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Yet another shitty opinion piece on #HigherEducation from the @nytimes. The dudes writing these stories have no sense of what goes on in small, public colleges where teaching is Job one, and zero sense of what professors at these schools do. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/online-college-coronavirus.html#click=https://t.co/0E1k8dMXRE
History professors at my college, where our very largest classes might have up to 40 students, seldom lecture. We change up our readings often in response to new work in our fields. One semester's version of a class can be very different from an earlier version
This is because readings change, the context in which we offer the course changes, and because the students in the class change.
We don't lecture. We cannot successfully stand behind the plexiglass screens mentioned by that clown president from Purdue. We use the room. We move students into and out of groups. We spend class time talking through and analyzing sources.
And we do a lot of advising, one on one, as we teach. A lot of college teaching takes place outside of the classroom.
To put this much stock in online teaching is wrong-headed to say the least. It relies on models of teaching that nobody responsibly does anymore because it doesn't work all that well with today's students. This is not a lament. It is exciting.
