Say what you want about technology, good or bad, it’s constantly changing our world. One way it’s changing my household is it allows my wife, Jenny, to take online courses in pursuit of her master’s degree through the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
This is good, because as a full-time worker, mother and wife she doesn’t have time to physically go anywhere for a class. She can take the courses she needs during her free time, usually later in the evening and during the weekend, without it interrupting her regular schedule.
Online courses have been around for a while, but until Jenny started taking them I assumed these types of classes were conducted via the professor e-mailing an assignment to his students and the students e-mailing the completed work back to the professor. This sounded about as interesting as watching a taped NASCAR race knowing there won’t be an accident wiping out half the field of cars.
But using Internet technology called “discussion boards,” students participate in insightful and meaningful classroom conversation that betters any dialogue I ever participated in through four years of high school and four years of college. Except for the time a history professor lectured our class for plagiarism, as one of the students in the class not only obviously used someone else’s assignment from the previous year she recognized, but also applied it to the wrong assignment. My friends and I still laugh about the idiot that did that.
The technology works by the professor posting a reading assignment and then some thought-provoking questions about it. Students then post their thoughts, and others, including the professor, can post replies to their thoughts.
Each student is required to post at least three times a week, and they are required to read every post. Of course, most students post well beyond the three times a week requirement, and the time spent reading everyone’s post probably surpasses the time they would have spent in an actual classroom.
The key difference is most of the postings enhance the classroom experience for the student in that students self-edit and put only their best thoughts online, as opposed to a classroom setting where students might have a hard time verbalizing their thoughts.
Also, all the students participate in the discussion online, whereas in a classroom the discussion is often hogged by the brainiacs or the people who think they are brainiacs. I was in a class in college once where a brainiac that looked like Richard Simmons literally took over the course from the professor, who for some reason didn’t take control back. Maybe she thought he was actually the fitness guru and wanted some workout tips. I don’t know, but I can’t stand the real-life Richard Simmons now because of the incident.
Best of all for me, these discussion boards allow me to vicariously participate in the class through my wife, as I can contribute my thoughts and input without the worry of actually doing the work. I enjoy learning new things, but don’t care for the homework that more often than not is associated with a class.
However, listening to Jenny as she reads her posts and posts from others to me, asking for my thoughts sometimes, makes me feel as though I’m in ancient Greece sitting in a group around Socrates, wearing a toga and answering questions with a deeper question. Although I haven’t done so yet, if I actually wanted to wear a toga while listening to my wife, I’m free to do so since I’m at home. I could also do so naked, but that’s an image most people would probably prefer not to imagine.
The biggest advantage to a home classroom is the savings in gas expenses. At $3.79 a gallon, plus or minus 30 cents depending on the day or the international crisis that somehow immediately impacts the price of gas, not having to commute to the classroom is a big plus.
I’m hoping this technology is harnessed in the near future to allow more people to work from home, if they can.
For example, I have a job in which all my work is done on a computer, as is the majority of the work by my colleagues at The Gazette. It is technologically possible for all of us to work from home, especially with today’s cell phone, wireless, fax and Internet technologies. Someday, as gas prices increase along with costs of everything else, The Gazette and other businesses may exist as virtual entities and not as actual physical locations. It sounds ridiculous right now, mainly because people like a physical location they can relate to, but if this market wants to survive its current crisis and future ones, changes like these may need to be made.
This technology does have its setbacks; the main one being the ability to quickly shut things down when they fail to work properly. As I type this, our Internet service at The Gazette is down, as it has been all morning. If this happened at home, my wife might be in trouble because she wouldn’t be able to participate in her class.
Then again, “The Internet isn’t working” could quickly become the new “My alarm clock didn’t go off” for this generation. We’re wearing our togas, but Socrates is dead.
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