As someone who stopped teaching on-line courses several years ago, I could be viewed as an individual who would be sympathetic with Jakub Grygiel arguments in “The MOOC Fraud:  You Can’t Consume an Education; You Can Only Earn It.”  I do agree with Grygiel’s conclusion that an education can’t be consumed; that it must be earned.  However, I disagree with most of the premises on which he bases his arguments against MOOCs and other forms of on-line education.

The main problem I have with Grygiel is that he makes extreme statements and then argues against those extremes.  For example, he claims, “’Online education’ is to education what pornography is to marriage.” Does this mean that our director of distance learning and her staff are our campus pornographers?  Should we really view them as being in the same league as the publishers of Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler?  Once on-line education is defined as pornography, little dialogue is possible.  Yet is it still worth considering some of Grygiel’s less dramatic premises because his errors are sometimes shared by others who write against on-line education.

Unfortunately, Grygiel sets up a false dichotomy between print and on-line sources.  He also mistakenly assumes that one cannot be challenged by a text unless there is face-to-face interaction.  Finally, he confuses the technology itself with how the technology is used.

Whether or not it is true that digital texts “encourage skimming,” I know that I often skim print texts when skimming is all that is necessary for my needs.  I also know that I carefully read and interact with on-line texts with much care and deliberation.  It is not the medium but the intent of the reader that determines the intensity of the interaction between reader and text.

Although I do not particularly care for the sparring analogy employed by Grygiel to illustrate the benefits of classroom discussions, such sparring can take place in the on-line environment or classroom.  In fact, because individuals have more time to reflect before responding, on-line discussions have the potential to be more thoughtfully stimulating than a classroom discussion.

Face-to-face interaction is not necessary for one to be challenged by a text.  Reading and reviewing Sugar in the Blood challenged my thinking.  Many times, while reading alone, I have experienced “sudden illumination” and “the dark clouds of frustration.” Furthermore, the fact that Stuart used “that old format that you can hold, touch and smell” is not what spurred my thought.  Had I read the book in a digital format, I would have been spurred in a similar fashion.  In fact, it was only the availability of digital sources that allowed me to fully grapple with and respond thoughtfully to Sugar in the Blood.¹

Grygiel rightly argues that “There are certainly risks in real, face-to-face education. Classes can be unruly, the professor a lunatic or a crank, the subject esoteric or irrelevant.”  Yet he is wrong when he asserts in his next sentence that “Online programs promise to eradicate these dangers.”    I would be as skeptical of an on-line program making such a promise as I would be of a face-to-face program that guaranteed to nourish “intersubjectivity, building a communio personarum rather than a purely transactional meeting of individuals.”  We cannot guarantee either based simply on the modality of delivery.

Unfortunately, Grygiel is too concerned with modality of delivery to consider how each modality can be appropriately incorporated into pedagogical aims.  He is right when he argues that Coursera, edX and Udacity “cannot teach a person how to think or argue or appreciate.”  But it is a shallow argument because instructional platforms and methods of delivery in and of themselves are not designed to teach thinking.  They are simply platforms on which to build modules which, if built well, have the potential to teach people to think or argue or appreciate.

The issue is not technology vs. the traditional classroom or print vs. digital sources.  Although I am sympathetic to the argument that “Lectures Didn’t Work in 1350—and They Still Don’t Work Today,” I still lecture when it is the best way to deliver information.  In fact, during the past few days, I have been revising the lectures I will give on the first two days of my very student centered film class that begins next week.  My lectures, which I believe will engage and challenge students, are the best way I can think of to convey the material that needs to be covered on those two days.  However, the lesson on day three cannot be well taught via lecture and so a different methodology will be utilized.

I do incorporate a considerable amount of technology in my classes.  This semester, I am also organizing required on-line discussions on Ocelot Scholars.  However, the chalk board is the only technology I will incorporate into some lessons.  For others, I will take a bag of crayons to class.  I will assign books and articles in both print and digital format.  My focus will not be on the technologies but on effective pedagogy.

I do have concerns about MOOCs and other forms of on-line education.  But in order to promote dialogue, I will refrain from accusing my colleagues who teach on-line classes or incorporate on-line components into their traditional classes of being pornographers.  I wish Grygiel could have shown the same restraint.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD

¹My review of Sugar in the Blood is scheduled for publication later this month.

Photo Caption:  Henry of Germany delivers a lecture to university students in 14th-century Bologna.

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