Teaching College Courses Online vs Face-to-Face, The Journal

Article Title: Teaching College Courses Online vs Face-to-Face

Author: by Glenn Gordon Smith, David Ferguson, Mieke Caris

Department and Issue: T.H.E. Journal Feature, April 2001

Experiencing a huge demand for college courses
taught over the Web and not wanting to be swept aside by competitors
from the commercial sector, universities are often pressuring faculty
to teach courses online. Many faculty members have never taught
online, and therefore wonder what they are getting themselves into.
What are the differences between teaching online and teaching
face-to-face? What can faculty members expect from the experience of
teaching college courses on the Web?

Other faculty members have some experience teaching online,
but haven't shared their experiences, nor have they read the
literature on distance education. Their knowledge remains
fragmentary. Are faculty experiences with teaching online specific to
their content areas, or representative of the larger experience of
teaching over the Web? This study seeks to integrate the experiences
of professors currently teaching online into a qualitative
description.

Literature Search

Before embarking on the research, we were aware of and
influenced by a number of research-based notions of distance
education. The first was that it requires a considerable amount of
time to design and develop an online class. The instructor must shift
from the role of content provider to content facilitator, gain
comfort and proficiency in using the Web as the primary
teacher-student link, and learn to teach effectively without the
visual control provided by direct eye contact (Williams & Peters
1997).

Moore (1993) suggests that there are three types of interaction
necessary for successful distance education: 1) learner-content
interaction, 2) learner-instructor interaction, and 3)
learner-learner interaction. Distance learning instructors need to
ensure that all three forms of interaction are maximized in their
course structure.

Peters (1993) criticizes distance education, saying that it reduces
education to a kind of industrial production process, lacking the
human dimension of group interaction, and even alienating learners
from teachers. He compares distance education to a mass-production
assembly line process where a division of labor (educators and
communications specialists) replaces the more craft-oriented approach
of traditional face-to-face education. However, Peters' article
predates the current Web-based boom in distance education. His
notions, like the computer themes in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A
Space Odyssey, sound slightly like industrial age paranoia toward
computers. The personal computer and the Internet have probably been
a greater force towards individualization than mass production.

Method

We interviewed 21 instructors who had taught both in the
distance and the face-to-face format. The instructors ranged from
assistant professors to adjunct professors. Fifteen of the 21
instructors taught in the context of the SUNY Learning Network, a
non-profit, grant-funded organization that provides the State
Universities of New York (SUNY) with an infrastructure, software, Web
space and templates for instructors to create their online course.
The Learning Network also provides workshops on developing and
teaching online courses, a help desk and other technical support for
Web-based distance education. The remaining six informants taught
Web-based distance education courses in similarly supported
situations at state universities in California and Indiana.

Four of the interviews were conducted over the telephone and 18 were
done via e-mail. The four telephone interviews occurred first and
were used to develop a set of open-ended questions for e-mail
interviews. Since e-mail interviewing did not require the laborious
process of transcription, the e-mail interview process allowed the
gathering of data from a much larger number of participants than was
possible from telephone or face-to-face interviews alone.

By reading over the transcriptions of the telephone interviews, the
investigators found emerging themes that were converted into 27
open-ended essay questions comprising the "e-mail interview." The
e-mail interview, as it is used in this study, is differentiated from
a questionnaire on several counts. It uses open-ended, essay-style
questions as opposed to the Likert style, fill-in-the-blank or
multiple-choice items common to questionnaires. The informants
averaged approximately 45 minutes to complete the e-mail interview.
The initial questions included some "chit-chat" and informal
questions designed to put the interviewee at ease. It also involved
some degree of interaction between the interviewer and the
interviewee. The interviewers sometimes e-mailed participants
follow-up questions to particularly interesting responses.

The investigators read over all the interviews at least two times,
looking for trends and consistencies and generating 39 categories of
responses and mnemonic codes to symbolize these categories. Some
typical coding categories include ">WK," meaning that the online
classes require more work, and "N FUNNY," meaning that humor was
problematic in the online environment.

Three investigators coded the interviews and then counted how many
times each type of response occurred (not the number of informants
who said or wrote a particular response). So if one informant wrote
at three different times in the interview that online classes
required more work, that interview contributed three occurrences of
the ">WK" category, not one occurrence. The coding system was not
done to be objective (this type of ethnographic research is by its
nature non-objective), but rather to uncover trends in the data.

Data Sources

Some of the most important, most emphasized and most frequent responses made points we had not directly asked about. A lot of
issues related to bandwidth limitations and the dominance of text in
Web-based classes. Some instructors feel as if a lifetime of teaching
skills goes by the wayside. They can not use their presence and their
classroom skills to get their point across. Nor can they use their
oral skills to improvise on the spot to deal with behavior problems
or educational opportunities.

Because of the reliance on text-based communication and a lack of
visual cues, every aspect of the course has to be laid out in
meticulous detail to avoid misunderstandings. Every lecture must be
converted to a typed document. Directions for every assignment must
be spelled out in a logical, self-contained way. Therefore, Web-based
distance classes require considerably more work, often including
hundreds of hours of up-front work to set up the course. On the other
hand, the development of an online class, especially one that began
as a face-to-face course, makes the instructor confront and analyze
the material in new and different ways.

Once the course begins, the long hours continue. Online instructors
must log on to the course Web site at least three or four times a
week for a number of hours each session. They respond to threaded
discussion questions, evaluate assignments, and above all answer
questions clearing up ambiguities, often spending an inordinate
amount of time communicating by e-mail. The many instructor hours
spent online create an "online presence," a psychological perception
for students that the instructor is out there and is responding to
them. Without this, students quickly become insecure and tend to drop
the class.

This great amount of work sounds intimidating; however, most online
instructors looked forward to their time spent online as time away
from their hectic face-to-face jobs. One respondent commented: "This
is why I like the online environment. It's kind of a purified
atmosphere. I only know the students to the extent of their work.
Obviously their work is revealing about them."

The Web environment presents a number of educational opportunities
and advantages over traditional classes, such as many informational
resources that can be seamlessly integrated into the class.
Instructors can assign Web pages as required reading, or have
students do research projects using online databases. However, it is
important that the instructor encourage the students to learn the
skills to differentiate valid and useful information from the dregs,
as the Internet is largely unregulated.

Some instructors also had online guests in their classes (authors,
experts in their field, etc.) residing at a distance, yet
participating in online threaded discussions with the students in the
class. All these things could theoretically be accomplished in a
traditional class by adding an online component; however, because
online classes are already on the Web, these opportunities are
integrated far more naturally.

Other advantages of online classes result from psychological aspects
of the medium itself. The emphasis on the written word encourages a
deeper level of thinking in online classes. A common feature in
online classes is the threaded discussion. The fact that students
must write their thoughts down, and the realization that those
thoughts will be exposed semi-permanently to others in the class seem
to result in a deeper level of discourse. Another response stated:

"The learning appears more profound as the discussions seemed both
broader and deeper. The students are more willing to engage both
their peers and the professor more actively. Each student is more
completely exposed and can not simply sit quietly throughout the
semester. Just as the participating students are noticeable by their
presence, the non-participating students are noticeable by their
absence. The quality of students' contributions can be more refined
as they have time to mull concepts over as they write, prior to
posting."

The asynchronous nature of the environment means that the student (or
professor) can read a posting and consider their response for a day
before posting it. Every student can and, for the most part, does
participate in the threaded discussions. In online classes, the
instructor usually makes class participation a higher percentage of
the class grade, since instructor access to the permanent archive of
threaded discussions allows more objective grading (by both quantity
and quality). This differs from face-to-face classes where, because
of time constraints, a relatively small percentage of the students
can participate in the discussions during one class session. Because
of the lack of physical presence and absence of many of the usual
in-person cues to personality, there is an initial feeling of
anonymity, which allows students who are usually shy in the
face-to-face classroom to participate in the online classroom.
Therefore it is possible and quite typical for all the students to
participate in the threaded discussions common to Web-based
classes.

This same feeling of anonymity creates some political differences,
such as more equality between the students and professor in an online
class. The lack of a face-to-face persona seems to divest the
professor of some authority. Students feel free to debate
intellectual ideas and even challenge the instructor. One respondent
stated that "In a face-to-face class the instructor initiates the
action; meeting the class, handing out the syllabus, etc. In online
instruction the student initiates the action by going to the Web
site, posting a message, or doing something. Also, I think that
students and instructors communicate on a more equal footing where
all of the power dynamics of the traditional face-to-face classroom
are absent."

Students are sometimes aggressive and questioning of authority in
ways not seen face-to-face. With the apparent anonymity of the
Internet, students feel much freer to talk. "Students tended to get
strident with me online when they felt frustrated, something that
never happened in face-to-face classes because I could work with
them, empathize and problem solve before they reached that level of
frustration," noted one respondent.

In the opening weeks of distance courses, there is an anonymity and
lack of identity which comes with the loss of various channels of
communication. Ironically, as the class progresses, a different type
of identity emerges. Consistencies in written communication, ideas
and attitudes create a personality that the instructor feels he or
she knows.

"Recently I had printed out a number of student papers to grade on a
plane. Most had forgotten to type their names into their
electronically submitted papers. I went ahead and graded and then
guessed who wrote each one. When I was later able to match the papers
with the names, I was right each time. Why? Because I knew their
writing styles and interests. When all of your communication is
written, you figure out these things quickly."

This emergence of online identity may make the whole worry of online
cheating a moot point. Often stronger one-to-one relationships
(instructor-student and student-student) are formed in online courses
than in face-to-face classes.

Conclusions

Contrary to intuition, current Web-based online college
courses are not an alienating, mass-produced product. They are a
labor-intensive, highly text-based, intellectually challenging forum
which elicits deeper thinking on the part of the students and which
presents, for better or worse, more equality between instructor and
student. Initial feelings of anonymity notwithstanding, over the
course of the semester, one-to-one relationships may be emphasized
more in online classes than in more traditional face-to-face
settings.

With the proliferation of online college classes, it is important for
the professor to understand the flavor of online education and to be
reassured as to the intellectual and academic integrity of this
teaching environment.




Glenn Gordon Smith is a professor in the Department of Technology
& Society within the College of Engineering & Applied
Sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He
teaches courses in educational technology and conducts research on
the effects of computer technology on human spatial visualization,
and on the differences between distance education and face-to-face
education. In August 1998, Glenn received his Ph.D. from Arizona
State University, where his dissertation research examined the
effects of computers and computer games on spatial visualization.
Prior to that, he worked as a computer programmer, specializing in
computer graphics for entertainment and aerospace industries.

E-mail: glsmith@notes.cc.sunysb.edu


David L. Ferguson is a professor of Technology and Society and
Applied Math at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He
has been director and co-director of numerous projects, including NSF
and FIPSE grants, for the improvement of undergraduate education in
science, engineering and mathematics. His publications include
articles on the use of advanced technologies in the learning and
teaching of mathematics and science. He has given numerous conference
presentations on the learning and teaching of problem solving.
Currently, he is director of the Center for Excellence in Learning
and Teaching at Stony Brook.



Aldegonda (Mieke) Caris received her M.A. in Teacher Education
at the Moller Institute in Holland. She founded the Institute of
Electronic Fashion & Design in Almelo, Netherlands. She developed
multimedia products and taught classes in linear and hyper media at
the University of Twente, Enschede in the Netherlands for the
department of Educational Science and Technology. She was directorof
Technology for the College of the Arts in Kompen and has been
involved in distance education since 1997. She is currently an
adjunct faculty member at Stony Brook, NY and a full-ime member of
the Faculty Development Center for Adelphi University in Garden City,
NY.


References

Moore, M. 1993. "Three Types of Interaction." Distance
Education: New Perspectives, eds. K. Harry , M. Hohn and D.
Keegan. London: Routledge.

Peters, O. 1993. "Understanding Distance Education." Distance
Education: New Perspectives, eds. K. Harry , M. Hohn and D.
Keegan. London: Routledge.

Williams, V. & Peters, K. 1997. "Faculty Incentives for the
Preparations of Web-Based Instruction." Web-based Instruction,
ed. B. H. Khan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology
Publications.

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