The Electronic Classroom to the Rescue
Food for Thought
In the early morning hours of August 8 unexpectedly severe rainstorms lashed New York City. Severe storms are hardly unique to New York, but they are more the exception here than they are in many parts of the country. The cities infrastructure is designed to handle big rainstorms without causing any inconvenience much more severe than wet feet (more if you don't have an umbrella) and traffic delays. The worst traffic delays are usually on the highways, but most people, including myself, do most of our traveling using public transportation. Cars are mostly an inconvenience here. Timing plays a role in everything, however, and these storms were timed perfectly to cause maximum inconvenience for everyone.
The Electronic Classroom is usually presented in one of three primary variants. Online classes are increasingly popular and have been adapted to a wide range of subject matters (including subject matters to which they seem ill-suited, like Public Speaking). Hybrid classes mix the traditional classroom and online interaction in a systematic way, often with discussions conducted online between less frequent conventional classes. Electronically extended classrooms supplement an otherwise conventional classroom experience with extended online resources like online syllabi, schedules, assignments, exercises, gradebooks, discussion notes, extended classroom discussions, group work, and other applications. Our pedagogy, in any of these variants, is generally planned well in advance.
The class I most commonly teach at Brooklyn College, Television and Radio Criticism, is a tightly scheduled theory, method, and writing filled capstone course. It depends on the students existing production experience and knowledge of things we don't teach in the course, like aesthetics, script writing, production, direction, and the technical knowledge of cameras, recording technology technology, real time coordination of diverse content sources, and editing. The primary goal of the class is to integrate that knowledge with diverse theoretical perspectives and qualitative analysis methods. An equally important goal to enhance students writing skills by having them apply these qualitative methods by writing academic papers. There's a lot to do in the semester, and no room at all for an unplanned class cancellation.
Which brings us back to the rainstorms, which flooded the cities subways just as the morning rush was starting. Somewhat ironically, I'd left for Brooklyn extra early that day, arriving at the subway I usually use, the number 2, about an hour and a half before I usually do, but just as the first trains were being emptied out at my station. There was no information, but I stopped at home, checked the MTA subway status information on my computer, noted that the only documented service interruption that affected me was the Number 2 service, and decided to try the B train, which was just a few blocks further away. I arrived there to discover that service was stalled (the train in that station had been there for over an hour), so I set across town to try the number 5 train, and when that failed, downtown to find the Q. Four miles and and hour and a quarter later, it became clear that I wasn't going to make it to Brooklyn. I wasn't going to be able to conduct my conventional class that day.
The good news, at this point, was that I already extensively supplement my conventional classroom in just about all of the ways one might electronically extend the conventional classroom. We'd already done discussions on Blackboard. They'd already submitted assignments there. So I went home, opened a classroom on Blackboard that asked them to submit the assignments that were due that day online, sent out an e-mail announcement, asked security to put a note pointing to Blackboard on the door of my classroom, and put announcements up online in the places I already had students looking for assignments. By that evening most of my students had posted their material, and on online discussion over the next 24 hours took us through a discussion of the days material, their assignments, and their personal horror stories about the days transportation snafus. New York City's subways were back to normal by noon, about the time my class would have ended, but we pulled off the class anyway, and moved right on at the next session.
There are lots of reasons why we use electronic technology in association with our classes. We teach online classes as a convenience to students and as an extension of the college education franchise that brings its benefits to a wider range of students. We use the hybrid classroom to change the classroom experience without losing the benefits of the conventional classroom. Lectures, presentations, and tests remain easier to do in the conventional classroom setting, but the online setting is particualarly well suited to conducting discussions in which all students can have a voice. Online materials, moreover, are often far more convenient to students than paper handouts.
We don't usually think of "emergencies" as a good time to make an impromptu shift to the electronic classroom, but based on this experience and some related classroom and non-classroom experiences, there is much to recommend it.
I've conducted conventional classes in weather conditions that prevented half my students from making it to class. What for me was a simple walk or bicycle ride to campus was, for many students, especially commuters, a difficult drive in blinding snow storms on unsafe roads. I didn't have the option of an impromptu move to an online classroom on those occasions. In retrospect, however, it would have been better if I had. The inconvenience to the students who were able to make class would have been minimal, but the advantages for those who were unable to make class would have been substantial. I'm not happy with the available options for conducting classes online. Blackboard and WebCT (now Blackboard CE) are particularly deficient in some aspects of their interactivity, but I no longer want to be "stuck" without the option of taking a class online in an emergency.
All to often, its students who lose when we cancel classes, or worse, don't cancel classes that they can't make because of severe weather. We should make sure we have alternatives in place when we need them. In this case, the electronic classroom proved a more that adequate alternative.
Food for thought.