Guest Blog

November 14, 2014 Mary Mullalond

Sustaining a Quality Education  ~with Brian Goedde ~

Online classes teach online civility

Never mind the Gallup polls. The essays my students choose to write in Composition II have been my most reliable cultural barometer.

When I first started teaching, almost everyone wrote about the Iraq War. Then there was an upswing of papers on gay marriage. By now interest in these topics has ebbed. When a general consensus has been reached (the Iraq War was misguided; gay marriage is fine, we just have to get used to the idea), I stop getting essays about it.

In the last year or so, a new topic has surged, and this one begins with a consensus: social media can be toxic. It creates dynamics that are stressful at least—e.g.: Will the person I’m dating change his/her Facebook “relationship status”?—and fatal at worst: Most papers will argue that “cyber bullying” has propelled some of its victims to suicide.

No one calls for an end to social media. Indeed, the authors all mention their own Facebook pages. What they argue for is a change in social media culture, a campaign for civility in our collective online life.

What is particularly interesting to me is that these papers have been written for my online classes, and while I could just be lucky, so far my online students have been remarkably civil. The discussion board forums, the peer-editing assignments— all of their communications with each other and me have been respectful. It’s far from the volatile discussions I sometimes have to referee in a “live” classroom. Occasionally I’ll have to send a note to a student asking him or her to “watch the tone” of his/her comments, but that’s it.

This kind of civility is essential in a class that discusses war, love, and other such controversial matters of life and death and human dignity. My cultural barometer is reading that we now need to improve our online discourse. On this note, my online students deserve praise. To adopt a phrase, they are the change they seek.

Brian Goedde
English and Writing Department
Washtenaw Community College

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