Technology, the Classroom, and the Future of Chalkboard Champions

Many years ago in a language arts anthology assigned as a textbook for a class I was teaching, I came across a short story by Isaac Asimov  entitled "The Fun They Had." This futuristic story described two children who had an afternoon free because their "teacher," a computer, had crashed, temporarily rendering it impossible for them to complete their school assignments. To occupy their time, the children went up to the attic to explore, where they came across a dusty trunk of ancient printed books. As residents of a highly technological society where every function was completed by computer, they had never seen books before. The find generated a conversation between the children about how students in the past attended schools with other children, interacted on a daily basis with a human teacher, and conducted their studies with print materials. At the end of their discussion, the children concluded that children of the past must have had much more fun in school than they.

The grass is always greener, isn't it?

I have been thinking about this somewhat prophetic story a great deal lately, and especially since I have recently enrolled in an online course through the local university. The course is run much the same way as the lessons completed by the students in the Asimov story. The professor posts the readings and the assignments. The assignment usually entails downloading a program from the internet and using the program to create a product that demonstrates both knowledge of the content contained in the readings and a mastery of the technology skills. The student posts the completed assignment on a class discussion board, where classmates view it and offer peer critiques. There is no direct instruction, no guided practice. The professor's role appears to be to make the assignments, grade the finished products, and be available in case the student has questions.

I know I'm not a child, but I find myself craving more. More direct instruction. More guided practice. More face-to-face time with the teacher; more human interaction with my classmates.

The other day, I became engaged in conversation with a student at a different university. We talked about the use of technology in our respective university courses. I related that on the first day of another course I had enrolled in, a course that meets for four hours every other week (attendance is optional), I was surprised when the instructor commented that she had expected everyone to show up with their laptops. I had dutifully shown up with my notebook, paper, pen, and textbook, and considered myself prepared. Not having taken a university course in about five years, it had never occurred to me that bringing a laptop was now an instructional expectation. That was a wake-up call for me.

The other student told me that she recently took a course in chemistry at a prestigious local university, and on the first day of class, 24 students showed up. Twelve did not have laptops. The instructor excused those twelve, because, he said, there was no way they could complete that day's assignments without the necessary technology. She said two people dropped the class that day, and four more dropped it by the next week, because they had no way of acquiring the technology. The young lady then told me that the entire course was taught by computer. How is it that a chemistry class does not involve a lab, or experiments, or any other kind of experiential learning?

In a highly technological society where more and more courses are being taught online, will there be a place for chalkboard champions?