Distance Learning
pagerunner:
barefootdramaturg:
Like the rest of the internet, one of the problems with distance learning is that it discourages students from seeing their peers as people. There’s no social factor, no sitting in class observing people’s quirks, or discussions in a coffee shop to make one see classmates as more than the sum of their work. It discourages compassion. I don’t know my classmates. I’ve never seen them, I’ve never talked to them, I know nothing about them. All I know is that they can’t follow instructions and they can’t write worth a damn, and there’s no human factor built in to stop me from wanting to say so. There’s nothing to mitigate my frustration and exasperation with them.
And I think that’s crappy.
This is really weird timing, which I’ll get to in a sec, but yeah, this was my exact experience with my library program. It was necessary that I do distance learning (still needed to work), but apart from a 6 day boot camp I never saw my classmates again. I still remember more from that 6 day class than most of the other classes I took, and I had more fun in them too, largely because I was getting to know the other people. And then we all went our separate ways and I never felt that connection with them again.
Now I work at a community college where all instructors (even wonky ones like me) have to take an edu course, and I specifically waited for a hybrid version so that I could have at least some face to face time with my classmates. First class was tonight (see weird timing) and it was GREAT. I didn’t think I’d miss being in school, but apparently what I actually miss is being in CLASS.
I didn’t really realize how different it was going to be in distance learning. They don’t exactly warn you. It’s so… lonely. There’s no conversation. There’s no hanging out in the student union or over coffee/tea and actually discussing the course material. There’s no real way to talk out an idea. I don’t know anyone I can explain my philosophical questions to and figure out the answers, because no one around me has the background to actually understand what nitpicky cataloguing rule I’m talking about. I was at an SLA event last Friday and there were a bunch of students from teh UCLA program, which is not a distance program, and it was kind of amazing to actually be able to talk about library school things with people who understood.
My professors will barely answer questions unless I get loud and demanding about it, and sometimes not even then. I could not have imagined a group of professors less interested in student learning before this. It’s so frustrating because I have been in good programs, I have had good professors and instructors who cared. I know what I need to be successful and I expect to get it because I always have before, and not to even come close is horribly disappointing all the time.
(via pagerunner)
