In Class Activity Essay

In Class Activity: Argument against online learning

In Nancy Bunge’s article “Why I No Longer Teach Online” she addresses the issues that made her drop the online segment of her “Philosophy in Literature” class that she taught because it was weakening the relationship she shared with her students. By removing online learning from her course she discovered that students learned more and were more intellectually challenged when it came to the subject being taught in the course. Bunge analyzed surveys given to students who had and had not taken the online portion of her class and compared the results to conclude that actively participating in a relationship with the students was the most important part of teaching. Whether this active relationship is online or in the classroom, Bunge found it was much easier to do when one is able to see the face of the student.

Derek Bruff’s article “A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network” describes in detail the way social networking cites are able to form “social pedagogies” and equate the “representation of knowledge” with the “construction of knowledge” in the minds of the students (Bruff p.4). When students write and display knowledge on social networking cites they transform their audience away for the single teacher to the “authentic audience” (Bruff p.5).  By writing to the authentic audience many believe students are motivated to do their best work because they feel as if their efforts are branching out beyond the single-person audience (teacher) to a whole realm of people willing to critique the work.

A distinction has to be made between the two opinions for and against online learning. The distinction between learning and applying what you learn is what separates the classroom and the virtual classroom (online). I find that students are best able to gain new knowledge when the teacher and student are able to grow with one another in a relationship and build on the relationship through the two-way interaction of learning. When the student is left to learn online on his own he is left with uncertainties because there is no one there to communicate to him how to learn. There is no relationship he is able to fall back on and grow from. Good teaching, teaching that requires students to grasp the knowledge and build on it, happens in the classroom and revolves around the student-teacher bond. Online learning weakens that bond. What online learning does well, however, is that it allows for the application of student knowledge after one has learned the material. The “social pedagogies” are a good example of this as they allow students to display their knowledge to a community of people rather than the single teacher. By taking part in the social pedagogies students become more motivated to do their best work: the work that stems from authentic learning within the classroom in a true student-teacher relationship.