As colleges and universities prepare for the new semester a huge question mark hangs over the whole process of higher education, and indeed education in general. Can distance learning be made to work? New technologies mean that students no longer need to meet in boring old classrooms with professors who may or may not be the best and the brightest. They also won’t need to waste their nights and damage their livers at keg parties, or resist the moral temptations of the mixed dormitory. They will be like scholar monks of the middle ages – alone in their cells with their holy laptops.
In the interests of full disclosure, I confess that I taught some college-level undergraduate courses on the internet back in the 1990s when the technique was still in its infancy so, just for once, I do know what I am talking about. The experience made me skeptical. From the student's point of view, it may be a quick and easy way to stack up credits. But it is a horribly impoverished substitute for an educational experience to sit alone with a computer, insecurely connected via the internet to a professor you don’t know and linked to your unseen fellow students only by artificial, laborious online discussions or Zoom sessions. I doubt that anyone will remember a great Zoom session, but the best live lectures and tutorials stick in your mind forever.
Plenty of professors dislike online teaching, but are equally reluctant to go back to the campus and the classroom where masks and distancing may be rejected by some students. As for the students themselves, their motivation is hard to guarantee when everyone in the virtual classroom is only a click away from his or her email, or a video game, or something even more interesting. It demands a lot maturity and self-control, which may be no bad thing if it happens. But it may not happen. Honest testing and evaluation are almost impossible on the internet and, from the teacher's point of view, the main problem is that you don't know your students. You can't look at them directly, or talk to them directly, or make all those delicate connections that can only be made face to face. In fact, you have no idea who is behind the screen on the other end, or where they are getting their information. I have come to believe, along with many old-fashioned educators, that more distance equals less learning.
At kindergarten it may be possible, but you can’t hope to accomplish higher education by watching videos. Somewhere along the line independent thinking has to enter the picture, and this is where I dare to introduce an old-fashioned, almost forgotten teaching tool – cheaper and infinitely more flexible than a computer – the book. When you come to think about it, a book is the perfect example of what we want from distance learning. It’s completely portable, virus-free and doesn’t even require power or a high-speed internet connection.
Just about all the knowledge in the world is available in books, and we have done very well with them for 500 years. Some skills, of course, demand a little hands-on instruction. Pure book learning is unlikely to produce doctors or aeronautical engineers we can trust. But the vast majority of what are usually called “academic” subjects could be self-taught from books with no more than a little written or recorded guidance, like an old-fashioned correspondence course. If knowledge is what you want, the pursuit of knowledge has never been easier.
Before tens of thousands of college students are swept away by the dream or nightmare of higher education on the internet, let’s pause for a moment, reflect on the costs and the options, and consider going back to the books. Where do you think professors get all that stuff?
Copyright: David Bouchier
