Online should not mean offline for business lecturers

“I dropped out of my business degree. It’s not worth it.” 

“We don’t hire people with business degrees.” 

Comments such as these are unfortunately more frequent as the price of higher education increases, and online business education becomes ubiquitous. In part, these comments are driven by student experiences of “ghost courses”, where the lecturer seems all too absent, forum posts go unanswered, non-appearances of other students proliferate, and recorded lectures mean that no attendance is needed. (At its most extreme, recorded lectures have reportedly been used after the professor has died.)

Under these conditions, higher education feels like a solo pursuit, rather than an interactive experience requiring collaboration and engagement between the lecturer and fellow students. The message is that distractedly listening to a recorded lecture while vacuuming the floor, commuting or watching your child play sport on a Saturday morning will suffice. Images on university websites depicting students apparently “learning” in isolation, with nothing but a lonely cup of coffee and a curated range of online resources to keep them company, reinforces this illusion. Learning becomes focused on the completion of assessment rather than immersion in a journey. Such a learning experience is exacerbated by truncated learning sessions that only allow for surface-level engagement with any particular topic. 

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So, where indeed is the value in an online learning experience like this?

Online business courses are more and more built with a highly curated, homogenised design of “all on, all recorded”, where all resources are made available from the first day, and interactions with the lecturers are prerecorded. The message to students is there is no need to turn up because the teacher appears not to be turning up, either.

This digital pedagogical approach takes away the space for a new or different lecturer to enter the online course and make it their own. When courses are delivered more or less to a prescribed script, this leaves little space for a unique teaching contribution. Highly centralised, standardised approaches to course design also stifle innovation. Not only does this cause conflict between academics and learning designers, but it also acts as a barrier to “teachership”. This is a particular concern for business education, given criticisms of the transactional, individualistic, credentialling-only focus of business curricula. Taking away lecturers’ ability to enact their academic freedom and autonomy leads to their giving in. Critically reviewing overbearing learning design guidelines that enforce the “all on, all recorded” design would help to ease the lack of autonomy lecturers feel, reinstating the space for flexibility, creativity and imagination in teachership.

Learning occurs from reaction – and teachership provokes this

Learning occurs as a result of a reaction to some sort of stimulus (touching a hot plate, reading a book, coming across a new worldview). The learning partnership between students and lecturers is that the lecturer agrees to provide the provocation, while the student agrees to be provoked. Part of being provoked into learning is interacting with materials. However, passive interactions do not drive deep, critical immersion. Nor do they create conditions where a student’s inquisitiveness and curiosity can pique. Education is, after all, a pursuit that requires interactions within an engaged learning community.

Designing online courses that preserve space for teachership honour the fundamental human interactions needed for critical thinking and learning. When teachership is a mandatory part of course delivery, students gain a companion on their learning journey. They find a lecturer who will walk beside them, provoking their learning along the way, and ensuring that inquisitiveness is reciprocated.

As lecturers continue to express concern about empty Zoom rooms where only one or two students turn up (if you’re lucky), consideration needs to be given to the “attendance is not required for learning” message that the “all on, all recorded” pedagogical approach promotes. As this message becomes reinforced across multiple courses in an online business degree, students are taught that engagement is an unnecessary use of their time. They can pass their assessments without it.

These ghost-like conditions mean those who do engage find that peer interaction falls far short of their hopes and expectations, resulting in a lacklustre experience of studying business at university. For the lecturer dedicated to teaching, logging on week after week to empty Zoom rooms is equally heartbreaking.

No need for learning partnerships…or relationships

Another potential consequence of teacherless pedagogy should be considered: the receipt of student feedback that ranges from defamatory remarks about appearance, accents and attire and general insults and calls for punishment to outright racist, misogynistic or homophobic attacks. The lecturers on the receiving end of such feedback are left demoralised and traumatised. They feel threatened and may suffer with mental health issues as a result. 

Universities are deploying some solutions to mitigate this type of feedback, but they often involve hiding abusive feedback from targeted academics, not changing the fundamental behaviour. However, the “no personal interaction” pretence of some online courses that leaves students bereft of teachership does not support the formation of personal relationships between students and lecturers, and so does not support mutually respectful learning partnerships. In this relationship wasteland, personal attacks become easier to dish out. The trend for universities to use call-centre-like one-stop-shops for student enquiries and support compounds this detachment from their lecturers. This approach reinforces the positioning of students as consumers. Not learners and partners…customers.

Adult students should expect and accept no less than a human experience to guide, facilitate and nurture their learning. University students need to show perseverance if they are to attain their degrees, and this perseverance is in part driven by the relationships they form with fellow students and with their lecturers. The sentiment that universities need to earn their students’ commute should flow through into their online environments, as well as on-campus courses. 

As business schools continue to struggle to demonstrate their legitimacy, ensuring the learning partnership and companionship between students and lecturers is a fundamental ingredient. The efforts of business students must not be frustrated by ghost online courses, but nurtured with determined teachership.

Anita Wheeldon is a senior lecturer (management) in the School of Business at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.

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