A Thousand Years in Thirty Virtual Days: Summer Online Courses and the Sophomore Survey
Time-Intensive Learning
Though new to the medium of distance education, I have taught dozens of survey classes with hundreds of students both in the traditional classroom and in study abroad semesters. I have perhaps become inured in course evaluations to the complaints of workload for any class that assigns more than 50 pages a term. In spite of such pleas, I have come to see the time students invest struggling with challenging texts as an opportunity to introduce college sophomores to the importance of careful reading, intent focus, and nimble thinking and writing. Several comments from students in both the 5-week and 10-week courses make this case better than I can.
Many of the strengths of online learning coincide with objectives related to many general education courses. For example, the primary objective of our survey is to "develop skills to analyze and interpret texts and authors through strategies of close reading." As Ken White and Bob Weight have noted in a discussion of time management, becoming more effective and efficient readers is essential to student success: "Most online courses—besides being completely textual themselves—are accompanied by a textbook(s) . . . There are skills that one can employ to assist learners to be more proficient readers . . . and active readers" (White & Weight, 1999, pp. 75-6). One of the 10-week students confirms this strength even as he complains of course workload:
I think the amount of work in one day was a challenge. I do not like sitting down for long periods of time and reading or working on a computer. So even though I said the e-journals and discussions were the best ways for me to learn, they were also a challenge. They required me to sit for a long time and really reflect on what I had read.
Another course objective common to many sophomore courses in and out of English departments is to "write effectively as a result of clear thinking, extensive reading, and careful observation." In this textual medium, it is not surprising that students would become more effective communicators; as one noted, the online class "allowed me to find my voice as a writer." In mid-term evaluations our first summer, some students seemed frustrated by the independence and personal responsibility that come with the new medium: one 10-week student complained, "we're not actually taught anything about the pieces of literature. All we do is write our own opinions or how we understood the literature and others comment on our responses. We are never taken through the works with a teacher explaining what everything means like what we get in class"; however, by the end of term, we had many more converts, with over 90% responding that the course "challenged me academically" often or very often and 95% that it "required creative and original thinking." Earlier complaints had largely been replaced by comments like this one from a 10-week student:
I have learned not to confine my responses or opinions of a literary work to what I believe the professor is looking to hear. Rather, I have unboxed my thinking and allowed myself the freedom of expression that I've never really utilized. Because of this, I have found myself exploring and questioning new ideas and ways of thinking, reaching far beyond the text itself.
High expectations combined with a workload roughly comparable to on-campus summer surveys were clearly intimidating for many students, and we saw significant attrition early; however, refusing to design a softer, easier version of a reading and writing-intensive course yielded successes beyond those related to literacy. In their final portfolio reflections, students from both course lengths argued for the extra-curricular benefits of time-intensive summer courses:
I think I am most proud of my time management skills. . . . I was not able to sit back and relax while trying to finish an assignment. An assignment was given and it had to be finished and turned in the next day. This class really didn't give me time to procrastinate and helped me to understand that I cannot sit around and instant message or talk on the phone while I'm doing my homework. I had to learn how to concentrate on one thing instead of multi-tasking like I am used to.
"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence." This quote by first lady Abigail Adams describes my philosophy of learning. Through this course and previous others, I have come to realize that hard work with a fierceness to consume the material pays off. The reward is a grade or just the satisfaction of learning. While on the journey of learning, obstacles need to be overcome in order to discover personal growth.