The Trouble With Online Education

[Commentary] The sentiment that our students are our teachers is an important truth. Understanding what it is that students have to teach teachers can help us to deal with one of the most vexing issues now facing colleges and universities: online education. But can online education ever be education of the very best sort? It’s here that the notion of students teaching teachers is illuminating. Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. The Internet teacher, even one who responds to students via e-mail, can never have the immediacy of contact that the teacher on the scene can, with his sensitivity to unspoken moods and enthusiasms. This is particularly true of online courses for which the lectures are already filmed and in the can. It doesn’t matter who is sitting out there on the Internet watching; the course is what it is.

[Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia]