I was not surprised by recent news that online classes have become swamped by artificial intelligence cheating, eroding academic integrity. From the second I heard about “asynchronous” studies, I thought of the word’s negative connotations: not happening or existing simultaneously, out of sync, allochronic, unsynchronized.
“You have to sign up for the 20-hour Canvas computer course,” my boss had informed me.
“I tried it. That software is too complicated for me and I don’t need it,” I told her. “Other teachers got permission to skip it, so I requested a waiver.”
As a popular college creative writing professor who’d filled up in-person sections every term for 25 years, I worried I was too much of a Luddite to learn new cyber tricks. Yet I’d actually adapted to and enjoyed easy Zoom live video meetings, which mirrored my regular courses. I assumed I’d just get an exemption to avoid the Canvas Learning Management System requirement.
Instead, when I didn’t complete the tutorial, the algorithm canceled my classes. Checking the university’s website, I saw that my list of 50 current students disappeared overnight. While two younger male colleagues were somehow excused from the cyber course prerequisite, I was dismissed after a quarter of a century of service, and I was distraught.
Reading about the 8.63 million workers who have been laid off this year reminded me of the shock I felt. I couldn’t afford the lost income. My husband needed surgery that year and we weren’t sure if he could keep working. Plus I’d loved teaching, and for years my employer had offered me praise, awards and touted the high return-student ratio I’d helped to build. I’d never planned to retire or change my course load.
I’d adapted when the Covid-19 pandemic closed our brick-and-mortar building and gave middle managers and commercial consultants more authority. Admittedly technophobic, I had students help me recreate my in-person classes with Zoom, the platform used by 90% of U.S. colleges. For two semesters, I dressed up to teach from my living room laptop, receiving excellent evaluations. Why switch to complex, problematic software? “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” I told my boss.
Researching the asynchronicity the institution was promoting, I saw it involved pre-recorded lectures, no live meetings and homework submitted by email 24/7 — no personal interactions. Although the software has taken over 41% of the U.S. education market, it isn’t user-friendly. Every user I knew complained it was inconsistent, illogical, cluttered, had clunky navigation and ignored accessibility standards.
Indeed, the Canvas learning management system, chosen by non-teachers and non-writers, had nothing to do with educating, reading or writing. It was financed by venture capital firms and hedge funds, and aimed to increase profits from overseas clients.
“Why is IT and the administration controlling how I teach successful writing instruction?” I asked my boss, rallying against the corporatization of academia. Indeed, the Canvas learning management system, chosen by non-teachers and non-writers, had nothing to do with educating, reading or writing. It was financed by venture capital firms and hedge funds, and aimed to increase profits from overseas clients. Like the billionaire geniuses who created social media that wound up depressing, dumbing down and dehumanizing civilization, the motives of these companies were purely financial.
They were pushing the antithesis of the intimate learning style my literary program had once promoted. A simple Google search of this management software continues to show on-going issues due to outages, ransomware breaches, cyberattacks and tech glitches that caused global classes and exams to need rescheduling.
“You can use Zoom on Canvas,” I was told.
But why would I? Changing my live, synchronous video classes could ruin the miraculous process, where students read their personal essays aloud, critique each other, bring in revisions, meet with newspaper and magazine editors for question-and-answer sessions, then publish their work. Hands-on instruction offers guidance, monitoring and inspiration. The human interaction, back-and-forth questions and follow-ups are essential to keep their stories authentic and anti-AI — a system that is proving to be detrimental to teaching writing skills.
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Telling a colleague that the software was too anonymous and complex for me, he suggested that I “pay an IT guy to do it.” Since my tech guy made house calls for $100 an hour, it would cost me $2000 to have him run the 20-hour course so I could keep a low-paying gig using a process that could wind up hurting my instruction.
Still, I actually considered this — until I read a quote by author Erica Williams Simon: “Don’t ever attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, or a purpose only. That’s how you keep your power and your peace.” Reading those words, I realized I had to be more loyal to myself than to the bureaucratic institution whose judgement I no longer trusted.
A freelancer by day, I’d appreciated teaching’s miraculous equation: I did my job, they paid me the first of every month. But after years of fighting for my own bylines, my ambition now was to help my students thrive, make a living and not repeat my mistakes. The steady checks from the university took the pressure off my pages as they championed my books with launch events in their auditoriums, sharing good reviews on their vast website. I debated if I was wrong to care more about pleasing my students — who were there only temporarily to finish two or four-year degrees — than my higher ups in permanent positions with power over me.
After 23 years of struggle and 60 rejections, I’d sold a hardcover memoir to Random House that led to a series of books. Education, my second love, was worth rethinking too.
The day my classes were deleted in 2021, I did an emergency phone shrink session where my therapist reminded me that with stints as a poet, novelist and journalist, I was well-versed at reinvention. After 23 years of struggle and 60 rejections, I’d sold a hardcover memoir to Random House that led to a series of books. Education, my second love, was worth rethinking too.
Since my teaching method focused on getting published, I’d already offered thousands of former students continued support in a Facebook group. After I lost my longtime gig, I decided to launch my own private computer course, based on strategies I’d perfected for decades. If only a few students enrolled, I’d still teach at a loss until I gained momentum. Posting social media fliers for free, I was taken aback when 80 people of all levels and backgrounds signed up for my first session, from ages 14 to 90. It was exhilarating as strangers and former pupils popped in, from India to Brazil to Ukraine to a block away from where I lived. For some it was before sunrise; others stayed up well past midnight in their time zone. For those who’d insisted that only self-paced classes would attract the market share of international business, the people taking my classes ironically spanned 50 countries.
I revised the syllabus to accommodate the expanding model. When there was an issue, I scheduled seminars, makeup sessions and phone office hours at different times to supplement the meetings and assignments. Because of the popularity of the virtual course, I was able to give scholarships to those who’d studied with me in the past but couldn’t afford the sequel, as a way to help see their projects through.
The results were stunning. A California high schooler who broke into top newspapers was offered a full scholarship to Stanford. An undergrad became a magazine staff writer and received a free ride to Columbia’s MFA program. A Michigan teacher’s first essay led to three bestselling novels from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A single mother from Trinidad landed a six-figure deal for a Random House memoir. I laughed when a protégé called me a digital nomad in the gig economy, like him. A few thanked me with national clips lauding my virtual teaching venture.
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I was surprised when, post-Covid, my old university offered me my in-person teaching job back. By then I was making six times my old salary. Additionally, hearing of the institution’s employee strikes, dismissals and downsizing due to lower enrollments, I respectfully declined. I was more secure in my own domain. After all, I’d never lay myself off, push any convoluted apps down my own throat, replace me with AI or let students use chatbots to supplant themselves.
Now I teach one in-person course a term at a different college. Other nights I’m still Zooming, setting the rules and opening the gates, grateful to my former employer for helping me develop a personal method of teaching that still has legs 30 years later.
Turns out I hadn’t flunked technology after all. In my fifth decade, I’d found a web-learning technique that was workable and empowering. All that’s needed is a laptop, students, and a teacher who shows up at the same time.
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