Some problems with online classes
Many people found it shocking when Harvard University cancelled classes in March 2020, a controversial move quickly copied by universities throughout the world in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19. The disbarring of students from campus moved classes online, forcing schools to scramble to connect professors and students over Zoom and other video conferencing apps. Though necessitated by the pandemic, most students and professors found that the poor communication and disengagement produced by these online classes discouraged learning. This review reflects on major problems stemming from virtual lectures as well as possible solutions.
Consider this personal experience contrasting physical and digital classes: I audited a class last semester taught by a wonderful professor who taught with precision and alacrity. I went to his classes regularly not for a grade—since I was auditing—but because of the quality and applicability of his lectures. Yet after the coronavirus caused the class to migrate online, I became disengaged despite the best efforts of the teacher. Concepts that had been simple earlier in the semester now became difficult, and I found it harder to visualize what the professor was relaying.
I observed that the general degradation of classes once they shifted online was common to many students, for reasons such as the added complexity of interacting over video calls, reduction of interpersonal interactions (including non-verbal), and the dehumanization of the class community into floating profile images. While some internet courses stressed one-on-one interaction and group conversation, most relocated lectures metamorphosed from a social experience into a glorified TED talk.
It’s not that I don’t love listening to TED talks, but there are problems associated with turning tuition into tickets for an online lecture. Juxtaposing the popular speaking series is useful in understanding many of the problems with online courses. For instance, consider the question of who the audience of a TED talk is. Is it the tech community? The people in the crowd? The overwhelming popularity of TED precludes any specific group. Their audience is the entire world—at least that portion of the world that has access to internet streaming. With millions of daily viewers, TED caters to no particular niche, but instead to a wide and general audience.
That leaves the viewer in a unique position. When I watch a TED talk, I know that the speaker isn’t speaking to me, because they effectively have no audience. I watch a TED talk not to engage with the lecturer, but to gather information. That’s a big deal—it means I’m not dealing with a person that I might build a relationship with, but more of an artificial object solely capable of relaying information. My video player—which puts me in control—is the perfect instrument for this high-level interaction. I can skip talks that don’t engage me or pause a video to do something more important. I “play God to it,” as Ray Bradbury once remarked about books (Fahrenheit 451, Simon & Schuster).
This contrasts with our experience of reality. We don’t play God to the people around us. When I am in a meeting, I can’t press pause to grab a snack. Virtual seminars are inanimate. They convey information statically. Live interactions are the opposite; the dynamisms of the relationship invite the people to adapt and respond to each other, and the conversation develops from how the people interact. There is an audience in a physical university course: it’s me, the student. The teacher can see me, can respond to me, and can interact with me in a way that is beneficial for my learning, and I can do the same with the teacher. Digitizing courses reduces these interactions significantly, and often completely.
The pandemic has negatively transformed these interactions, objectifying (or at least de-animating) how we learn from others. If schools existed to provide information in this way, then administrators could fire all the professors and just provide textbooks to all their students. Rather than a messy move to digital instruction, colleges could say, “it’s in the textbook”—the same information presented statically, yet far more economically.
This is eerily similar to what many classes became post-digitizing, with teachers reading subject material to 60 darkened screens over Zoom. Conference calls, no matter the fidelity, strip the humanity out of an interaction, reducing a classroom to a singular stream of information devoid of the interaction and adaptation characteristic of active learning. It’s an unfortunately widespread predicament produced by the pandemic, though there are ways to prevent it.
To contrast my earlier, audited course, I took another class with less than 20 students. My classmates and I were further divided into teams of 6 and tasked with a semester-long group project that required frequent collaboration. After the precipitous campus shutdowns our team continued to find ways to meet online. The classes with our professor didn’t Zoom into the faceless abyss but were rather spattered with discussion and commentary. Many of us turned on our webcams, and the small class sized allowed more teacher-student interactions. Despite the social estrangement imposed by video conferencing, I showed up to that class every day just as I had before the shift (albeit in a living room rather than a desk). I was punctual and engaged, as were most of my classmates.
Both of my classes were useful, engaging, and informative. Both were led by experienced professors with a keen interest in their students’ success. But while the smaller, personal classroom perpetuated itself throughout the quarantine, the larger, lecture-based class seemed less able to do so.
In order to sustain both valuable teaching and learning, students, professors and administrators need to effectively sustain human interaction as schools move predominantly online. The disparity of success between these two classes can indicate some of the ways in which both students and teachers can improve online learning. While this must be uniquely implemented in each setting, several generalities might include:
Students:
Regularly engaging the professor (or a teaching assistant) by asking questions over chat or on video;
Attending class formally by turning on web cameras;
Forming collaborative study groups with other classmates to encourage group discussion and understanding;
Discussing topics with teaching assistants and professors more regularly;
Speaking up and making recommendations to professors concerning class policy;
Professors:
Fostering natural peer conversations, perhaps by establishing communal feeds, dividing classes into smaller groups, or creating more group projects;
Encouraging virtual visits during office hours;
Utilizing teaching assistants to decrease effective class size;
Increasing group discussion and communication during classes while reducing lectures which eliminate the need for student participation.
Hopefully the pandemic is abated and universities can return to their campuses. Hopefully these measures are temporary. But while we all struggle through digital academia, hopefully I and all of us will be able to focus on individuals, rather than just transferring information.
