Pedagogical Pleasure, Online Learning, and the Empty Comfy Chair
Five years ago, my institution joined the race for online course offerings. Many colleagues reacted strongly, but I felt mostly lazy disinterest. I’m no Luddite, but I’m no techie, either. At any rate, I wanted to believe that my creative writing students and colleagues and I wouldn’t be affected. A small program at a satellite campus, we’re often forgotten. Sometimes this works for us.
But a couple Septembers ago, new administrators making new noise about enrollment offered faculty grants to develop online courses.
My son was about to be born; my daughter needed braces.
Reader, I took the money.
I’ve taught Introduction to Creative Writing online several times now. Student work is about the same quality as in my traditional classes: the same number of surprising gems, the same number of submissions that make my eyes bleed. I teach the same content and spend the same amount of time commenting on drafts. Overall, the course functions reasonably and effectively.
But I don’t enjoy teaching online. Admittedly, my reasons aren’t grounded in ethics, altruism, or practicality. In fact, they’re selfish. At least, they’re personal.
I love writing fiction, but it’s a lonesome vocation. In transitioning from writerly work to teaching, I need to shift gears, rejoin the world, and be around flesh-and-blood people. Traditional teaching allows this opportunity and enables me to join 6 communities a year.
If I’m any good at teaching, it’s because I invest deeply, and I invest deeply because I depend on these communities. When not facing blank pages, I need faces to read, live arguments, laughter, and sometimes even tears. I like live office hours, the student sitting across from me in the comfy chair, scanning my bookshelves, looking for answers. I like the workshop circle’s physical dynamic.
Online, I miss all this, along with small talk, which, most teachers realize, often isn’t small at all. In electronic teaching, small-talk time too often is used up solving technical glitches—figuring out whether Firefox’s new version is compatible with the new E-learning platform or determining why an assignment won’t upload to a drop box. (“My sonnet says it’s already been uploaded!” one frazzled student recently emailed. A spooky notion if you think about it.)
So while work gets done and learning occurs, it’s more difficult for my online students and me to take pleasure in the learning process. It’s harder to enjoy each other. Other connections necessarily take precedence. Our communion isn’t as rich.
Joy is an aspect of my job that I’ve taken for granted during much of my 13 years in the profession, but as online education becomes more prevalent, I find myself worrying that it might be slipping away. Not yet gone, but no longer a given.
Tom Noyes teaches in the BFA program at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, and is consulting editor for the literary magazine Lake Effect. His newest book, Come by Here: A Novella and Stories, won the 2013 Autumn House Prize in Fiction and will be released Spring 2014.
