Final Reflection

 Last year, my first hour American Authors class had 40 students in the class.  Sometimes at the end of the week I would look at the kids filing out the door at the end of the hour and think about who I hadn't talked to at all over the course of the week because there were literally too many people in the class to be able to interact with everybody.

Looking back at Christ Church College from the Meadow

 Then this summer I took a class at Oxford University in England and learned more about their tutorial system.  At Oxford each student is assigned a tutor and students never sit in a classroom (lectures are recommended, but not required).  The most number of students who ever meet with a tutor (an Oxford professor, AKA a genius) at a time to discuss a topic is three.  Each week, the tutor and student meet.  The tutor assigns the student with books to read and a paper to write and the next week the student comes back needing to interpret what they've read, present their papers to their tutor, and respond to the tutor's questions.  It's kind of like giving a dissertation every week.  I was fascinated by this kind of one-on-one education where many of the world's smartest people study.  A class size of 40 students together for the purpose of studying literature and writing would never be considered.

What struck me the most while taking this class was when Kris said that online learning is like having "a class of thirty, but instead thirty classes of one."  The opportunities that we can potentially present to students through online learning seem to me more in line with the Oxford model of education.  Also, the idea of really being able to understand and push the students in the middle is very motivating to me.  I certainly spend more time giving my attention to the students who are very high and very low-skilled, and the ability to provide more individualized attention for the students in the middle is something that appeals to me as a teacher.

I'm not sure when or if I'll have the opportunity to teach online, but I have certainly learned more about technology that can support me as a teacher and that I can include in my current brick-and-mortar classroom.