Summer's almost over. That means school's about to start up again. I guess my days of lying around the house in my pajamas and listening to hours upon hours of music are nearly over. It's time to be productive. With this in mind, I decided to get to work yesterday. This semester I'm teaching a Web-based technical writing course. It will be my first Internet class.
As I read through the course manual, I noticed that my teacherly role was defined as "manager." I'm not a teacher, not an instructor, but a manager. For some reason this stuck me as odd and interesting. Despite leaving the corporate world years ago for a career in academia, I now find myself occupying the position that I once held in that previous (and far less fulfilling) life. To be honest though, taking on the role of manager in my virtual classroom doesn't bother me too much, for it seems identical to the "facilitator" role about which compositionists rave. The difference, however, is that "facilitator" is an overly-used term, one that means so many different things to so many different teachers. "Manager," on the other hand, rarely finds its way into writing classes and, subsequently, compels me to really think about my role in the classroom.
In the online environment, my manager role includes answering emails, monitoring student progress, making sure that course Websites are functioning properly, making class announcements, encouraging students to work well independently and in groups, giving advice and guidance to students, and grading assignments. Note that my responsibilities do not include actively teaching students in the traditional sense. That is to say, I don't lecture to them. Rather, it seems that I am supposed to acknowledge my students' creative and intellectual abilities. I do not immediately view them as deficient when it comes to course content, as containers that must be filled will knowledge (an idea that has already received some attention here on The Rhetorical Situation). To be sure, course managers value the voices of their students over their own.
This managerial approach to writing is nothing new. Alas, it is something that many composition teachers try to practice but rarely achieve. For when faced with student resistance to active learning, it is always easiest for the teacher to fall back into lecturing, thus losing the benefits of a student-centered classroom. The Web-based course offers no such recourse to lecturing. Accordingly, my time in the online classroom may help me to develop productive strategies to curb student resistance in the physical classroom. Of course, because the online environment is not immediate, it is not susceptible to awkward silences when students refuse to speak up.
1 comment:
This is a great post--I really like the way you're thinking about your role as a teacher and how the electronic class will contribute to the goals of student-centered teaching. I'm looking forward to discussing this with you as we get further into it. It might make for a fruitful exchange between the blogs.
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