The Times Are A Changing

So recently I've been viewing other people's blogs and noticed this trend of reactions to online articles regarding online education. This phenomenon worried me because I thought that the final project was the end of it all and that this was an interactivity I missed doing. But then, after checking on the blog home page of Prof. Phillips, I realized that no such assignment was given. Just a trend of interested students taking the initiative via active learning. Well, let me join the band wagon. I researched an article regarding the whole 'online classes' movement and let me go on record saying, I'm not sure I feel as strongly about it as my fellow peers. It just doesn't sound appealing to me. I understand what the experts are saying, how online courses are financially friendly to the down and out students and their existence makes higher level learning that much graspable. But based on my experiences in this class (which is my first online course), no offense Prof. Phillips, I feel like I would have had an easier time learning the subject if this class was a hybrid. I just engaged in a lengthy discussion with my roommate about the nature of online courses and his opinion and mine were as different as lard and dirt. He stressed that to think independently and learn on one's own (as well as teaching yourself due to the easy access of online informative resources thanks to the internet), is a necessary skill. It may not be an easy one, and that not everyone is capable of performing efficiently for an online course, but it is one of those rites of passages college students have to go through in order to mature. I told him that I think it might be easier for students if online classes were introduced to students earlier, such as high school, because of the type of generation our future kids are being born into: the tech savvy, prodigal sons and daughters. And if that is able to happen in the future for those same kids, then they will have an easier time transitioning to this sort of teaching learning when they reach college. Because, I'm pretty sure everyone can agree with me, there are many of us who've only just experience online classes this semester. My roommate said: [insert inappropriate joke here] before agreeing with me. That the whole point of secondary education, besides further teaching kids the basics of the world around them and how to act and think within those social and professional boundaries, is to prepare those same kids (at least the majority of them, there many kids out there who are unable to progress further on) for college. So why not prepare them for online classes? Just add it amongst the sea of things we teach them that they'll probably, in the most part, forget in the summer between senior high school year and freshman college year, and learn later on down the road in that same area of learning. My roommate also said that he believed online classes are not meant for the type of subjects requiring complex understanding in regards to principles and laws, such as Mathematics and Science. Those types of subjects need that pupil-instructor relationship we all yearn and dread. We both agreed in that respect and even went further to say online courses benefit the "written/visual/audio/discussion" side of learning, the ones that can be easily imbued in the form of text. These classes are English and History and even Art. The two of reached that consensus, while taking on hordes of zombies in a mid-final study break, and discussed the different ways online courses can approach those types of subjects. The article I read advocated that online courses are "undeniably chipping at the traditional boundaries of higher education." And I can agree with that in the sense that this sort of teaching is unorthodox. Students are expected to have information spoon-fed to them in the forms of lectures and summative and formative assessments based within the confines of the classroom. Online courses pick up those same students, stick them in the wilderness, and force them to survive on their own. The article also went into a tangent of [insert run on sentences with *yawn* statistics regarding students and colleges and the success rates of online course] and I'll just go on record saying: students are never the same. They're as unique and diverse and wild as those bubble gum ball machines you find in the malls around you. You'll never get the old school, traditional pen and paper and iron-willed attention span that can handle the lectures of a college level classroom in order to learn. You'll never get the rising dawn of technological experts who want nothing more than to complete online courses for the sake of independent and active learning as well as the convenience of it all. So why stick to either side of the spectrum? Before you go all in for the "online class" phenomenon, why not lead up to that or cut it into half. Indulge the students with hybrid classes, have that equal balance of traditional and new age learning. I know that I, as one of many students going through the same thing, benefit from learning on my own, but I also appreciate other parties talking in the background. Offering up their own opinions. And before you go into that whole "Oh, but online discussions happen all the time. Look at the comment sections!" cop out, hear me out. You can't savor all the doubts and the back-pedaling talking that happens in face to face conversations within the classroom. You can't properly connect with them and challenge them face to face with an opinion of your own. Real life learning is different from learning from the other side of a computer screen. Hybrid it up in the college classes department, give us the sweet and sour of both entrees. That's just my opinion. Because before you know it, we'll be as wrinkly as prunes one day. And despite all the holographic technologies and robots and space cars, I'm pretty sure we'll take that deep sigh and say "Where the hell did the time go? I wish I could go back to the good 'ol days, when things were SIMPLER." That will be the moment when we', or at least I for the most part, will truly know the times have changed.