Teaching Online versus Teaching in the Classroom
Rick Garlikov

Introduction

This paper is an attempt to distill my experiences and reflections about teaching and learning online versus teaching and learning in the classroom, hereafter referred to as “onground.  There is not strictly a one to one comparison between teaching online versus teaching onground because there are different formats for teaching in both, and some have more comparable characteristics and pedagogical effects with those across the divide than with those on the same side. There are techniques and potential characteristics for each that can make them better or worse, and I have written extensively about teaching methods in general in essays at www.garlikov.com.  I will not repeat that here, nor will I try to explain, for example, how to lecture better or how to ask better questions more likely to generate responses in either print or speech.  This paper simply tries to explain what the similarities and differences are between the nature of teaching online and teaching onground that affect learning. 

 My basic contention will be that the main pedagogical differences will not result from there being or not being face to face contact among teacher and students (though some of that matters), but from factors that have to do with the immediacy or time lag among responses, along with the benefits and problems associated with that.  The main distinction will be between what are called “synchronous” and “asynchronous” education formats, which will be explained more fully shortly, but in short, synchronous courses are ones where teachers and students can communicate with each other relatively immediately, and asynchronous ones are those in which communication takes longer.  As I am using the terms, “synchronous” does not mean simply being together at the same time in the same place, but being able to communicate immediately with each other.  There are asynchronous elements in onground courses, and there can be synchronous elements in online courses, so the online/onground dichotomy does not correspond simply to the synchronous/asynchronous dichotomy. Large lectures that allow little or no response or questions from students are asynchronous formats in onground courses, in my sense of the term “asynchronous”, as are reading and homework assignments that students do apart from teacher contact.  Similarly, taking tests or writing papers and having them graded after being submitted. The synchronous parts of onground courses are only those parts where teacher and student(s) are communicating back and forth in relatively immediate feedback and responses. And online courses allow elements of that in some circumstances, as will be explained below.

 Onground, 1) there are lectures in large classes where students do not interact with the teacher but simply listen or read what is on the board/screen, 2) there are lectures that allow some questions/comments/responses from the students[1], 3)there are lectures that foster and want responses from the students, and 4) there are smaller classes (often called recitation classes) that are the standard classroom where there is supposed to be some interaction among students and teacher in whatever ratio the teacher wants and can get to happen. 

Some teachers lecture well; others poorly. The old adage about poor lectures is that a lecture is an hour in which information passes from the notes of the teaching to the notes of the students without going through the minds of either.  Some teachers are better at generating productive and meaningful discussion/questions/responses than others, whether in a large lecture hall, a large classroom, or a small one.  Some topics and some circumstances lend themselves more to lecture or long print passages; others more to dialogue. It is not just that lecturing is a better or worse way to teach than is encouraging discussion, but that there are some circumstances  where lecturing, if it is done well, is better and other circumstances where encouraging discussion, if it can be done well, is better.  (In some cases eliciting responses from students causes enough cognitive dissonance that they are far more receptive to short lectures that resolve their confusion than they would be if the lecture were given without first getting them to see and “feel” the problems the lecture is meant to address and resolve.)  When either method is done poorly, whether because of the teacher’s being boring, disorganized, unclear, pedantic, intimidating, cold, etc. or the students’ being apathetic, unprepared, inattentive, shy, timid, fearful, etc., or a combination of both, it is not necessarily a reflection on the method or the potential of the method. 

I will try to distinguish throughout this paper issues that have to do with the methodologies themselves versus their being done poorly by teachers or students, though there is potentially nothing wrong with the methods.  But that is often difficult to do because there are many cases where a method would work if either the teacher or student knew how to use it or respond to it better, but they are not able to because they don’t have sufficient background or skill or the right attitude.  In such cases it is misleading to say there is nothing wrong with the method or that the method would work if used and responded to correctly, or if it could be taught and learned how to use correctly, since it won’t be – at least not by many teachers and most students. 

Online courses can be what are called “synchronous” or “asynchronous”.   “Synchronous” courses are those in which teachers and students are in contact with each other at the same time in a form of immediate back and forth communication, as it could occur in an onground classroom that allows interaction among students and teachers.  Online, this can occur in a “chat room” type of software platform where all participants can see what each person contributes as the comments and questions appear onscreen, or in a combination computer/telephone conference kind of classroom, whereby the teacher can show and lecture information and students can type questions and comments that all can see or that just the teacher can see, or the students can speak on the phone to comment or question as they see fit. 

Synchronous teaching can also be done with one student at a time on an individual basis, through something like instant messaging back and forth between the teacher and a student.  Instant messaging situations are more like a teacher meeting with individual students (outside of class time, whether in the teacher’s office or over coffee, or in the classroom after the class period is over, or in a phone conversation).  The other students do not participate in the interaction.  This sort of interaction is potentially great for those issues peculiar to the particular student, but less efficient if the student has questions or misunderstandings that would benefit the other students because they have them in common.  It is often frustrating in onground courses, for example, when a student waits till after class to raise a question or make a comment that would have been important and helpful to everyone to address during the class. 

Therefore, there are two dichotomies to keep in mind: 1) the synchronous/asynchronous dichotomy and 2) the group/individual dichotomy.  An onground classroom is an example of a group, synchronous education platform.  Private consultation with students individually is individual synchronous education (which happens to occur onground), as is instant messaging (though it occurs online).  E-mail exchanges (which are online) are more likely asynchronous, but so are reading or attending a lecture and having to wait to meet with a teacher in a recitation class or outside of class (onground). 

Asynchronous online courses, which constitute many or most online college courses now, are those in which students can check into the classroom whenever convenient for themselves to find their assignments and instructions and to leave answers or comments for teachers and/or for classmates, and find responses to them.  This makes courses potentially available for people in different time zones or on different work schedules or with different family responsibilities.    Students and teachers can go online at whatever time(s) of the day suit their schedule. However, it means there may be hours or a day or two between the time comments are posted and the time they are read, even when students and teachers are conscientious. When students or teachers are not conscientious, or are particularly busy outside of the course, there may be longer periods between responses.

And there can be mixed online/onground courses, whereby students meet in a classroom but also meet online in whatever proportion for which the course is designed.

Similarities and Differences in Quality of Education

Theoretically, as long as certain conditions are in place, I believe there is no necessary difference in the quality of education that can be received online versus onground – for subjects that do not require proximity because of some particular reason.  Some subjects seem to require more proximity than others.  E.g., if one is teaching cooking or wine-tasting or if one is trying to teach how to mix or heat ingredients enough to reach a certain consistency that has to be felt, it is important for the teacher and student to experience the same food, wine, or mixture.  Following a food recipe alone may not quite give the desired taste; two bottles of the same brand and vintage wine may not have the same bouquet or taste; two mixtures that look to be the same consistency may not feel the same, and subtle differences can sometimes be significant. A Nobel laureate in medicine one time told me that although you could usually emulate experiments you read about in journals, there are occasions where you cannot get the same results and you need to visit the author’s lab to see what, if anything, the two of you are doing different that is not coming across in the verbal description of the process.  But even onground courses in some subjects are limited in quality if the subject matter is three-dimensional (such as sculpture or architecture) and the best examples are not within reach of the students to visit, and cannot be done adequate justice in drawings or photographs. The same is true for wine-tasting courses or cooking classes, for the proximity needs to be not just between teacher and students, but among teachers, students, and the material or phenomenon being taught.

 Moreover, two people’s looking at the same thing while standing next to each other may not mean they see it the same way or are thinking about it the same way. As a photographer, I learned to refuse to try to take pictures for clients who want a picture of a child that emulates a photo they have that I or someone else took of an older sibling or of the parent, because I have found that there is almost always some feature of the original that is the key feature to the client but is one that seems totally insignificant to me, and that I cannot or do not duplicate.  E.g., one time a woman brought in a baby picture of her husband and wanted a similar picture of their son at the same age.  I worked very hard to get the angle, the lighting, the expression, the pose, etc. of the baby and thought I had achieved it perfectly.  The woman was unhappy with the result because on the baby’s right hand, he did not have his fingers in the same position the father did as a baby, and, for some reason, that finger position was the most salient feature of the original photograph to her.  Had she told me that to begin with or even during the shooting – which she was watching while I did it, I’d have refused to do the picture, since that was not likely anything I could get the baby to do. So proximity is not necessarily a sufficient guarantee of mutual understanding of ideas and concepts, but it often helps.

As of this writing, there is a practical problem with teaching online that is akin to the wine-tasting problem.  The teacher cannot always know what the student is seeing on his/her monitor, and when it is not what the teacher sees on his/her monitor, that can cause some serious problems.  At one college at which I teach, I discovered, after increasingly discordant exchanges between me and the affected students, that some of the classroom material does not show up at all on the screens of students who use Macs with Safari as their web browser.  (They have to use a different web browser, it turned out.) Since much of the instructional material is in the missing components, it makes it seem as though the students are disregarding reading assignments or course instructions, when in fact, they have no reason to believe there is anything there to read. There is not even a gap that might make them suspicious they are missing something. So students were not following simple instructions I complained they were ignoring, and they thought I was being unduly accusatory, since they were doing everything required.  I now have my students cut and paste a passage from those sorts of components to prove to me that they actually have access to them and see them.   

In a simpler, less problematic kind of case, if a teacher uses a font to emphasize certain passages, and students’ computers do not have that font, the students won’t see the emphasis.

Every time any platform changes or is “upgraded” in an online course, or any time new browsing platforms become available, such as currently various “mobile apps”, there is a fairly good risk that what students are seeing is not all they are supposed to be seeing or what the teacher thinks they are seeing.

But if we limit this discussion to those courses whose content is primarily verbal and visual in ways computers can handle (such as currently, displaying two-dimensional images such as photos, blueprints, or paintings), I will argue that online courses can be every bit as good, and often much better than onground courses, but only under certain conditions – which unfortunately may not be the norm at this time for most students and for many teachers, and are not easy to achieve.  For knowledgeable teachers and students with good communication skills for expressing and understanding complex ideas, online courses afford great educational potential because they offer more opportunities for sustained, detailed, reflective, polished discussion than does a typical onground classroom.

Online courses allow the opportunity to combine the best qualities of reading and of interactive dialogue. If students take the time and make the effort to read reflectively and respond fully, there can be far more effective and efficient dialogue than usually occurs extemporaneously in a classroom hour or two.  However, in practice at this time, only a small proportion of students work that way or perhaps understand how.   And although only a small proportion of students enter an onground classroom each day fully prepared to discuss or even ask questions that will help them understand the assigned readings or any lecturing presented, there are teaching techniques in a classroom – or any synchronous environment-- that can mask, or sometimes even make up for, student inability to understand or attend sufficiently to longer written or spoken passages and complex or difficult ideas.

A Word About Teaching and Learning
Teaching and learning is the transmission, not just of facts, but often of ideas, and of the relationships among facts, from the mind of one person to the mind of another through the use normally of words (written or spoken), images, and symbols which are experienced through the senses.    If you have ever been in the position of knowing how to do something but not knowing how to explain it to someone, then you realize that what you know is not necessarily verbal or simply a set of words.  You have understanding that is different from the description.  If you ever worked with a (written or spoken) set of directions that at first you could not understand but, through trial and error, and persistent going back and forth between your results and the instructions until you finally “saw” what the instructions are trying to say or “getting at”, you understand that the words alone are not the same thing as either the idea or the understanding.  This is true even when the instructions are such that after you see what they mean, you would describe them as accurate directions.  Many of our insights are not verbal in nature; we suddenly just understand or realize connections and relationships we didn’t understand or realize before. Spoken and written words are simply an often inefficient, sometimes ineffective, means of communication, but they are in many cases the best or only way we have to try to communicate and explain our ideas to each other.  If you become attuned to the many kinds of mistakes and misunderstandings that occur, not only about complex ideas, but also about simple things in ordinary life, you might be amazed that we ever really do understand each other, rather than being frustrated that we often do not. 

Teaching requires trying to turn an experience, idea, or insight we have into words which we transmit to others through writing or speaking and then hoping that the recipient of the words can use those words to understand the idea or insight we have.  It is a difficult process and one that is not always successful even when the teacher and the student are both conscientious and have good vocabulary.  Some concepts and phenomena are simply difficult to transmit through the use of words.  If you tried to explain, for example, what ice is to someone who had never seen it, and explained it is frozen water, they would not likely know what you mean.  And it doesn’t likely help to say that it is water that is hard like a rock, because being water and being hard like a rock are incompatible ideas to someone who has only experienced water in liquid form.  Perhaps the best they might understand originally from that description would be if they had fallen from a height and hit a body of water very flat on their back, side, or stomach, and it hurt a lot.  But that would still not be anything like falling onto ice, which they cannot comprehend.  Possibly one could say that if you make water cold enough, it turns into a substance that is very much like greasy, slippery glass as long as it stays cold. 

The same is true for teaching any concept that is initially “foreign” to student understanding or experience.   For example, it is difficult for many children to learn to ride a bicycle because they know they cannot just sit on it and balance.  Adding speed to the experience doesn’t strike them as being a help, even if you show them a wheel will stay upright by itself when it moves.  First, they will see the wheel eventually falls down or hits something and then falls down, and they are not looking to ride if that is the outcome.  Or they will have tried to ride with some speed but not really balanced properly and crashed anyway.  So they are not encouraged that motion is the secret.  And even if they see other children or adults ride a bike, they believe very strongly they themselves cannot do it.  It takes a certain amount of work to teach them to do it, if they are not able to do it just naturally and if they have fear of it. And it is unlikely you can simply teach them very efficiently to ride, if at all, by giving only verbal instructions.

This is often even more difficult for concepts, because it is more difficult to teach them and show some tangible results.  Algebra is extremely difficult for many students, for example, as is any math “word problem” – meaning any problem that looks like it involves math and the particular kind of calculation necessary is not just given to you.  

But it is not just math that is difficult for students to comprehend.  Far too many college students cannot follow any sort of complex or extended verbal train of thought, whether in speech or in print. So they have problems following and understanding extended reading assignments and spoken lectures. Most, for example, cannot see what the reasoning and points are in the Declaration of Independence, even if they have plenty of time to read the document (which is not all that long) carefully.  They know the few catch phrases that “All men are created equal” and have the “unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.  But they do not and cannot understand the context in the Declaration for which those points serve as evidence.  They don’t see the reasoning of which those points are only a part.  They don’t see the relationship of those points to the broader meaning and purpose of the document.  And in many cases they do not understand even those points, and will argue, for example that capital punishment abrogates the unalienable right to life pointed out in this clause in the Declaration of Independence, and that life in prison is therefore the proper punishment for the most serious crimes.  Yet prison abrogates the right to “liberty” (and probably the right to “the pursuit of happiness”) in the same way, but they don’t see the inconsistency in their understanding.

Being able to teach and learn new and difficult material involves being able to present it in ways that a student is likely to be able to understand it, but that usually takes work on the students’ part as well because understanding something complex requires active thinking, not just passive reading or listening.  Many teachers cannot do it well; and many students cannot do it well, even when the teacher has done his/her part well, because those students either have not had the proper training or they don’t want to have to do the thinking or work that is required.  Many students today will look all over the Internet for the answer to questions posed that requires them to think, and that is not likely to have been written about on the Internet. When they cannot find the answer on the Internet or clearly stated in their assigned reading, many think the question is simply not fair because you have not taught them the answer or made it possible for them to find it already stated in those places.  They do not know how to derive answers from knowledge and information they already have, but only to repeat what they have read or been told.  At best, many will make a feeble attempt to derive an answer and think they have done enough; and that if they don’t get a good grade for that, it is because the teacher is not clear or hasn’t taught them or is making them guess what is “wanted”.  One particularly interesting, but sad, phenomenon is that in an onground discussion or in an online discussion, most students do not listen to or read the other students’ answers they are supposed to or they don’t follow them as they should, so that when a student gives an excellent well-reasoned answer to a problem, his/her classmates do not recognize it as such, unless the teacher points out it is a correct or brilliant answer – and sometimes even then.  I don’t think this is simply always because they are inattentive but because they cannot follow and recognize a well-reasoned deduction from evidence to a conclusion which they have not read or heard before.[2]^, [3]                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Now, there are methods that can serve in a synchronous environment, such as a chat room, conference call, or online chat room that foster the learning of difficult concepts and ideas – or that sometimes mask or hide not learning them.  And those methods are not open to being done well in an asynchronous environment.  So what happens is that teaching and learning may actually be easier in an onground course or, more likely, they simply appear to be easier even though teaching and learning are not really taking place to the extent they should. 

The methods involve various forms of dividing the difficult material into components that students may be better able to grasp.  One such method is the Socratic Method of teaching, which I have written about at www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html, but an easy way to see the general idea of dividing material into piecemeal components is to consider giving someone driving directions to some place they are seeking, in an area with which they are unfamiliar, so that you cannot just say something like “It is two blocks west of the Old Mill, on Darcy Street” because they do not know where either the Old Mill or where Darcy Street is (and may not know which way is west).  So you give them the component directions piecemeal.  If there are many twists and turns, they probably need to write them down, or have you write them down.  If you MapQuest or use Google Maps for directions, you get both a pictorial map and a set of step by step directions.  If you are driving by yourself you need to either memorize all the directions or you need to learn enough of them at a time that you don’t have to keep stopping to look at them or try to read them while you are driving.   Having a passenger who can read will allow you to get each direction as you are ready for it.  Modern GPS systems give you the same advantage without a passenger.  You can arrive at your whole destination step by step.  This is the beauty of synchronous teaching in a step by step fashion as the student is ready for each subsequent step.   In an asynchronous environment, it would take far longer if you had to wait a long time for the next direction each time you completed a step.  You might not be able to get to a meeting on time, for example, using an asynchronous step-wise methodology, and thus defeat the purpose of the trip.

 However, notice, that when the student arrives, he may still not have learned the route, but only followed each step as it was given.  That is not the same thing as knowing how to find the destination on one’s own.  The student may even not have a clue how to do it again without following the directions again.  It may take repeated trips before the student knows how to arrive at the destination and can get there even by varying the route on his or her own, because s/he now “understands” the relationship between the starting point and the destination, not just the specific step by step directions how to get there.  The student might even find a shorter route or a quicker route or a prettier route.

 Moreover, with a modern GPS or a passenger who knows the route himself and is simply giving directions as needed from his own knowledge, the driver can make mistakes while thinking he is on the right track, and it is the GPS or the passenger who is correcting those errors and getting him back on track.  So the driver may arrive at the destination even without having correctly followed the directions given.

 The corollary in the classroom to this is that if a teacher can break down material into smaller components, students can achieve certain results even without learning the important ideas, or they can think they are learning, while they are only following directions and steps.  They may even be making deductions as they go, but if they do not go back over the whole process until they see, understand, appreciate the significance of, and can work with the relationship between the parts and the whole, they have not learned the material.  A synchronous incremental teaching/guiding process can give the illusion of teaching/learning, even when learning is not taking place.

 On the other hand, effective teaching can take place with such an incremental process.  And either way, asynchronous learning does not have the same effect or illusion unless not many steps are needed or they can be presented in ways that take less time.

 It is not that students can follow steps individually, and it is not just that students can repeat answers or information they have been told, that determines whether they have learned concepts, relationships, or complex ideas, but whether they can use those concepts, relationships, or complex ideas in some meaningful way or not.  This doesn’t mean one can solve every problem just because one has understanding of the principles that should solve it – because sometimes we do not see the obvious, and feel like a fool when someone tells us or when we finally have an insight we should have had hours or days earlier.  But it means that there is some situation where we can see, and show, we have the knowledge and understanding to apply it to resolve a problem or answer a question.

 Repeating someone else’s explanation of their understanding is not the same thing as having understanding of what you are saying.  Whether someone has understanding or not is seen in ways other than their simply stating the point at issue.  You need to see how students discover or come up with the points being made and/or how they use them.   It is beautiful to watch a student have an epiphany or make a discovery.  When you see (or read) the moment of insight, you can tell they understand what they are saying and not just repeating someone else’s words.  On some occasions online I have watched five or six students discuss and debate some topic in a way that evolved into one of them actually having a feasible resolution that as soon as they state it, the others see it immediately as being right, and perhaps even developing it further.  That is the goal desired in teaching concepts, relationships, ideas, whether it occurs in a group discussion or a student’s individual explanation.  On rare occasions also, I have seen students work through their own answers themselves by posting one they soon retract for reasons they give, offer another one, and see its problems, sometimes even switching to an opposite conclusion only to see it won’t work either, until they finally see the bigger picture and post an answer that resolves all the problems and explains what caused the original mistakes.  These are ways in which the student discoveries of their answers show they understand them. (See also “Understanding ‘Understanding’ or What It Means To ‘Understand’ Something http://www.garlikov.com/teaching/uu.htm)

 The main drawback of asynchronous communication occurs in those kinds of learning situations where immediate feedback would be most helpful and/or that proceed in steps which need responses before the next step can be implemented.  The Socratic Method, for example, requires asking a series of logically structured questions, the content of each of which depends on the previous answer given by the student.  If a student makes an error, you would then ask a different question from one you would ask next if the student got it right.  (See www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html for an example with explanation of teaching a class by using the Socratic Method.)  When student and teacher are communicating back and forth relatively instantly, the method can work pretty well and cover a lot of material in a short time.[4]  But if you have to wait a half a day or a day or two for a response to each question or answer, that is extremely inefficient.  It is similar to requiring an inspection for each step of building something, and the inspectors only come around three or four days or a week after they were called.  It slows construction down to a crawl.  This will have important secondary ramifications for teaching that I will address later.

One way around that problem in teaching is to write material in dialogue form, such as the works of Plato, but that doesn’t help much because whenever the dialogue diverges from how the reader would have answered the questions, it defeats the purpose of the method.

A better solution is for teachers to be able to explain material well in writing (or in speaking/lecturing), but not all have that skill because they leave (often serious) gaps in the explanation and/or don’t know how to structure the material so that its logic or significance most likely shows.  And when they do, a serious problem is that many students cannot or do not read or listen carefully for comprehension and understanding. [5]  Careful reading and comprehension skills, even at the college level, are frequently so bad that I jokingly say one can see why Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit even though the only instruction God gave them was not to eat the fruit of that one tree while He went out for a bit.  One imagines they both remembered it as “He said something about eating the fruit of this tree” or thought “That instruction is probably not important.” The problem is actually, however, no different in regard to listening onground in the classroom than reading online in an asynchronous course.  And it is no worse online than it is in regard to student understanding of assigned readings for homework in an onground course.  But in an onground course or in synchronous communication, lack of understanding or reading shows up much quicker, at least potentially.[6] And in onground courses, there is the potential compensation of immediacy that allows for step by step progress in a topic too complex to absorb all at once.

Moreover, in teaching a whole group, whether online, by conference call, or in a classroom, you are normally able to reach more people with the same comment in response to any misunderstanding – particularly a common one.  If someone says something everyone agrees with or if someone asks a question others also are thinking about, one answer (or an answer with immediate follow-ups) will suffice for all who are 1) paying attention at the time, and 2) who are psychologically ready for the response at that time so that the answer is meaningful.  Now theoretically the same would be true for asynchronous communication as long as the responses are all available for reading.  But many students do not read the interactions teachers have with their classmates – even when directed to do so as a course policy.  And what tends to happen in practice is that the teacher has to repeat the same things to each student, as if teaching 20 different separate tutorials. 

This is not much different from students not paying attention in a classroom to answers teachers give to a classmate or to the questions and comments of classmates in the first place, and then asking the same question or making the same comment five minutes later.  However, it is more likely to happen in an asynchronous interaction than a synchronous one, I think.  This is not necessarily because some online students are inattentive or irresponsible, but in an online course, even conscientious students will often say they feel it is cheating to read their classmates’ answers, or they say they don’t want to be influenced by those answers before they post their own. (My directions about the latter concern are they should then write their own answer for themselves, but they should not submit it until they have read the already posted responses to see whether they need to amend their answer – and this is not cheating if it is the practice the teacher wants implemented. If the teacher wants you to learn from your mistakes rather than getting a low or failing grade because of them, that is sound educational practice, not cheating.  Moreover, it is not cheating if you have to add your own reasons and give your own explanations and examples beyond what the previous students have said, in order to show you truly do understand the material.  That precludes simply copying or paraphrasing someone else’s answer.)

The previous point applies to online discussions where the answers are graded and count toward the students’ final grades.  However, if the discussion is not graded, only the most conscientious students in asynchronous courses tend to read their classmates’ comments and the teacher’s responses.  This is very similar to classroom discussions where “participation” does not count toward students’ grades and where the teacher is not knowledgeable or skilled enough to have a way to motivate students to appreciate the intrinsic value of being actively involved in the discussion.  In such cases only conscientious students tend to listen to the comments their classmates make and take them into account in their own thinking about the topic under consideration.  That is a shame because it wastes many potentially teachable moments that would have been important and that would have made the course material actually more interesting and relevant to most of the students.  Often the material that goes beyond the foundational material is what is most interesting and challenging, so when students don’t listen or read and don’t assimilate the basic material, it makes the conscientious teacher spend most of his/her time repeatedly correcting simple mistakes and misunderstandings individually instead of doing that all at once and moving past it to the more interesting ideas.

 On the other hand, whether onground in the classroom (group) or online in the classroom (where the group sees the communications), a somewhat opposite phenomenon also occurs: the teacher can tell the whole group that an answer is correct when first given (and supported/explained) by whichever student comes up with it. That does not mean the other students will understand the answer, and yet the teacher will proceed as if it does.  Unless the teacher has some way to determine that other students can use or give their own support/explanation, rather than just saying what the first student says, it can easily be that the other students do not really understand the material in the way the teacher assumes.  So there have to be methods for determining they do, preferably while teaching, not just while testing and grading and then “moving on”. 

 Conscientiousness

It is probably easier to detect students and teachers who are not conscientious or who are apathetic in an onground course than in an online course.  Online courses can keep track of student attendance (whether courses are synchronous or asynchronous) but they cannot tell as easily whether a student is paying attention or whether a teacher is attentive to students as is able to be seen in a classroom, unless perhaps it is simply a huge lecture hall.  But in a classroom of 20 or 25 students (perhaps even 50 students) where the teacher can pretty easily see facial expressions and body language, and can call on a fairly large number of students in a short amount of time, a teacher can be constantly monitoring for student attentiveness.  And students can readily see whether the teacher cares whether s/he is getting through to the students or not, and being responsive to their questions, comments, or even to just their expressions of puzzlement, or whether the teacher is just putting in the time for a paycheck.

 In an online classroom it is easier for an apathetic, inattentive, or irresponsible student to hide during the teaching phase of a course, though that will show in answers they give to any questions or in any comments they may be forced to make.  There is no difference in the outcome between online and onground determinedly apathetic or irresponsible students, but it is probably easier for a teacher to identify and get through to a student who is merely unconfident or reticent in an onground course than in an online course.  When one’s only interaction with a student is online (even including by telephone), it is very difficult to get them to respond if they are simply fearful or very shy.  It can be difficult even to help such students take an interactive part in their learning when they are onground, but I think it is far more difficult in an online course.  And it is more difficult to distinguish online between such students and those who are simply lazy, apathetic, or otherwise irresponsible.

 Online Course Design/Format

Facilitating Discussion

Courses designed for discussion need to have a technological format that facilitates collaborative discussion.  One format I have seen militates against that; each student responds primarily to the teacher and although other students can see each others’ answers, they have no particular incentive to read them or to respond. If the course requires them to respond to other students, many will just give meaningless, perfunctory responses, such as “I really liked the way you explained that.  It helped make it clear to me finally. Good job.”  More often than not, such a response is given to a student who gave a wrong answer, sometimes even an exceptionally poor, wrong answer.

 In some online classroom formats, a student can change the subject line to indicate what a post is about (a general comment, a new comment, a rebuttal or supplementary comment to a previous post) or to whom it is directed (e.g., all the students or to a particular few).  But in many courses, the format prevents that, and uses the same subject line for all responses after the first.  This means one has to open and read all the responses to see whether they are germane to the topic and intended for everyone or not.

 It is not strictly an online phenomenon that students do not pay attention to the ideas of their classmates.  In many onground classrooms, students do not pay attention to or respond to other students’ comments, because they think they are unimportant grade-wise and only want to hear how the teacher answers the question that was raised.  There are instructional techniques to minimize or eliminate that problem in the onground classroom, but in a poorly designed online classroom format, it is more difficult to encourage and achieve collaborative discussion, particularly if other online courses and teachers in the system do not do so and students have no model for, or practice in, doing it.

 Displaying Important Information in a Reasonable Way

I have found online course design and visual format to be serious issues in regard to making sure students have all the information they need.  Web pages that form the course often are not laid out well and make it difficult for students to see or find all the information they need, particularly when different bits of information are squirreled away in different links (especially if the links are difficult to notice) or components of the screen.  In some classrooms important new information gets hidden at the bottom of a home page that comes on first when students login, and unless they know and remember to scroll to the bottom of the page, they are not likely to notice there is something new they need to see.  In some cases students have to click on different links individually in order to find out all the information that they need to know about a particular topic or about what their assignments are, etc. In some cases there are too many portals of information to have to check to see whether there is important new information or not.  This is like a teacher’s having a note on the corner of a chalk board or white board and expecting all students to notice it before s/he erases it.   It is, of course, important that students are conscientious, but if the course design or format is such that even conscientious students are not likely to see or realize the importance of reading information they need, then that is a serious design or operational flaw in the course format.

 I think this is more of a problem online because web design in general is not always as functional as it needs to be at the time I am writing this.  There are thousands of web pages all over the Internet for even quite affluent, large corporations, where it is extremely difficult for a potential client or customer to find the information he needs, because it is hidden in some link that is not obviously the link the customer would know to search.  E.g., one recent example I came across had various reasonable categories as links, but none described what I was seeking.  I finally found a phone number and called the business where I was informed that the link I was seeking could be found in a drop box that was buried in a bottom corner of the page that was marked “Quick links”.  But that itself was insufficient to know because one also needed to know the name of the department that handled that particular matter for this organization, rather than searching by the topic itself. 

 In an online classroom where some information students need to know is under one link, and other information is under other links, and few of the links are named or designated in any way that shows they are important, it is easy even for the most conscientious student not to have seen something s/he needs to know in order to learn the material.  It is also easy for the teacher to forget to put an important piece of information somewhere it needs to be.

 I have found that it is important to copy and place the same vital information everywhere one can, and in font colors or formats that set it off for notice.  I particularly find it useful to put general instructions not only in announcements about course policies and procedures, but copied within each assignment or discussion question as well, to facilitate students doing the right thing, and in order to prevent any legitimate claim that the student didn’t know they were supposed to do that  in this particular discussion or assignment.[7]  That doesn’t prevent students from being irresponsible or careless, but it helps identify for further investigation those who probably are, and lets teachers know which students they may feel deserve additional help and are likely to benefit from it and which do not. 

 Because I knew mostly conscientious college students when I was in school, I used to think that most lack of understanding was the fault of teachers’ not explaining things well; but now that I see there are college students who are not conscientious and responsible, I hold the view there is only so much a teacher needs to do in order to try to teach well, and that the teacher is not responsible for the failure of students who disregard all reasonable help given to insure they can learn.  For example, it turns out near the end of some courses that a student will have to admit never having bought the textbook and never did any of the reading assignments, and then complains the discussion or test questions are too difficult or unfair.  Or a student may let slip sometime into the term that s/he doesn’t have the university’s required software to post an answer a certain way and is thus going to post it a different way, which is legitimate.  But it means that the student then never read many of the announcements or information that has been disseminated all term in a format readable only with that university-required software.  These are typically the students who in the last week of the term ask what they can do to improve their grade.  It is one thing for a teacher to try to accommodate every conscientious student, but quite another to spend time trying to accommodate irresponsible ones or those in circumstances that don’t allow them to study sufficiently even with time extensions and supplemental assistance by the teacher.

 Online Attempts to Force and Monitor Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is one of those concepts that are not easily, if at all, able to be evaluated objectively in terms of meeting a prescribed set of objective criteria.  And institutions make a serious error in trying to formalize such a set of criteria, which unfortunately is a common practice.  For example, if one wants students to check an ongoing discussion periodically to see whether they need to respond to a new question or direction in it, and if one wants them to respond when they have something to contribute, it does not work to make a rule such as one must be online four days during each seven day classroom week and that one must respond one time during discussion of any assignment to two other students.  Students who are not conscientious will easily meet that requirement without making any useful contribution to the discussion whatsoever.   Or if the requirement for a teacher is to respond to 70% of the comments made and to check in to the classroom at least five days a week without missing two days consecutively, that also can be fairly easily met without the teacher’s really being a usefully responsive teacher.  Oppositely, I have had online students whose day jobs required travel to places they did not always have internet access and many of those students were extremely conscientious and made valuable contributions to the class by responding very fully early and in every opportunity they had, which might mean twice or three times during the week.  Yet the automated system would flag them for poor attendance that could suspend them from the course.  Fortunately the system gave the teacher a chance to prevent the suspension.  But the point is that conscientiousness cannot be measured by mere class attendance, by online logins to the classroom, or by number or percentage of comments made during a discussion.  It is a qualitative matter, not a quantitative one.

 The Potential Benefits of Asynchronous Online Courses Which Compensate for Lag in Response Times

First, and most obviously, students and teachers can be anywhere in the world, united by a common interest, rather than by the accident of geographical proximity.  That allows even the smallest village to be a center of worldwide teaching or learning, as long as the subject matter can be taught and learned through verbal and pictorial communication, and as long as it can be organized and presented in a way that enhances (or at least does not impede) that.

Second, online courses are potentially excellent when teachers and students are conscientious, capable, prepared and have the time and freedom to do what is right, and when the format of the course facilitates (or at least does not hinder) discussion and the timely exchange[8] of information among students with each other or between teacher and students.  This is because there is more time for students to think about points raised and to be able to respond in a way that gives other students or the teacher the opportunity to do the same.  In onground courses, students often hold a comment until after class, or don’t even think of the response they wish they had given until hours after the course is over.  In such cases, any salient comments or questions have to wait until the next classroom period, which may be a few days or even a week later.  Online, questions and comments can be posted when they occur, and can be addressed within 24 hours.  In an “active” course with enthusiastic participants, comments will be viewed and responses will be given within a few hours or within half a day. 

 Plus, in writing a response for an asynchronous environment, one has the chance to formulate it as well as one can and to amend it before sending it.  That helps students who are less comfortable with extemporaneous speaking or who want to take the time to formulate a well-fashioned response rather than just to give their immediate, perhaps incomplete thoughts which may not be as well articulated as they would like, or which they may know are poorly conceived or wrong.  But careful, reflective, thorough, detailed writing is a skill or character trait too many students and adults lack. Yet it can be developed, and as online courses proliferate and become more demanding and more instructional in this regard, they could possibly revive the rare art of careful, reflective, and coherent and complete writing.

 Also, online classes have some of the same “protective anonymity” that I believe onground courses that are large have.  Protective anonymity is the name I give the phenomenon I have noticed that in large classes, students are often more likely to speak up than they are in smaller groups if one can pose any sort of stimulating, interesting, or challenging question at all to the class, particularly if the teacher can get students to see they disagree with each other in ways they might not have realized.  I think it is because there is a kind of “anonymity in numbers” that does not occur in a class of 12, 15, or 20 students.  Even though there are more people to see you blunder, if you do, in a large class, it is somehow, I believe, less personally embarrassing or threatening, particularly if you disagree with a classmate who is sitting far across the room (or in their own living room) than if they are sitting fairly close to you.  Plus, I think that if a student has an idea they may not be able to articulate very well, they know they are more likely to receive support from someone else in a large class because there is more likely to be someone else who will understand and agree with them and who may be able to say it a bit better than they do if they hear the idea mentioned in the first place.  In those few cases where students disagree about culturally conventional ideas, they may find some peer support in a large class. In cases where the issue is one that is not conventionally discussed in the students’ culture or culture at large, unusual views will also more likely have peer support once stated in a large class.

 I have not tried to test or prove this theory of anonymity in numbers, and I understand that a large group intuitively seems to be more terrifying to address than a small group, but I don’t think it works out that way in practice when the teacher is skilled at techniques that can generate discussion in general.  I think those techniques will succeed faster and more easily in large groups than in small.  It seems to be much more intimidating for reticent students to speak up in a small group than in a large one.  And I believe that online offers the same kind of what I am calling protective anonymity that is available in large classrooms or small lecture halls.  Plus, there is more of an opportunity or more of a disposition for an actively involved student to amend or add to an earlier statement in an ongoing written discussion than in one that is oral, where one feels one might be talking too much or too frequently or where one feels one is interrupting the current thread.  In a written online discussion that has a threaded pattern of responses, one can go back and insert an amended answer or question in the proper place in the discussion without causing a digression from the most recent discussion.

 For conscientious students and teachers, an online classroom potentially makes up, in reflective, organized expressions of ideas and responses, for what it lacks in immediacy.  And when students and teachers are checking on discussions once or twice or more a day (as often happens when a discussion becomes particularly interesting) the lack of immediacy is not all that great in the first place.  And lack of immediacy is not a problem when a number of students are having a good discussion/debate with each other, since they fill in the time gaps left by the teacher’s not being online.  In the ideal discussion, a student will post an answer with a full explanation and support for it; other students will see there is a flaw in that answer or rationale or explanation or that it is good and has even more of a rationale and explanation than the first student saw, and they will post their observations.  Similarly with more students joining in until the issue is resolved (or is resolved reasonably for the level of the course), with the teacher than coming in at the end to add further evidence or explanation to bolster the point, point out any problems, or put it all into a perspective that may give it more significance for the students.

 Unfortunately, most students do not understand how the ideal discussion should be.  Instead they look for (usually those short) answers by other students whose conclusions they agree with and simply say so.  In many cases, the first student only gives a conclusion and no real evidence or explanation to support it or make it clear.  The art of explaining, supporting one’s ideas, and of rationally analyzing and evaluating the ideas of others needs to be taught to students.  It is my belief that all middle schools or junior high schools, high schools and colleges should teach or ensure this ability and show how it applies to almost all subjects.  There are some subjects where pure memorization or drill and practice for learning information is important; but most subjects involve understanding concepts, relationships among the facts, ideas, and evidence for discoveries and the existing (presumed) knowledge in the field.  Pure memorization of supposed facts is not sufficient for knowledge and understanding.

 Still, in an onground classroom where the students and the teacher are at least reasonably involved, attentive, and dynamic (which is not the normal classroom unfortunately), it seems to me it may be easier for there to be greater progress with greater understanding than in an online classroom because the interactions can be better facilitated.  If a teacher is giving an explanation and sees either a blank or puzzled demeanor, s/he can try to address that immediately, and possibly succeed if the student is forthcoming and honest in responding.  A student or teacher can ask immediately for a clarification if s/he feels something is amiss.  I don’t know of anything comparable to that in an asynchronous environment.

 There is another potential difference, though not necessarily. A comment, perhaps one made casually or as an aside, by a student or teacher, which might not have presented itself in writing (though in some cases of writing full explanations students may include off-hand remarks; and in some synchronous writing situations, such as a chat room, people sometimes make off-hand comments), can immediately trigger an idea that might not have cropped up without it.  A teacher can notice and address a crucial misunderstanding or mistake made by one student that is likely to be relevant to many other students also and perhaps be more likely to make the other students aware of its relevance to them if the course is operating synchronously.  Good onground (or more precisely, synchronous discussions no matter how they take place) offer efficiency and free-ranging spontaneity, whereas good online (or otherwise asynchronous) discussions offer more reflective and sustained thinking.  Combined online and onground courses (or, again more precisely, combined synchronous and asynchronous courses) where class discussions are followed up with asynchronous online ones, offer the best of both worlds.

 Secondary Effects of Lack of Immediacy in Asynchronous Discussions With Students
or Teachers Who Don’t Have the Necessary Skill and Desire to Conduct a Good Discussion

 Because discussions that require teacher responses to each student take so much time, much less material can be covered unless the responses are full, clear, and complete in ways most students and many teachers cannot or do not do.   This causes a host of problems:

1) Where the students do not understand the basic concepts and ideas, the more interesting material is not discussed because all the time is inefficiently spent trying to teach the basic concepts and ideas. You can’t get into the more interesting applications and mistaken apparent applications of the ideas because all the time is spent just trying to explain the basic ideas themselves.

 2) Sometimes even essential basic material has to be omitted – particularly if the course is taught in a short (or mini) term, which many online courses are, for reasons I don’t understand.  Mini terms compress the time for absorption and assimilation of concepts and ideas that need more time to “percolate” in students’ minds.  While students can memorize numerous “facts” in a compressed time frame, material that requires understanding often needs more time for students to absorb before they can go on to being given further material.  Whether onground or online, it is very difficult to teach or learn algebra, for example, five hours a day five days a week for six weeks than to have it one hour a day five times a week for 30 weeks, though both involve 150 hours of instruction.  Students need time to practice the earlier concepts and applications before moving on to those which build upon them.

 3) Grading gets too intertwined with teaching to make either be effective, if ways are not devised to prevent that.  Since there are potentially fewer interactions (due to lack of response speed) between teacher and student in asynchronous courses in which students do not work well with each others’ answers, teachers who are trying to teach and not just be giving grades do not have the luxury of having a lot of ungraded discussion they can use for teaching and modeling purposes.  In online courses, frequently much of what students contribute to the course is graded, and not just analyzed and critiqued for teaching purposes.  Even in onground (more precisely, synchronous) courses, because students are so used to simply being graded rather than taught, it is extremely difficult to divorce teaching and learning from grading and being graded.  It is almost impossible to do in any individual course with most students in an online, asynchronous class because there is not time to have the many kinds of discussions and use the techniques that get their minds off being graded or trying to figure out what “the teacher wants”, such as playing devil’s advocate without telling them until the end of the class period that is what you are doing – in order to try to get them to explain and prove their point more thoroughly, not abandon it. And by telling them at the end of the period what you have been doing and why, you have not left them to founder for days not knowing what was going on or what you were trying to show them. 

 Not being able to divorce grading from teaching causes some pedagogical problems:

a) students are more inclined to try to say what they think the teacher wants to hear/read instead of saying what they honestly think – which normally would be more helpful in nurturing their understanding.

b) students don’t care about the material if they can just do whatever they need to with it to get a good grade.

c) when they think a unit is over and the material no longer involves their grade, they do not care whether they learned it or know it yet or not.

d) students resent any poor grade or any disagreement with their answers (which they think will mean a poor grade) and focus more on that than they do on trying to learn from their mistakes. Often students will spend far more time and effort explaining why it is not their fault they don’t understand the material than they do trying to understand or explain what it is they don’t understand about it so that the teacher or other students can possibly help them.  They will say “I just don’t understand any of it.”  So then, with no clue what to focus on, the conscientious teacher will try to explain it in different ways or give different examples or focus on some part that is normally the most problematic for students.  But the student who is more concerned about the grade than in trying to learn, or who does not know how to isolate problems in understanding[9], will say things like “You just keep saying the same thing in different ways and that is not of any help!”  

“Well, what part of it seems wrong or doesn’t make sense? Where do you start not being able to follow it or accept it.”

“I just don’t get any of it.”

[In an interesting coincidence, today I received an e-mail from a student who wanted to pursue a discussion we had during the online course that had ended two weeks ago.  She had already seen her recorded grade, and simply wanted to discuss this particular topic further, apart from any grade, because she found it challenging and stimulating. That is the kind of environment I want to foster, and that I often could in a synchronous (onground) environment, but find difficult to do in an asynchronous one other than with students who already have the desire to learn, apart from getting a grade.  I found out a year or so after one night course I had taught onground ended, that after each class period most of the students stayed for another hour or so outside in the parking lot discussing and debating issues that had arisen in class.  That was gratifying to learn.  Clearly they were not doing that to impress me for a higher grade. I attribute it to the fact that we were able to discuss in a two hour class period, a great many stimulating and challenging points and arguments related to the main points I was trying to teach.  A couple of my students online last term had individual dialogue with me, that was posted for all to see, about issues they wanted to pursue further. After one such prolonged exchange, the student said she didn’t understand why none of her classmates joined the discussion with us, because she thought it was so interesting.]

 By not being able to have the time and opportunities to model and foster the sorts of discussions desired, a vicious circle is easy to get started and continued throughout the course.  If students do not enter a course knowing how to conduct a productive, rational discussion among themselves, and if you, as the teacher,  cannot get them to see how to do it – i.e., pointing out to each other problems with the conclusions and rationales they find in each others’ answers or pointing out additional support and explanation they can add from their own experiences and ideas, or adding additional perspective to their classmates’ answers – and if you cannot even get them to read each others’ answers and your replies to the ones that first state common errors, then you are left with the bad options of either ignoring (other than simply grading) their individual mistaken answers that are all very similar to each other or having to conduct individual tutorials with each student, some of whom are simply trying to entice you into giving them the answer or tell them where to find it, so they do not have to think for themselves.  The online/asynchronous individual tutorial approach is not good because it saps all the teachers’ time and energy on trying to correct basic errors in a very inefficient way; and it is an extremely inefficient use of the teacher’s time and knowledge of the subject.

Pitfalls In Both Online and Onground Courses

1) When students or teachers are not conscientious, material is typically not covered in the depth it can be.  If students do not reflect on the material assigned, in order to seek deeper understanding, they will miss much of the significance of it.  They will not have the insights into it they should, and they will not notice that some of the material will provoke questions that provide “teachable moments”.  If teachers are not attentive or caring, then any teachable moments which do arise will be squandered. This is as true onground as it is online. In good courses of either sort, there is ample time and opportunity for teachers and students to experience and utilize “teachable moments”; moments where students are more likely to absorb and appreciate any information given because something has challenged or stimulated them to be in more of a receptive learning mode than normal. It is a shame to minimize or squander potential teachable moments whether online or onground.

2) Some teachers, whether online or onground, assign too much material and often compound that mistake by assuming students can simply read it and learn it on their own.  They think they are being intellectually rigorous.  Instead they are simply being unreasonably demanding and are not necessarily teaching.  One could call it “school” to assign students to the library to begin reading at “A” and stop when they have finished “Z”, but that is not a good, fair, reasonable, or efficient way to teach.  Students who do not ask questions about the material to show they are trying but having specific difficulties understanding, simply enable poor teachers to continue assigning too much without giving any real help.

3) Just as there is too often apathetic, slipshod, and negligent teaching whether online or onground, there are also slipshod, mechanical, contrived “assessments” of student learning that do not seriously measure what they are supposed to, and that often do not motivate or inspire students to learn[10].  For many reasons some students give up on, or don’t care about, learning the material in a course (often a required course, or a course chosen to meet a requirement) and don’t care what their grade is as long as they pass.  Such students often do minimal work, or sometimes are not adequately prepared to take the course, and it is very difficult in many cases to tell what is the cause of their poor performance – apathy, bad study skills, lack of previous important experience/knowledge, higher priorities with lack of time/energy to get to the lower ones, lack of talent for the particular subject matter, etc.  Sometimes tests or assessments are just so poorly designed or worded that even conscientious and knowledgeable students will not necessarily do well on them.

4) Polite and “politically correct” students too often refrain from criticizing a fellow student’s answers because a) they do not distinguish properly between analysis of the answer and criticism of the person, and b) because they are under the misguided impression in courses with more intangible subject matter that there are no wrong answers or that any answer is as good as any other.  They need to be taught that civilly saying an answer is wrong, and why, is not the same thing as saying the person who gave it is stupid, ignorant, blind, inept, lazy, careless, deceitful, callous, biased, or irresponsible – as long as they stick to the issue itself and the evidence that pertains to it.  This will help generate more, and more meaningful, responses and better discussions.

5) I tend to think that too often, particularly perhaps in some online courses, too much of what ought to be free intellectual discussion is instead a formally graded assignment that makes students unwilling to explore ideas for fear of being graded down for being “wrong”, meaning “not giving the answers the teacher or test is ‘looking for’”.  I think it is important to be able to challenge student thinking in ways that encourage students to be intellectually adventuresome and allow them to make certain kinds of understandable errors without penalty, so they can learn from their mistakes.  E.g., if one is trying to teach certain difficult concepts, it should be sufficient that students demonstrate understanding and ability to use those concepts by the end of the term even if it takes them a long time and much effort to learn them.  That does not mean basic errors in material they should know are acceptable, and it doesn’t mean they can acceptably be less than perfect on tasks that require perfection, such as engine repair or heart surgery.

In short, while there may be certain aspects of teaching onground or online that give an inherent advantage to one over the other for particular subjects, there is nothing automatic that makes teaching online or onground necessarily good without skill, effort, and understanding on the part of both teachers and students.  Online courses are not necessarily a panacea for education; they can be taught poorly or attended to by students poorly.  But they are also not necessarily merely “diploma mill” tools that are educationally valueless; they can be taught well by conscientious and able teachers, and much can be learned by conscientious and capable students.

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