WebCT in Utopia: how Dante, iPods, and the Lilliputians led to e-learning enlightenment at one university

University Business, July, 2005 by Robert Viau

Do most faculty just throw notes and lectures online and call it e-learning? Some readers might draw that conclusion from "Thwarted Innovation: What Happened to e-Learning and Why," research published by Robert Zemsky of the University of Pennsylvania and William F. Massy, professor emeritus at Stanford University (Calif.), as analyzed in Rebecca Sausner's enlightening University Business piece (November 2004).

Reports Sausner, "The other truth raised in 'Thwarted Innovation' is that most online education offerings are fiat--they're still primarily based on text and pictures, with little use of audio, video, graphics, simulations, or even asynchronous discussions. Once professors figured out how to load their existing notes and lectures onto [course management systems], they stopped innovating." I'm less interested here in debating the point than ensuring that readers get a full flavor of at least one notable exception.

My experience at Georgia Cortege & State University is anything but a black hole. It involves fiery online give-and-take on eternal existential questions, integrated with fine art, classical music and the ubiquitous iPod. I've found that structured online discussion and content delivery supports complex learning and discovery.

GC&SU is the officially designated public liberal arts university of Georgia. I use WebCT as the principal web "interface" for the only required course in the Honors & Scholars Program here: "Utopia/Dystopia: Studies in No Place." Because Utopia/Dystopia is the gateway course for the Honors Program, taken usually by the entering class of honors students, I am especially mindful to engage the students in the core concepts of the Honors Program and the university as well as the core course content. Integral to all three are critical thinking and writing, and it is in this regard that I find online learning most particularly useful I use our course management system to get students to talk to one another about a wide range of subjects, both specific to and less obviously related to the central course materials.

My students read a variety of utopian/dystopian texts such as Dante's Inferno, More's Utopia, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Gilman's Herland, Zamiatin's We, Orwell's 1984, and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In addition to such purely literary texts, I have a course web site with hundreds of photos of historical architecture and art, which I have connected to the different component units of the course. Finally, each student has more than 2,500 pieces of music (ranging from traditional classical to pop) and other audio files such as poems and famous speeches loaded onto 15GB iPods.

The course concepts that unite these texts are two dichotomies: the classical versus the gothic paradigm, and the corresponding elements of utopian and dystopian thought in the Western tradition. The lines dividing these two loosely corresponding and parallel dichotomies are quite blurred, the result being a wide field of course material that is very hazy and thus excellent for catching students up in interesting discussions that I fancy help them to refine their writing and develop critical thinking skills. The interplay between the various texts, discussions and WebCT-based content also helps my students develop cognitive flexibility as well as a sense of community. As it turn out, most of my students live in the Honors Living/Learning Community and thus learn how to model utopian principles (or how not to!) even as they use technology to connect with each other, share, and exchange ideas. WebCT and the iPod docking stations become hubs for the students, a virtual community center for the commerce of ideas and values.

MAJOR POSTINGS

Each week the students are required to make one or more "major postings" (MPs) on subjects directly related to the texts we are currently studying. I ask students to reflect on the relationships within and among texts, or the correspondences among the different disciplines of the course. For example, I might ask my students to look at the painting The Isle of the Dead by Arnold Boecklin and simultaneously listen to the musical piece of the same name by Rachmaninoff. Then I might ask them to discuss both pieces in terms of their structure, style, "color," mood, tone, and so on. Finally, I might also ask them to discuss ways in which the two disciplines--painting and music--correspond. This assignment forces students outside of their communication comfort zone and has produced very interesting responses. Students are not used to writing about either art or music, let alone both, and it is intriguing to watch them stretch their minds to embrace ambiguity.

Other MPs require students to respond to some issue in a text we are currently discussing and relate that issue to their Lives in general and their Lives in the Honors Living/Learning Community. Still others require students to examine a current event and relate it to utopian/dystopian principles. The point of these MP assignments is, first, to keep my students actively engaged in the ideas of the course, but also to keep them relating those ideas to themselves and their world.