I don’t agree, in principle with online education. It definitely has its place in expanding access to education and serving as a supplemental tool to help students graduate on time, but I think the value of teacher-student interactions is too high to give up. Our traditional education at Middlebury, however, has already incorporated a lot of elements native to online education. We turn in papers online, take exams online, and rely on online sources to complete assignments. I was thinking about this in terms of the end of the fall term. I have an online exam, a paper to be turned in online, and one paper that has to be turned in in person. If it weren’t for the paper that has to be turned in as a hard copy, I would be able to leave as soon as my last class ends on Friday at 10 AM. If the temporal structure (in terms of using Moodle for assessment, and turning in papers via Moodle) that most of my classes have started using were utilized curriculum-wide, I would be able to go home. But more importantly, uniformity would give students an equal and predictable expectation for their work.

The problem right now is that every class approaches media differently. One of my classes has no online presence whatsoever, while one of my classes’ homework is all turned in via Moodle. This means that every assignment I turn in is not just turned in on a different subject, but also in a different temporal form. I’m not incompetent so I can handle it, but it’s a distraction from the actual work. A standardized system would allow students to focus on content rather than worrying about what form each assignment has to take, not to mention the fact that it would allow students to plan their vacations more easily.