It’s the adjuncts themselves who need to organize and demand better pay & working conditions. Adjuncts need to be willing to walk away (or be fired) from jobs that pay too little and demand too much. They need to be willing to put their bodies and time on the line–something with which the online world can help, but in the end, bodies in the streets matter SO much more than online petitions, Facebook “likes,” or a Tumblr feed. That’s the only thing that will make a difference in the long run.

is is expecting a level of solidarity never before seen in human history. There’s no shop to walk out of, no picket line to form, no tactics we can use to prevent the hiring of scabs or put pressure on administrators, no peer pressure to exert on colleagues who may be reconsidering their courageous stand since they have a family to support. Most of the time I have no idea about the identity of the other several hundred people applying for these jobs. As quixote indicates, successful labor action requires that everyone in the shop, including those on tt and with tenure (who play a large if not final role in the hiring process) participate in the resistance. There is nothing I can do if some department in Sioux Falls or Valdosta hires an adjunct. Nothing consequential anyway. Bodies in the streets? Am I going to buy a plane ticket every time word spreads that some uni hired an adjunct? How would I even know? Half (or more?) of these contingent jobs are not even advertised. These fools CPP mentions who think that mass resignations are the answer to our problems are just that, fools. But it is true we are dependent on their actions. Nothing will happen without a commitment of participation from those who cannot be fired.

I definitely will report back on how that self-examination goes. I am going to ask the students to read a couple of things, but I’m not sure how I will get a response from them. Maybe a discussion board or self-quiz or a poll? I think our on-line teaching guru already has an assignment for this. One of the things they have had us reading asks students to do regular reflections on what they are learning and how they are learning it, or not.

One of the things I was thinking about today, after reading your post and the comments here, is that maybe the best class for us to put on-line would be our senior capstone class where the students write an article length paper based on original research. Right now they are scheduled to meet once a week, but there are several weeks built into the calendar for research, writing, and conferences. So we maybe meet as a class for six or eight weeks out of the sixteen week semester. This might be something we could do completely on-line, or in part, because its mostly self paced work anyway.

In some ways it makes more sense for the seniors to work independently and interact on-line, because by this point, they either know what they are doing, or they don’t and a three credit class in their last semester is not going to change that. The Freshmen in the intro level classes are still figuring out how to be college students, and they are probably the last people who should be taking on-line classes, they need the most poking, prodding, and socializing into what it means to be a college student.

Historiann, what are your thoughts and the thoughts of the other teachers who do this kind of project based teaching?

Perhaps online education is a gateway drug for wasting higher education entirely.

Yes, exactly. Koshembos teaches only postgrads, while most people here teach undergrads at all levels. I teach grad students every year, too. What works for graduate school pedagogy–either f2f or online–does not work with 18- and 19-year-olds who need to learn how to learn.

Matt L’s idea of taking students through a self-examination of whether or not online ed will work for his students is a terrific one. Matt, would you please report back on how this is done (reading assignments? an online quiz?) and how you think this works?

Although these people have mostly stopped showing up here, at Tenured Radical, Dr. Crazy, and at other blogges of tenured faculty, there is a faction of non-tenure-track faculty who claim that the tenured/tenure-track faculty are their oppressors–or at a minimum in league with their oppressors–and that the only ethically sound action for tenured faculty is to voluntarily relinquish their tenured positions.

“BoostMyGrades.com is considered a tutoring service. Please understand your school’s academic policies and read our complete” It cuts off there because they must not make enough money to hire a real web designer who knows about expanding containers to fit content.

About adjuncts striking, first it would be essential for universities to sign onto agreements that preclude hiring replacements for strikers. That’ll happen when the moon turns into green cheese. The only kind of strike that might work would be one where *all* the faculty participate in solidarity, and all hang tough. Can you see that happening? And what you’re asking of the much poorer and less secure adjuncts is more than that.

(I realize I’m being a Debbie Downer. I don’t have a solution. Just grim foreboding.)

As far as face-to-face goes, I worry that face to face itself is disappearing, as students sit in campus cafes “with” their friends, each tending to their devices, holding them up once in a while to display a text or a picture. In that sense, f2f may be a doomed sphere itself, but the classroom at least offers a place where it can be imposed by rule part of the time. I keep waiting for the generational pendulum-swing. I’ve heard anecdotally that kids are doing less and less facebooking.

Koshembos rightly notes the irony of the fact that so many of us distance skeptics spend much of the rest of our days vacuuming knowledge from the etherspace. But there is a difference, I think, between *being* educated remotely, and *using* education in that environment.