Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Teaching online for 14 semesters, I could defrost David McGrath’s chilling claims about online education’s impersonal and faceless features. Just two points:
– Education, online and offline, has controllable and uncontrollable parts. Students are uncontrollable; courses are controllable. If McGrath is dissatisfied with his online students’ behavior, perhaps he should consider adjusting his course.
– An online student’s evaluation of a discussion question in one of my online courses reflects one of online education’s virtues: “I think online discussions were easier to state my opinions more openly and honestly than I would have in a classroom.”
