I know from long personal experience that some forms of online classes are extremely interactive, with many interactions between teacher and student as well as between student and student.

In this type of online learning there is indeed a teacher, a very busy one if he or she is doing it right. Students can asynchronously post questions and comments like we do here on RoaneViews, or email or text or call the teacher, and the teacher answers all, continuing back and forth, or live, discussion as long as needed.

Done right, online learning is not a way to cut back on teacher hours.

In addition, online classes can optionally provide a pure meeting of minds, with other advantages such as a level playing field without gender, race, sexual orientation, appearance, nationality, and religious biases.

-- OneTahiti

Aside Title:
To (Mary) from (OneTahiti), Re: Favoritism is Live and Well
online

Dear Mary,

You wrote,

"Favoritism is not limited to a F2F environment, it has
definitely occurred in this class as well. And just as an instructor can
choose to ignore student B over A, he or she can do the very same thing online.
I was that student "B" in a recent conference in this course--I don't want
to provide details because I know all the instructors have access to our
postings. We all know who the "favorites are in this class. So favoritism
is just as live and well in the online environment as it is in the F2F class."

A careful analysis of Module 1 shows that it contains an entire thread
(#10) for free-form discussion and questions about the topics raised in the
readings; the other threads are either one-way communication from instructor
to the class, or are about mechanics of the class, or are for assigned
tasks, not "natural," student-initiated discussion.

That thread contains posts by 15 students, some substantive, in the
following distribution:
1 post - 10 students

2 posts - 3 students

3 posts - 1 student

5 posts - 1 student.

Only one student received any kind of answer from an instructor at all,
and that 'answer' stated that no answer would be given, and that the student
should ask the question of another one of the instructors later.

There was no other instructor interaction in that thread.

I too was a "student B" in that conference--all 15 of us were--and had
felt alone and ignored, especially since I had spent literally days writing
my posts, researching just the right primary references to use, etc.. I felt as if all my research and work were not even noticed.

Of course, later, I felt much better after I read in (Walti, 2003, p.
230), that this class was literally not designed nor intended to have
instructor interaction with students in the conferences on the substance of
the course topics, but only on matters of form such as "grammar, APA style,
approach, use of literature and depth and broadness of scope and/or use of a criteria scale," and not even on all of those but only on "one or two of the previously mentioned aspects." What this means is that if we get any
interaction at all with the instructors with regard to the course material
we are truly fortunate, and in receipt of instruction above and beyond the
course design, proving the dedication and goodwill of our kind teachers! :)
After reading Prof. Walti's paper I felt no longer so ignored--after all, we were supposed to be ignored on matters of substance, and my posts, and most of the posts of others there, were above all on substance, with matters of form fairly well in hand. :) If only I had read (Walti, 2003) first I would have been spared those unnecessary negative feelings.

That said, I must argue that "online conferences can produce equal or superior outcomes than discussions in traditional (i.e. face to face) seminars." The question to ask in this particular context is: superior outcomes for whom?

While it would be a rare face-to-face seminar in which the teacher could
escape answering questions about the course material--students could always
just press questions on the instructor at the door, or follow the instructor down the hall, until answers were received--in online conferences instructors have far greater freedom in instructional design, and far greater, superior possible outcomes in that whole courses and programs can be designed without any promise of two-way instructor-student interaction on the course topics themselves.

This is a possibility I had never seen nor imagined in the 60 or so
online classes I have been involved with at this university on the instructor side, and the realization that this type of design would be considered acceptable by a curriculum advisory committee and University management is something I learned right here, by observation and through reading

(Walti, 2003). :) :)
:) Hence, instructors can indeed have superior outcomes in the form of
lowered two-way communicative workload and accompanying greater
productivity, while still having attractive automatically generated course
statistics about dialog to aid in generation of further publications
(Hülsmann, 2003), another perk of online instruction not found in
face-to-face classes. :)

For those of you who are not familiar with the faculty-side interface in
our class software, there are extensive conference statistics just a few clicks away.
Here are some gathered from some recent classes here:

--(OneTahiti)

References:

Hülsmann, T. (2003). "Texts that talk back - Asynchronous conferencing: a
possible form of academic discourse?" In U. Bernath, & E. Rubin, (Eds).
Reflections on teaching and learning in an online master program - A case
study, (pp. 227-244). Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg.

Walti, C. (2003). "Experiencing a new paradigm - Elements, aspects and
structure of selected courses in the MDE program." In U. Bernath, & E.
Rubin, (Eds). Reflections on teaching and learning in an online master
program - A case study, (pp. 227-244). Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg.

Copyright © 2004 (OneTahiti).

********
Mary posted back, and I answered her:
Aside
(Mary) wrote, "Are you implying that online courses that limit all interaction to student-student produce superior results? That seems odd to me."

No, I did not mean to imply that, not at all. :) My post addressed only the issue of instructor outcomes from a productivity and publishing perspective, not results from a student perspective, nor anything to do with learning....

Also, my already lengthy post did not attempt to address the topic of whether student-student interaction is superior (or not) over student-faculty interaction. By the way, personally I think both are a great idea, the more the merrier. :) :) :)

-- OneTahiti

There's a lot of good info in that, OneT!