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News From the Alumni House
On the Digital Road to Canterbury
October
2000
by Anthony M. ("Tony") Lavely '64
Anthony
M. ("Tony") Lavely '64 (AMLavely@aol.com)
lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a former member of the AYA
Board of Governors, a former president of the Yale Club of Chicago,
and a current Fellow of Branford College.
Last
March, I volunteered to be a guinea pig for a new online continuing education program offered by the Association of Yale Alumni.
Over the years, I have returned to the Yale campus for alumni programs,
participated in local Yale club education events, and even subscribed
to a videotape or two. Nevertheless, it was with some anxiety that
I ventured into this latest form of continuing education. Although
I have been using the Internet and e-mail for at least five years,
it was definitely a leap of faith to consider taking an academic
course online. Two courses were offered in this pilot program, and
I chose the one most closely aligned with my undergraduate major.
After all, why venture into uncharted waters for both process and
content? The course was "To Hear Their Voices: Chaucer, Shakespeare,
and Frost," with Marie Borroff, Sterling Professor Emerita of English.
From the beginning,
Process (the Internet) and Content (the poetry) vied for attention. The startup
was challenging and not without a few glitches. The logistics involved juggling
the Internet, texts, audio materials, and videotapes. Marie was most visible via
the videotapes, speaking to us from a handsome Yale office.
Our instructor, Mike
Parker '75, '79PhD, really brought a personal approach to the course. He aided,
questioned, challenged, and sympathized, as the occasion demanded. Most of all,
Mike made it fun. We started with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, so Mike asked everyone
to write a personal profile in the Chaucerian style. Mike dubbed me "The Cook,"
after reading about my long career in restaurant management.
At various times
throughout the four-week course, I plugged in from four different time zones and
numerous hotel rooms. Clearly, I couldn't have participated in any other learning
format. My laptop and the Internet made it possible. I almost met one of my "course-mates"
face-to-face when Gil Colgate '53 and I realized we were both online in Manhattan
over Easter weekend. Alas, that meeting did not occur, so everyone I met is still
just an e-mail address, though we were all "pilgrims" on the same road.
There were eight
individual modules, each of which had a reading assignment, a video lecture, a
discussion topic, and a writing assignment. You really have to sign up for one
of these courses to grasp their scope. After scrambling to keep up, I realized
that the promise of "about five to eight hours a week of your time" was a cleverly
baited hook! You could easily have spent twice as much time and still not have
done justice to the material. As it was, I rediscovered Chaucer, gained a deeper
understanding of Shakespeare, and really grasped Frost for the first time. I also
"virtually" met 17 other Yale alumni, of widely varying backgrounds.
Perhaps the most
interesting aspect was the use of an e-mail-like technique, called "discussion
threads," through which you could respond to anyone at any time on the posted
topic. Just like a real-time discussion, these "threads" created quite an intricate
and interwoven pattern of comments. You could poke around in these "bone piles"
for hours! Undoubtedly, the most fun was the evening our entire class came together
in a scheduled chat room with Marie Borroff and Mike Parker. Since I have three
teenagers, for whom chat rooms and instant messaging are a way of life, I waded
into the Borroff chat room with no inhibitions. It went on for hours. You had
to be there!
Like anything new,
this experience had its difficulties. I wish there had been a more
structured framework for contemporaneous feedback on ways to make
the experience even better. There was an evaluation questionnaire
at the end of the course, but these never seem to capture the moment.
I am optimistic that Yale will continue to invest resources in this
new form of continuing education. Whether you're a reformed Luddite,
like me, or a computer jockey with your own dot-com, I urge you
to sign up for one of these courses when one appears in your digital
neighborhood. |
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