Bill's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

McWilliam and Palmer’s paper on the importance of the teacher’s material presence in teaching reminded me of something a colleague once told me: “65% of all teaching is performance”. You might disagree with his percentage or dismiss him as a proponent of old-fashioned transmissive teaching methods, but anyone who has ever taught in a classroom understands there is at least a core of truth in that statement.

Distance/online learning disembodies not only the students but the teacher as well and raises a few interesting questions: Does teaching become harder without a material body? Can avatars and online profiles adequately substitute the material presence of the teacher? Does this material absence mean that there’s actually 65% less teaching in online learning. Or –the horror!– 65% less learning?

If you’re looking for quick answers, I’d say: Yes / No / Not 65%, but there’s certainly less “teaching” and more “facilitating” / Certainly not, but this is also a matter of effective course design. But the real question is this: are we heading towards a postcyborg pedagogy in which the material teacher or the human teacher will be completely obsolete? One imagines the bodies of teachers being exhibited in future museums or freak-shows (”See a teacher from the past! Marvel at the inner workings of a primitive teaching machine!), embalmed, or plastinated and dissected like the poor corpses of Gunther von Hagens. At the core of this concern lies the fear that several other professions have experienced or are experiencing right now, the fear that digital technology will make us redundant, obsolete. But I feel that the real challenge here is not just our survival but our adaptation to the needs of the digital era for the benefit of our students.

McWilliam, E and Palmer, P. (1995). Teaching tech(no)bodies: open learning and postgraduate pedagogy. Australian Universities’ Review, 2.