The Asynchronous Classroom and Professional Identity: Am I Teaching Yet?

Emory & Henry College, Emory, USA

Keyword: Asynchronous education, distance education, distance learning, on-line learning, electronic learning, web-based teaching,

Article style and source: Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication Atlanta, Georgia, 27 March 1999. CCCC is a refereed professional conference affiliated with the National Council of Teachers of English in the United States.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Asynchronous Teaching: Need I Be as Scattered as My Students?
• Attendance: If They Don’t Turn On and Tune In, Are My Students Really There?
• Accountability: When, If Ever, Can I Stop Documenting Virtually Every Breath I Take?
• Conclusion
• Works Cited

Abstract

Introduction

"Developments in long-distance education and asynchronous learning promise a shift in the pedagogical paradigm as we move into the next century," announced Illinois Institute of Technology President Lewis Collens in a recent speech. Just as I worked through the shift from emphasis on product to process in the teaching of writing, I find myself now right in the midst of a natural yet more dramatic shift to an emphasis on not only writing but also pedagogy as process. It is both thrilling and daunting to be virtually on the edge of yet another paradigm shift that embraces the computer as writing and classroom environment.

Gail E. Hawisher and Michael A. Pemberton, in "Writing Across the Curriculum Encounters Asynchronous Learning Networks," remind us of a common caution about computer-based instruction: "Those of us who have worked with computer networks recognize their promise, but we also realize that computer networks can be used to support teaching approaches every bit as ill-considered as those found in old correspondence courses where instructors send out materials to students who are then expected to absorb the material and send back answers to prescribed questions . . . (17-18). In our efforts to avoid applying old techniques to new media, many of us are experimenting with new ways to challenge both students and ourselves. Such challenges are exhilarating and often positive. Teachers such as Sheila Ruzycki O’Brien of the University of Idaho have written about the positive effects of electronic conferencing, e-mail, and so on to suggest that "The Medium Facilitates the Messages" (79).

I agree. I am very fond of my asynchronous class. The responsibility we have to the asynchronous writing classroom, I think I have learned, is to let pedagogy evolve to accommodate what is unique about asynchronous experiences. One way pedagogy is evolving is through the interrelation of computer assistance and the Internet. Hilary McLellan reminds us of the Internet’s inevitable impact on asynchronous learning in "The Internet as a Virtual Learning Community." From the wide array of materials to the magic of hypersyllabi to E-mail and boards, and so on, we can weave a wonderful web of learning. My own course integrates web resources on art and on writing, an electronic bulletin board, e-mail communication, and electronically submitted papers. It is an exciting and successful course.

However, as I have let it evolve I have been forced to think as much about my changing role as a teacher as I have about the changing role of students. That is what I talk about today, briefly, in an attempt to be frank about some challenges to my persona. To focus, I have selected three conceptual areas that have taken much of my energies during the transition in one composition course from a traditional classroom to an electronic one: asynchronisity, attendance, and accountability. I have previously written about what I love about my course, so today I feel I can be honest about what has bugged me. And I am not alone. Mary Lou Crouch and Virginia Montecino wrote about my experience, though they never met me, in "Cyberstress: Asynchronous Anxiety or Worried in Cyberspace." To illustrate my biggest lessons from stress, I answer the following questions:

• Need I be as scattered as my students?
• If they don’t turn on and tune in, are my students really there?
• When, if ever, can I stop documenting virtually every breath I take?

Asynchronous Teaching: Need I Be as Scattered as My Students?

Asynchronous itself is a new word, not even yet in the Oxford English Dictionary though it is in the WordPerfect dictionary: not synchronous. Traditional instruction is known as synchronous because the students tend to be in the same place at the same time, listening to the same words of wisdom, taking the same test in a controlled environment. Distance learning, by contrast, is often paired with the term asynchronous because students can adapt their different schedules to meet the objectives of a course. "Asynchronous learning is the traditional distance-education model," reports Vicki Phillips a consultant on online education (Lehrer par. 10). Distance-education models vary, from teleconference courses to Internet-based instruction. My experience is with Internet-based instruction, for which the teaching of writing seems suited. Such a model has, according to Donald J. Winiecki of Boise State University, "the advantage of permitting students to participate in educational experiences in a ‘time shifted’ environment" (par. 3). Students read and write, I read and write, and everyone--including myself--learns.

The asynchronous educational experience has grown to fit the schedules of busy and non-traditional students. In fact, many programs exist to meet the growing demands of a new academic community in a faster-paced world. My distance course, a remedial course for students across the curriculum who have problems that continue past the required English courses, evolved into an asynchronous one, in fact, because students--many of them teacher education students with responsibilities in the schools--had trouble fitting the course into their schedules. If students are working at different paces, however, how are their professors to keep apace? There is something magical about a computer, I think, that leads a student to expect that if he or she is online, no matter the time, the instructor is there waiting with bated breath at the other end of the line. The magic also makes students nervous. If they send an e-mail into virtual space, does it dematerialize?

This semester I have two students who about two seconds after submitting a writing assignment write me to see if I have received it yet. "I forwarded my revised paragraph to you. Did you receive it?" Renee asked on February 1. An earlier communication, January 29, stated, "Was concerned that I had not received a reply to my draft on African Art. Are you still in the grading stage or have I lost your reply?" Renee, despite weekly assurances that I read her mail, continues to send these follow-up messages. March 20, a minute after she submitted a revision, she wrote, "Did you receive the correction you requested I make? I corrected it and returned it on Saturday, March 20, 1999 at 12:15 ." Such diligence is an admirable trait in contrast with the students who think distance means far away and out of touch, students I will discuss in my section on attendance. But it also means that I must decide between writing back immediately or to wait until the time I have learned to set aside for reading.

There seems to be the sense that the distance instructor lives at a computer terminal, ready to respond at any given cue. It is possible to live at the computer too. When I first began teaching this particular course, what was a one-hour course ended up taking more time than a three-hour course. Lacking the parameters of the traditional 3:30-4:30 time slot for teaching, with grading time slipped in here and there, the course expanded its parameters to ooze into all hours and days of the week. Every time I opened my e-mail, I found a message with English 199 in the subject slot, and I felt compelled to follow e-mail etiquette and respond right away. That meant that I was never far from the course, not mentally and not physically. Fortunately, Charlene Kiser of Milligan College, who has developed and worked with an OWL, introduced me to filters and folders, which led me to shift from a simple Eudora program to Netscape Messenger. Advice from colleagues on the Appalachian College Association ITEACH listserv led me to feel more secure about closing my door and working without interruption on commenting and interacting with my students within a reasonable time frame, rather than spreading my energies through the day and many interruptions.

My best advice to others who are beginning asynchronous experiences is, obversely, to establish parameters. Structure is the best way to balance lack of structure. I had to learn better time management skills, just as my early students taught me that distance education works best for students who have good time management skills and select regular times to visit the Writing Center each week to accomplish their tasks (Mitchell 28). One way I learned to manage my time was also to abdicate a certain teacher-centeredness as I began to require students to write to each other and not just to me. I evolved from a one-person OWL, I think, to a someone who--like Sheila Ruzycki O’Brien--"values the importance of students learning from one another" (79). top

Attendance: If They Don’t Turn On and Tune In, Are My Students Really There?

Whereas many people such as Donald J. Winiecki wonder if technical facility will be the major initial drawback for students entering into asynchronous learning experiences, my experiences suggest that the major obstacles students need to overcome is what appears to be absolute freedom. After my first experience with English 199, I realized that "I had to stress to the stragglers that the course was developmental and sequential, that it was not a matter of cramming in all the hours in a two week period. I had to assign failure" (Mitchell 28).

The most flamboyant result of my need to begin teaching time management alongside English composition was the implementation of an interactive web syllabi of hypersyllabi that evolved even more into a checklist for students to keep track of whether or not they were doing their work during the weekly intervals set aside for certain tasks. I also refined the attendance policy, with blinking text, for a course in which attendance is something other than sitting in a room at the same time because I quickly learned that it was not enough to ask students to complete the work. I had to build in penalties for late work to keep students on task and to keep me from working with different assignments at too many intervals throughout the semester (which could lead to the aforementioned problems with asynchronous parameters).

The jazzed-up attendance policy was the result of what I saw as an assault on my belief that not turning in work constituted not attending. That seemingly reasonable assumption was questioned during the second semester I taught the course. In July of 1998, my Dean of Students requested and received from Computer Services copies of all of my correspondence to a student in my online course and also records of when the student last checked his mail in order to make a case that the student should not be held accountable for the grade I assigned because he had not been using his Internet account. Computer Services could show that the student had not read any mail from me or sent any work to me after March 20, around the middle of the semester. Instead of allowing this to support lack of attendance or participation, the Dean of Students wanted to help the student to use it to appeal his grade. Indeed, I was encouraged to change the grade from a WF ("withdrew failing," to indicate a drop while failing) to a W ("withdrew") to help the student's GPA (grade point average).

Around the time of this incident, I wrote the ECAC--electronic communication across the curriculum--Listserv for advice and support. "Forget the fact that the student never turned in work or did the grammar review with the software package," I observed. In the case I made to our Dean of Students, I stressed that if students do not read their mail and participate, that is the same as not attending class. If they do not turn work in electronically, it is the same as not turning it in in person. It is inappropriate to suggest otherwise to students. Trying to prove someone did not participate in an electronic forum in order to defend his or her behaviour seems odd in that we would never say "John Doe cut 28 classes and should not be held responsible for not learning and should definitely not receive a low grade because he couldn't remember which building to go to and didn’t realize he should call his instructor for help." The ECAC Listserv offers the moral support people new to electronic teaching need.

My advice for people who are wondering how to keep students involved at regular intervals is to establish, again, parameters, in this case parameters for attending to the responsibilities of the course. Cosby Steele Rogers and Peter Laws stressed the same idea in a report on their experiences, "Successes and Lessons Learned in an On-Line Course on Socioemotional Development." They suggested that strict deadlines were essential to help counter lack of self-direction. On the bright side, asynchronous learning can help students to become more self-directed. In the meantime, spell everything out; print syllabi, and post web syllabi. And keep good records of attendance. top

Accountability: When, If Ever, Can I Stop Documenting Virtually Every Breath I Take?

Imagine a classroom with a state-of-the-art video camera mounted to follow every move you make while you stand in front of your students. It records each cough, each profound statement, each extemporaneous and sometimes pithy response to questions raised by students, whose every movement and word--from the sacred to the profane--are also recorded. Each class period is logged this way and kept on file, neatly labelled with date and time and second, in an office that promises to crowd you out before too long if you do not get rid of some of your books. Alongside the neatly arranged videos, or laser discs if your school is really upscale, are files and files that contain photocopies of each assignment submitted by the students, from freewriting and class logs to formal papers (drafts to final copies), even photographs of notes left in green on the whiteboard on your office door. Affixed to some of the papers from students are comments you have made in writing, for every comment you write, every verb error you signal, every faulty piece of logic you cite, must be documented. But that is not all. There are the taped conversations between you and selected students, phone conversations dealing with confusion about assignments, excuses for absences, excitement about learning.

Sounds a little extreme, right? A little like 1984 meets 1999. Well, listen. At the beginning of this semester, a student appealed his F in English 199 to our Committee on Academic Standards. His defence was not that he did not deserve the F; it was instead that I had not given him enough adequate feedback about his work with Perfect Copy, our grammar review program. (Let’s forget for a moment that he wrote a failing final with significant errors in grammar and paragraph construction or that he had not done all the work required in the course and thus had made an F via the flashy attendance policy.) The catch was that the work I had not supplied feedback on was work the student had failed to submit. After dealing with the Standards Committee, I came--perhaps erroneously, but I’m sensitive--to the conclusion that I was in the midst of modern-day witch hunt, that my electronic methods for teaching were more on trial than my assessment that the student continued to have severe writing problems. I had an unpleasant exchange, but I did not change the grade.

Because I have colleagues who think that electronic learning is suspect, who wonder how I can be teaching if I am not standing in front of a class lecturing on how to use a comma, I will continue to have to document every move I make in English 199. However, this need not be a negative. Documenting may be tedious and time consuming, but it can in the end be a positive and useful way to build electronic portfolios for students whose progress (or lack thereof) you can document and gauge. Scott A. Chadwick and Jon Dorbolo, in "InterQuest: Designing a Communication-Intensive Web-Based Course," in fact spoke of how their early web-based instruction led them to "implement a portfolio system in which students will save to disk their work, their conversations, their teacher comments, and texts significant to them" in order to have "products they take from the course" (126). While my students’ portfolios comprise their products, mine constitute a little more--but that’s okay.

My advice for people who are called on the carpet for teaching in new and innovative ways is to stand their ground. Confront the dubious with your expertise and autonomy. Do not be defensive about doing something new. And document anyway. Whereas in the olden days, a grade would suffice, and it may again in the future, right now we need to be able to assure the nervous that we have not abdicated our professional duties. top

Conclusions

A few words to conclude:

Conspicuously missing from the list I just went through is what Wienicki would expect: "Am I teaching computer science or writing?" Although some think that computer skills may be the most problematic for students entering into asynchronous experiences, my psychic energies have not had to dwell as long and hard on them. Adequate orientation can help students move immediately--or almost immediately--into a computer-assisted environment. My students range from those who are quite savvy to those who need to learn what a cursor is. In the end, their writing improvement is based not on their ease with computers but with their willingness to write and to revise.

Also conspicuously missing in the midst of my selection of woes is the fact that I very much love the way the course works. And it does work. The interaction is intense, but there is something about the element of autonomy that helps students to exceed past writing expectations. I love watching students who have never found their voices find their voices in the liberating medium of a computer-assisted writing environment. And that happens more often than not, enough to make me realize that the stress involved in adjusting my own person to help them realize the true depth of theirs is worth it. top

Works Cited

Chadwick, Scott A., and Jon Dorbolo. "InterQuest: Designing a Communication-Intensive Web-Based Course." Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum. Ed. Donna Reiss, Dickie Selfe, and Art Young. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1998. 117-128.

Clifton, Renee. E-mail to the author. 1 February 1999.

Clifton, Renee. E-mail to the author. 20 March 1999.

Collens, Lewis. "Innovation and Leadership: The Search for the Renaissance Professionals." Vital Speeches 62.1 (15 Oct. 1998): 20(4). Online. Infotrac. Article A21262759. First presented at Symposium, New Paradigms for Higher Education in the 21^st Century, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana, August 27-28, 1998.

Crouch, Mary Lou, and Virginia Montecino. "Cyberstress: Asynchronous Anxiety or Worried in Cyberspace." 1997. ERIC ED 412938.

Hawisher, Gail, and Michael A. Pemberton. "Writing Across the Curriculum Encounters Asynchronous Learning Networks." Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum. Ed. Donna Reiss, Dickie Selfe, and Art Young. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1998. 17-39.

Lehrer, Ehle. "Big Mouse on Campus." Insight on the News 14.30 (26 Oct. 1998): 38(2) . Online. Infotrac. Article A21250165.

McLellan, Hilary. "The Internet as A Virtual Learning Community." Journal of Computing in Higher Education 9.2 (1998): 92-112.

Mitchell, Felicia. Listserv Communication. ECAC Listserv. Summer 1998.

Mitchell, Felicia. "Remedial English at Emory & Henry College: Experiences in ‘Distance Learning.’" The Virginia English Bulletin 48.1 (Winter 1998): 25-30.

O’Brien, Sheila Ruzycki. "The Medium Facilitates the Messages: Electronic Discourse and Literature Class Dynamics."Computers and Composition 11.1 (1994): 79-86.

Rogers, Cosby Steele, and Peter Laws. "Successes and Lessons Learned in an On-Line Course on Socioemotional Development." Paper Presented at the 2^nd Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference, Kapiolani Community College, April 1-3, 1997. top

About the author

E-mail: fmitchel@ehc.edu

Copyright © Felicia Mitchell, 1999. For uses other than personal research or study, as permitted under the Copyright Laws of your country, permission must be negotiated with the author. Any further publication permitted by the author must include full acknowledgement of first publication in ultiBASE (http://ultibase.rmit.edu.au). Please contact the Editor of ultiBASE for assistance with acknowledgement of subsequent publication.