April 2001 — Features

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Teaching College Courses Online vs Face-to-Face

by Glenn Gordon Smith, David Ferguson, Mieke Caris

In online classes, the instructor usually makes class participation a higher percentage of the class grade, since instructor access to the permanent archive of threaded discussions allows more objective grading (by both quantity and quality). This differs from face-to-face classes where, because of time constraints, a relatively small percentage of the students can participate in the discussions during one class session. Because of the lack of physical presence and absence of many of the usual in-person cues to personality, there is an initial feeling of anonymity, which allows students who are usually shy in the face-to-face classroom to participate in the online classroom. Therefore it is possible and quite typical for all the students to participate in the threaded discussions common to Web-based classes.

This same feeling of anonymity creates some political differences, such as more equality between the students and professor in an online class. The lack of a face-to-face persona seems to divest the professor of some authority. Students feel free to debate intellectual ideas and even challenge the instructor. One respondent stated that "In a face-to-face class the instructor initiates the action; meeting the class, handing out the syllabus, etc. In online instruction the student initiates the action by going to the Web site, posting a message, or doing something. Also, I think that students and instructors communicate on a more equal footing where all of the power dynamics of the traditional face-to-face classroom are absent."

Students are sometimes aggressive and questioning of authority in ways not seen face-to-face. With the apparent anonymity of the Internet, students feel much freer to talk. "Students tended to get strident with me online when they felt frustrated, something that never happened in face-to-face classes because I could work with them, empathize and problem solve before they reached that level of frustration," noted one respondent.

In the opening weeks of distance courses, there is an anonymity and lack of identity which comes with the loss of various channels of communication. Ironically, as the class progresses, a different type of identity emerges. Consistencies in written communication, ideas and attitudes create a personality that the instructor feels he or she knows.

"Recently I had printed out a number of student papers to grade on a plane. Most had forgotten to type their names into their electronically submitted papers. I went ahead and graded and then guessed who wrote each one. When I was later able to match the papers with the names, I was right each time. Why? Because I knew their writing styles and interests. When all of your communication is written, you figure out these things quickly."

This emergence of online identity may make the whole worry of online cheating a moot point. Often stronger one-to-one relationships (instructor-student and student-student) are formed in online courses than in face-to-face classes.

Conclusions

Contrary to intuition, current Web-based online college courses are not an alienating, mass-produced product. They are a labor-intensive, highly text-based, intellectually challenging forum which elicits deeper thinking on the part of the students and which presents, for better or worse, more equality between instructor and student. Initial feelings of anonymity notwithstanding, over the course of the semester, one-to-one relationships may be emphasized more in online classes than in more traditional face-to-face settings.