Socrates Bound: The Irreplaceable Centrality of Dialogue in Education (Or: the Lamentations of a Professor of Online Classes)
Location
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
23-9-2016 2:00 PM
Description
Having taught innumerable online classes at a half dozen universities, Dr. Smith knows just about as much as anyone what the extraordinary pedagogical tools of programs like Blackboard and D2L can accomplish and, more importantly, he has seen precisely where those programs fail, due not to any technological shortcoming inherent in the systems themselves, but due to the shortcoming of technology in trying to to replicate the traditional classroom environment. Although online classes, especially in Humanities courses, offer invaluable resources for those who are unable to attend traditional classes, they nevertheless fall short of closely approximating that traditional classroom experience. Following the Socratic-inspired insights of John Dewey, Dr. Smith’s presentation will analyze the “experience” of online education in the Humanities, explore its shortcomings and conclude with a binary proposition: either we accept that online education will continue to strive to emulate the classroom experience (and fail, for reasons he explores in this presentation) or else we need to rethink what we mean by “learning” in general as we move further into the 21st century.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Clancy, "Socrates Bound: The Irreplaceable Centrality of Dialogue in Education (Or: the Lamentations of a Professor of Online Classes)" (2016). Humanities Symposium. 5.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2016/2016/5
Socrates Bound: The Irreplaceable Centrality of Dialogue in Education (Or: the Lamentations of a Professor of Online Classes)
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Having taught innumerable online classes at a half dozen universities, Dr. Smith knows just about as much as anyone what the extraordinary pedagogical tools of programs like Blackboard and D2L can accomplish and, more importantly, he has seen precisely where those programs fail, due not to any technological shortcoming inherent in the systems themselves, but due to the shortcoming of technology in trying to to replicate the traditional classroom environment. Although online classes, especially in Humanities courses, offer invaluable resources for those who are unable to attend traditional classes, they nevertheless fall short of closely approximating that traditional classroom experience. Following the Socratic-inspired insights of John Dewey, Dr. Smith’s presentation will analyze the “experience” of online education in the Humanities, explore its shortcomings and conclude with a binary proposition: either we accept that online education will continue to strive to emulate the classroom experience (and fail, for reasons he explores in this presentation) or else we need to rethink what we mean by “learning” in general as we move further into the 21st century.
Comments
Convocation Credit: Society and the Arts and Sciences