Benefits and Drawbacks of Online Teaching vs. Teaching in a Traditional Face-To-Face Setting

CyborgED:

Hybrid Pedagogy and Student performance

Harkening to the roots of educational episteme, in What Does it Mean to be educated, John Spayde (2010), addresses the convergence of knowledge formation in late-capitalism from the position of a Socratic muse. In review of contemporary educational praxis, Spayde examines the polemic that has arisen from the knowledge vs. information paradigm prompted by Cartesian comparison of the traditional and online classroom. Seemingly underneath this proposition, is the devolution of centuries of classical thought as global capital flows push the limits on what has become 'priority' knowledge; or conduits where classical and technical skill might be acquired. As Spayde opines, in the United States, the current state of knowledge exchange as a field of practice may only be understood by way of systemic analysis of accumulation. Hence, the reification of testing standards over longitudinal or analytical performance by way of thorough-going expiation and demonstration; where the capacity of students to 'score' on exams overrules all other facets of evidence to knowledge acquisition.

Emergent alternatives to the traditional face-to-face classroom environment both through multi-media-based knowledge facilitation, and especially distance learning options is now promoting an entire scope of new educational research perspectives to look at the persistence of different motivational factors and learning styles present in the traditional classroom. Increased engagement of students in online environments seems to suggest that performance enhancement is more likely in those settings (Daymont and Blau, 2008).

If classical thought on knowledge building looks to 'teaching pedagogies' as the source to all outcomes in later economic, social and political formations, the efficacy of educator facilitated instruction as a technology of power, then, must measure up to the alternatives now laid forth where students are exposed to an array of knowledge acquisition channels previously untenable without professional explanation. In the context of the contemporary hybrid internet-based learning environment, Spayde offers continuity to the idea of the mid-twentieth century concept of Antonio Gramsci's 'organic' intellectual:' equity through exposure to both classical lineage and exercise through technical application. What the online learning space offers students is the comfort of an asynchronous temporality. As augmentation to the traditional classroom, students may also bring the deductive logic honed in the classroom coupled with queries from the origination of their own inductive (i.e. comparative logic) force to the more extensive abductive logic available in the artificial intelligence of instructional learning tools for toward comprehensive outcomes.

Indeed, the online environment does not detract from classical thought, and offers a support to the advancement of subjects that might otherwise be lost in the current of education as process, where new priorities in technical learning meant to enhance career options post matriculation are popularized as vehicles of distributive equity. Where instructional learning tools, and even free research association on the internet is in some cases better suited to training of classical subjects, is the easy access to core subject matter (i.e. Latin), that as a foundation to knowledge still share basis for later professional practice (i.e. law and medicine) akin to those skills related to IT systems training (i.e. lexicons) marketed as priorities within recommended pedagogies. At present, the crucible within pedagogical discussions on classical knowledge often lies in the 'use value' of classical knowledge as a mechanism for capitalization. Critical thinking does not develop in a vacuum say classical proponents, and the limits of 'information' supplanted as 'knowledge' must be distinguished if we are to find our way back to competency as a nation.

With the entrance of the internet as a virtual 'commons' for knowledge sharing, we have the opportunity for dialogue perhaps as never before (Spayde, 2010). It is merely a matter of degree. Knowledge inculcation is 'slow' in development where deep of integration is a factor. Information is on the other hand is 'fast' zipping "through the terminals" -- a testament to the capital 'advancement' of communications in our society (Spayde, 2010). The distinction, however, makes us keenly aware that information is not knowledge per se, yet pedagogical theories are seeking accommodation in the hybrid 'mind' of mediated learning as many students have become so difficult to engender with the expected knowledge where performance is concerned. Assistance by way of instructional learning technologies and internet-based tools is increasingly proven to circumvent continued problems in test scores, for example.

Where is the evidence that hybrid or online learning promotes other best practices core competencies such as 'learner centered' facilitation? In Developing Outcomes Based Assessment: for learner centered education, Driscoll and Wood (2007), OBE decision making has led to the convergence of institutional approaches to standardized curricula, student competency, and continuity in innovation. Education practice setting research shows ample proof that educators stand to benefit from the ready facilitation technological tools in the extended classroom where outcomes-based education (OBE) is monitored. Evidence-based practices derived from findings to the plethora of investigation that has culminated as a viable platform for recommended practice in education, is largely the result of an earlier shift just prior to the hybrid revolution, stemming from impacts to episteme on democratic education, and the elimination of older, authoritarian approaches to proscriptive learning. Where teacher centered has been replaced by learner centered methodologies, renewed emphasis on classical models of Socratic praxis permeate both spheres of dialectic engagement.

Baseline praxis to learner centered formats certainly fosters the iterative structure of new alternatives in instructional learning technologies, as students find positive resource in the evaluative methodologies of proto score mechanisms. Faculty perception of OBE, argue Driscoll and Wood, also supports this idea, where student outcomes proffer investigative findings respective to contemporary educator questions on the utility of those resources. The network aspect of the knowledge sharing phenomenon is also made more complete, where professional dialogue is informed by student participation and grounded research is put at the center of the OBE model. Pedagogical transformations, then, are reliant upon the hybrid rather than comparative approach as provision to the construction of better learner centered applications.