Moxley, USF's interim director of composition, has some big plans for this summer and Fall semester. His goal is to create a new standard for teaching first-year composition online. The course will be taught entirely online, with no off-line readings--even the textbook, College Writing Online is a webtext. To pioneer the program, Moxley hired 6 TAs (including me) to develop policies and procedures for the course--there are six of us teaching a single class of 120 students, and, yes, we're already butting heads over issues like due dates and which tools warrant usage in the class. Not surprisingly, wikis were rejected out-of-hand and Blackboard embraced. YUCK!

To prepare myself for teaching a totally online course, I've been doing some reading. I started with Roberto Bamberger's Learning in a Connected World. Bamberger starts with a quote from Einstein--"I never try to teach my students anything. I only try to create an environment in which they can learn." Interesting quotation, I think. Obviously, sometimes I think my learning environments inhibit learning, in particular those dreadful seminar classes where one or two bozos dominate the discussion. I really can't imagine how students can be traumatized into learning anything.

I really like Bamberger's description of the modern "typical student": Today’s students have higher expectations than ever before. Their expectations are strongly influenced by their experiences as consumers and working professionals. Of course, these experiences and expectations are precisely what I'd like to think we could unite against before it's too late: Teachers reduced to the status of McDonald's employees, and, no, you can't have fries with that. Everyday that fine line between votech and college narrows, doesn't it?

Of course, Bamberger is a Microsoft employee, so naturally his article focuses on how Microsoft can help create the ideal learning environment. Yawn. Maybe Microsoft can stimulate education by releasing its sourcecode for computer programming students--specifically so they'll know what NOT to do in their own applications.

The next piece on my agenda was Leslie Blair's "Teaching Composition Online: No Longer the Second Best Choice." Blair points out that students in online composition courses are forced to use writing to communicate much more often than students in traditional courses. She also suggests that some "silent" students are quite animated in online discussions, a fact that I've noticed and feel is true about me.

Blair ends on a high note:

Online education is no longer a second choice alternative to adult education. It is a growing, changing, educational system that can lend itself to certain kinds of learning better than any other media. Although students of a freshmen composition course might value online education for different reasons than distance learners, both kinds of students have the advantage of learning to write by writing when they take composition online or have the opportunity to use an online component in a face-to-face class.

Naturally, my biggest question regarding teaching composition online is whom such "methods of mass instruction" truly benefit. Regardless of what some people claim, I see great potential for online learning to dramatically reduce the costs of education, especially when computer illiterate teachers are gradually replaced with people who are already highly experienced with advanced technology. It's likely that universities with a strong online learning component will begin rejecting applications from TA's who evince a hatred, phobia, or profound ignorance about computers. Anyway...

Here's what I'm worried about: Does online learning provide another way for the administration to exploit both students and teachers? After all, it does deny to teachers what some value most highly about the job: Personal, face-to-face interaction with students. There's something less glamarous about doing this work in a cubicle--oops, personal workstation--in some office building, right? And does the allure of "working at home" really amount to the inability to HAVE a private home? One great thing about working at an office is that you get to LEAVE the damn thing at the end of the day. Is that what this is all about? Reducing teachers to the status of "help desk operators" and students to the role of "online learning client?" Maybe we'll carry around cells to field questions from hungry students.

I've got a meeting tomorrow with some folks at USF who are trying to introduce "synchronous learning." What it amounts to is headsets for teachers; students will get the chance to hear their distance ed teachers--"How can I help you?" As somone who has done his share of telemarketing, I can assure you that the sight of a headset is less than thrilling. Still, of course I see the potential of such devices to do good, and it is an experiment, and I do so love experiments.

Hmm...Well, I definitely see a pattern emerging here. These students are taking on the role of consumers, and we're gradually taking the role of telemarketers and help desk operators. Help, please?