What comes across is a sentimentalism of a glorious education past that is on the verge of being corrupted. This is not what comes across in the survey findings.
The truth is that there are some profoundly exciting developments in digital learning technologies across higher education that will improve interaction and support better delivery of academic content. And, finally, the plurality of students being taught, the “new majority,” are older, part-time student who have different needs and goals for their educational experience. Fourth, these most important front-line courses, which are taken by the vast majority of our students, overemphasize facts, minimize higher order thinking, and underemphasize exactly the kinds of student engagement necessary for student success. Third, the instructors standing in front of the lecture hall are usually contingent faculty, including adjuncts, graduate students, and non-tenure track faculty who have limited incentives or support in becoming the next Mr.
Second, the vast majority of face-to-face courses are a far cry from that idyllic seminar room, with lecture being the predominant instructional method across most colleges and universities. What wormhole, I want to ask, are these faculty stuck in? First, there are plenty of research studies by now that document the comparability of online to face-to-face courses. Such bravado is all nice and good if these faculty are truly inciting roomfuls of earnest youth on a daily basis. Only four percent of all faculty, for example, thought that online classes were better than face-to-face at fostering quality interaction with students or helping to deliver the necessary academic content. The frustrating aspect of the findings is that they were so predictable: most faculty feel that online classes can’t be as good as face-to-face, whether it’s in helping “at risk” or “exceptional” students, answering student questions, or grading student work.
Moreover, the lack of disaggregation across many of these demographic variables and lack of any statistical analysis makes me wonder if the findings actually hide more than they reveal. There appears to be some major self-selection biases given, for example, the preponderance of faculty who have experience in teaching online courses, who are tenured and tenure-track, and who seemingly teach at a liberal arts institution to take just the latter point, liberal arts institutions make up just three percent of all postsecondary institutions, yet sixty-two percent of respondents stated that they teach at such an institution.
(I want to note that while I am going to take the findings at face value, I have serious reservations about the survey’s methodology and data analysis. But it also makes vivid (and perpetuates) an old and deeply problematic storyline that technology is somehow destroying the future of education. It’s a useful report, with important findings about how instructors across higher education think about online education. It is thus with frustration that I read through the just-released Inside Higher Ed survey of faculty attitudes on technology. That is the transformative power of education, and Keating’s dramatic style of teaching and advice of “seize the day” has resonated with two generations of students and teachers about what it means to be an instructor and push students beyond what they thought they were capable of thinking and being. I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.”
#CARPE DIEM EDUCATION MOVIE#
In one of the most memorable movie scenes ever about teaching, Robin Williams, as the high school English teacher John Keating, stands up on his desk and asks the stunned class “Why do I stand up here?” When a student replies “To feel taller!” Williams responds, “No! Thank you for playing Mr.
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