I rise to defend the classroom: that traditional venue where the students sit, the teacher declaims and the educational technology has hardly advanced in centuries. This old-fashioned arrangement has been abandoned in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, writes Stephen L. Carter.<\/p>\n
Instead, all of us, learners and teachers, have been reduced to tiles on a screen, competing for attention with all the distracting detritus of the digital age.<\/p>\n
Let me be clear: I deny neither the dangers of the pandemic nor the utility of the virtual classroom in this moment. Nevertheless, it\u2019s important to acknowledge what online learning misses.<\/p>\n
Here, then, on the basis of nearly four decades of experience, is what we might call \u201cThe Case for the Classroom\u201d.<\/p>\n
First: Physical presence allows the instructor to read the room. A good teacher does more than stand up and lecture and answer the occasional question.<\/p>\n
The delivery of the material must be tailored, day by day and even minute by minute, to the classroom dynamic. For that, one must can read the cues. Are students confused? Have examples that have worked for years finally fallen flat?<\/p>\n
Only by reading the room can the teacher tell who\u2019s fully engaged and who\u2019s giving up. Students having trouble with a topic often won\u2019t raise their hands, in person or on Zoom.<\/p>\n
In a large class, lots of people might have the same question, but none dares ask because each fears being the only one who\u2019s struggling.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019m able to read this uneasiness in faces and postures, I can bring them directly into the conversation. Or I can go over in a different way what I\u2019ve been saying, until more eyes light up with understanding.<\/p>\n
For me, teaching isn\u2019t just organizing information for delivery. It\u2019s also doing all that I can to make sure that the students learn the skills or facts or theories I\u2019m trying to impart.<\/p>\n
And teaching in a law school, where we don\u2019t assign regular homework or problem sets, there\u2019s no better way to know whether I\u2019m succeeding than seeing those faces day after day.<\/p>\n
Second: In the physical classroom, students are less likely to be distracted and more likely to learn. A 2019 study found that students taking courses online were significantly more likely than students allowed to use laptops in a traditional classroom to spend time texting, emailing, even watching videos.<\/p>\n
Research published in 2017 found that students in hybrid courses (partly online, partly in person) are significantly more likely to multitask during the online portion \u2014 and that the online multitasking reduces their cognitive engagement, which in turn reduces the amount learned.<\/p>\n
That students learn less when they\u2019re able to access the internet during class has been confirmed by study after study.<\/p>\n
Our cognitive processing capacity is limited. If we\u2019re texting while we\u2019re listening, we\u2019ll likely absorb less of what we hear than if we\u2019re listening without texting.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one reason many professors don\u2019t even allow laptops in their classrooms. They\u2019re just too tempting: The research suggests that many students will multitask even when they know the behavior is likely to harm their grades.<\/p>\n
Yet even for frequent multitaskers, actually engaging in the behavior is sensitive to opportunity. In a face-to-face classroom, the opportunity is less, and students with a tendency to go browsing will learn more.<\/p>\n
Yes, this research is preliminary. Much of it fails to distinguish synchronous from asynchronous learning. Besides, if education\u2019s future is online, everyone will eventually get used to it. But my concern is the present.<\/p>\n
Third: Humor. In the classroom, even my bad jokes can be an asset. One doesn\u2019t want to be a standup comic \u2014 most of us couldn\u2019t anyway \u2014 but, when properly deployed, humor can work well, clarifying examples and theories and smoothing the experience for nervous students, for whom laughter can break the tension.<\/p>\n
Research suggests, moreover, that the instructor\u2019s classroom humor, when closely related to the material, improves student performance.<\/p>\n
And the decision on where to insert the humor can be made on the fly by reading such cues as student body language.<\/p>\n
Alas, it\u2019s my experience that humor works poorly online, and I\u2019ve talked to others who to agree. True, some pre-pandemic research suggests that humor in online courses has pedagogical advantages similar to those in the physical classroom.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, long before the current crisis, experienced online instructors pointed out that in the virtual classroom, humor plays differently and requires more effort.<\/p>\n
Fourth and finally: Because the topic is on the nation\u2019s lips, let me say a word about diversity and inclusion.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been my experience that many faculty members who happen to be not white or not male will confess to a felt need to establish instant command in the classroom, to explode in the first few days whatever lingering biases some students might possess that relate competence to gender or skin color.<\/p>\n
That command is more readily established by a dominating professor in front of the room than by a face on a screen. In this case, I\u2019ve no data to support my contention, but I\u2019m confident that it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
Again, none of what I\u2019ve said is meant to deny that the pandemic forces hard choices upon us. Nor am I arguing that the online classroom can\u2019t deliver measurable results similar to those of the physical classroom.<\/p>\n
But there are delicate complexities to teaching and learning that are hard to quantify. Let\u2019s weigh them as we debate how to move forward.<\/p>\n