opinion A deconstruction of online learning
WRITTEN BY
BRITTANY BELLAMY GETTY IMAGES
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A student sits at a desk typing away diligently on her computer, surrounded by other students while a teacher drones on in the background. Take away the students, desks and teacher and put that student in her room, lounging on her couch. Sounds like an enjoyable time, right? The learning of a classroom accessible from the comfort of a dorm room. However, in my experience, online classes aren’t quite the fun and games they appear to be. Most students and professors sing the praises of online classes, citing examples of greater student participation and involvement, personalized instruction and greater convenience. However, the subtle effects of technology on our thought processes can be a far greater cost than these petty bonuses can provide. Marshall McLuhan’s communication theory of technological determinism states that each advent of a new technology forever alters the way human beings think and interact. The invention of the alphabet and the written word, for example, limited our capacity for extended memory and made our thinking more linear. The invention of a clock gave us a greater concept of the moment, but it took away part of our understanding of the eternal. The invention of the Internet is taking away our ability to process large chunks of information. In his book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” Nicholas Carr discusses several studies revealing that the short, rapidburst information presentation of the Internet has slowly taken away our ability to sit, read and comprehend longer chunks of text. Our brains have been trained to process the newest and brightest things. Facebook gives short status updates. Twitter offers a maximum of 140 characters per tweet. We expect our information to be given to us in as short and concise a manner
as possible. News story lengths have shortened considerably. In fact, many of you were probably tempted to simply flip past this article due to its length. Bravo to you for reading this far.
of information is slowly being reduced. We sacrifice our ability to think long and critically on the altar of being technologically hip and having convenience at our fingertips.
When presented with a several page article during an online class, how many of us simply scroll through to find pertinent information, answer the question and move on? This “search and find” method of learning is merely turning us into automated robots who process as little as possible without longer consideration of length and content. This means that while we are adept at finding vast amounts of information, we have trouble retaining it. Can you provide a summary of the last thing you searched on Google? Online learning enforces looking at short bursts of information simply to answer questions. While students may appear to have better initial understanding, their long term capacity to understand, process and retain larger amounts
What then is the solution? I am not decrying the use of online learning as a whole, as I believe that being able to adapt and navigate through the online world is a crucial skill to success. And I know that some students need to take programs that are completely online because of different circumstances. But for classes that matter, I think we should take them face-to-face. Sit down and read a textbook. Write that hard paper. Although it may not seem enjoyable now, cultivate and practice your ability to think critically over long pieces of text. Be aware of how new technologies affect you. We consume the media; the media should not not consume us.
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