On the Virtues of Distance
I run a Great Books Program that offers courses online so that students anywhere can earn a certificate. Recently I heard Gareth Williams, Chair of Columbia’s famous Lit-Hum core and emailed him for his thoughts on teaching great books online. He was, not surprisingly, dubious:
As for Core courses online, I myself would be sceptical about the feasibility of such a step, at least from a Columbia perspective: so much here depends on the seminar format of voices heard around the table, and I feel that that format would be very hard indeed to reproduce in anything like its ‘real-life’ vitality if we tried it online.
I confess to similar doubts, admit that synchronous live dialogue is not reproducible, and acknowledge that the online courses are a marketing tool. Still, in 2010, perhaps discussion takes a back seat to getting students exposed to challenging texts at all. I started my program basically to keep frequently-cancelled literature courses alive in my institution (administrative pluses: lower cost and a draw for disenfranchised literature students across the country). Yet Professor Williams’s reply started me thinking about other virtues of online courses (I have taken at least a dozen and taught even more). My defense of the online mode was bolstered by an experience of “voices around the table” while reporting to an informal group of students about the Association for Core Texts and Courses Conference where I heard Dr. Williams. I could hardly get a word in edgewise with all the interruptions and crosstalk. Everyone wanted to speak at once; everyone had an opinion; no one had a question; no one cared to listen. I finally gave up.
Neil Postman preached that
for every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The disadvantage may exceed in importance the advantage, or the advantage may well be worth the cost.
For now, the cost of electronically embracing what Victor Davis Hanson calls the “vanquished civilization of readers” may be the loss of “voices around the table.” The advantage of online discussions, however, is the opportunity to complete one’s thought. Students can also take time to frame their words, reflect rather than react, revise, expand, cross reference, corroborate, and fact-check.
My online classes often turn into one-on-one tutorials, epistolary, more time-consuming than the classroom but with a balance of distance and intimacy. The shy can “speak” as loudly as the bold. Discipline is limited to enforcing the flaming policy. No one is watching the clock or tweeting, and students are no longer packed in a box (by the end of the day, my 1940s era classroom is redolent of a high school locker room). Martin Pawley used to argue that all technology acts as insulation against human contact. Sometimes that’s not a bad thing.
As a member of the group to which Mr. Clemens refers in this post, I would like to respond. The group, The Great Books Club, was founded as part of his Great Books Program, and has become a strong and exciting component of the program itself. The members are highly intelligent students from 19 to 60 years of age, including a professional artist, a practicing lawyer, former military Veterans, and other full-time students who are passionate about learning. Our PhD faculty advisor is an active part of our group, and we are always happy when Mr. Clemens joins our conversation. On this particular Tuesday we were discussing the arrival of Robert Pinsky and his upcoming face-to-face meeting with us the next afternoon, as well as his lecture the next evening, a wonderful opportunity engineered by Mr. Clemens himself as part of a Colloquium on Great Books and Democracy. We were also engaged in a voluble discussion regarding our attendance the previous weekend at a Great Books seminar and our views on those lectures when Mr. Clemens dropped in to tell us about his own weekend at a conference regarding Core curriculum. As he described Lit Hum, Art Hum, Music Hum, through the incorporation of Science and Multiculturalism in Core curriculum, we all became even more voluble and excited and yes, had many comments and indeed several questions about the incorporation of arts and humanities, the loss of music and arts education in secondary education, and how students have to be introduced to these important elements at the college level. There was a spirited exchange of ideas from all of us, including our faculty advisor, and we all talked for about half an hour before Mr. Clemens had to leave for a meeting. After he left, we discussed it further, and since then have brought the subject up in various contexts both in the group and in one-on-one encounters. The following Monday, before Mr. Clemens posted this commentary, I went to his office to ask him to join us the next day to discuss the arrival of Victor Davis Hanson, the next speaker in the Colloquium. He told me that after the previous week’s meeting he doubted he would return, and cited the concerns he had, saying he had thought about writing about them. I was shocked, as our experience had been so different, and I told him that I thought that since we all know him well and have had both face-to-face and online classes with him, and since he had dropped in informally and unexpectedly, that we felt comfortable treating him as part of our group and comfortable including him in our exciting conversations. Each of us in the group has taken at least one online class, including those of Mr. Clemens, and we all agree, without exception, that we prefer the face-to-face classroom experience. We find online classes to be lacking in human contact and interaction, and while one is able to sit alone and express a single, uninterrupted thought, the amount of engagement is exponentially removed, from the posting, to the reading, to the responding. The response is words on a computer screen, devoid of facial expression and nuance, and in spite of flaming restrictions, can contain false bravado due to hiding behind the false face of the computer. On the other hand, I remember the face-to-face encounter with our group and Mr. Clemens vividly. I remember the weather outside the large window of our conference room, what the girl across from me was wearing, what it felt like to sit next to an impassioned fellow student, what another member said about multiculturalism, what I asked about art and whether Mr. Clemens felt that the Art Hum Core curriculum was important. Most importantly, I recall the faces, the laughter, the disagreements, and the arguments for and against an issue. This is true discourse, in both the modern and the archaic sense of the word. Online will never replace this rich experience, and perhaps the fact that Mr. Clemens had a different experience only serves to strengthen the argument for face-to-face interaction: would he have had this intense desire to put forth his opinion if he had merely posted his conference findings on a website, waited hours, days, weeks for a response, read a flat screen without nuance or expression, and was unable to engage his full senses in a roomful of people engaging theirs? And although he may have felt unheard that day, I am sure he remembers the room and the people as vividly as I do. An online class will never replace the rich human experience of the classroom with all of its subtle interaction and direct, immediate, flawed and exciting human contact.