It's been a while since I've blogged about virtual classrooms, and lately I've been wondering about the class participation levels in online versus offline spaces.
I've taken some non-law courses lately both in the virtual space and in real life classrooms - yes, they still exist even outside law schools.
In my recent experiences in classes that have a participation component, I've noticed that in the virtual classroom, more students seem to post on every thread of a discussion, while in the real space classroom (due to physical and temporal constraints), not everyone weighs in on every discussion point. I'm wondering it that's a good or a bad thing. Allowing people a whole week to weigh in on each discussion point and give them all the time and space to provide a lengthy response certainly encourages individual thinking about a problem. However, it can lose the spontenaity and detailed interaction of in-class discussions, and can end up with a bunch of individual students writing mini-essays on an issue without paying much attention to what others have contributed.
In cases where students are geographically dispersed, the online interactions are necessarily the main discussion forum, although they can be augmented with real time online chat sessions. But I'm wondering what is lost if more educational initiatives are moved partly or wholly online. I love the flexibility of online learning and the ability to interact with students around the country and around the world. But I wonder what we lose in the absence of face-to-face discussions.
On the point that students participating in on-line discussions tune each other out: I'm not so sure that something similar doesn't happen even in live classrooms. Over the last few years, I've had occasion to observe many classes taught by colleagues. Whenever I do, if the class is a large one, I make a point of sitting in the back and providing the teacher with a report on student laptop usage. One of the things I've seen consistently is that even students who are generally inclined to pay close attention in class and to use their laptops only for note-taking are much more likely to check their e-mail or bring up a web screen when another student is speaking. That is, they will hang on pretty much every word the prof says, but they are not nearly so interested in what their classmates have to say. My impression is that this is especially the case for classmates whom they don't particularly respect. This leads me to believe that at least some students feel they don't profit much from hearing the comments of other students, or at least most other students. Does this mean they are missing something important? Or does it mean they are shrewd managers of their time and effort? Perhaps the answer differs for different students.
Posted by: Jim Gardner | November 12, 2012 at 11:57 AM
Interesting observations, Jim, and that certainly accords with what I suspect is going on in a lot of real world classrooms. I've definitely had student evaluations complaining if I spend a lot of time in classes/seminars eliciting views from students rather than just telling them what I think.
Posted by: Jacqueline Lipton | November 12, 2012 at 12:05 PM