseminate knowledge. But I don't understand how it's different from a good book. A good book will give you a lot of knowledge. A video lecture just presents it to you in a more engaging fashion. You could even read a bunch of textbooks or readers. Readers typically have introductions that orient you to the readings. What is the point, then, of a teacher? I wonder, though, if the main point of online education is in fact the dissemination of knowledge--perhaps it's just the certification. Which brings us back around to the problem that college itself often isn't about gaining knowledge; it's often about buying a certification.

A class taught by a professor is sort of like a book--it includes a professor's reflections on a particular topic. Those reflections are evident not only in the choice of readings, but also in the way that the professor interprets the readings. However, there's a lot more going on in a class, otherwise we could all just read Aristotle or Plato or Rawls and be done with it. One of the primary things that a class teaches you to do (at least in political theory) is to read Aristotle or Plato or Rawls, understand it, and respond to it. 

When I teach political theory, my goal is not only to expose the students to a wide range of writings in the subject of hand, it is also to teach them how to read, how to construct an argument, how to write, and how to discuss. I work on these skills in a variety of ways--including through asking them to read complicated arguments and then to explain those arguments to me. When they have misunderstood or understood those arguments incompletely, then I help fill in the pieces. Part of teaching them to construct an argument is teaching them to dissect and analyze the arguments of the thinkers that we read. In class, I talk about how to construct an argument and how to write a paper. I sit down with them when they're making their outlines and talk about the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments, as well as about how to organize a paper. After reading their whole paper, I offer feedback on their papers, and then often sit down with them to discuss this feedback in person. I encourage them to make arguments orally in class throughout the semester, and at the end of the semester in an oral exam. These skills, as Edmundson points out, are skills that require frequent interactions between the teacher and the student. It requires the student to do work and the teacher to give feedback. It requires the student to first offer his or her interpretation of the reading, before the teacher steps in to aid them in that process. Watching a video will not provide students with these skills, although it may tell them something about political thought. Maybe even something more brilliant than what I can teach them, although I doubt it.