A University Students Perspective of eLearning
The Student's Perspective, Carie Windham, North Carolina State University
We sat across from one another, he in his cracked leather desk chair and me in a wooden chair taken from the hallway. He leaned back, arms crossed, eyes peering over wire-framed glasses. I strummed my fingers nervously on the chipped wood of the chair's arm.
"I e-mailed you the proposal last week," I said. "I don't understand why the topic change came as a surprise."
"I didn't get it," he said simply.
"I sent it a week ago. Maybe it came back; I don't know."
"I'll be honest; I don't check my e-mail."
I paused. "Ever?" I asked.
"Ever. Can't stand it."
"Right. Should I have called?"
"I don't check voicemail either."
My brow furrowed as I contemplated my next move.
"So how exactly do you stay in touch with your students between classes?" I asked.
"Well, I expect that they'll hunt me down on campus if they need anything."
I sank back in the chair and stared at his desk, scattered with haphazard Post-Its and torn notebook paper. A cassette-tape answering machine gathered dust in the corner. An overstuffed planner bulged near my seat. I thought of my own desk at home-neat, sterile, a laptop and a Palm Pilot.
"So you're serious? No e-mail and no voicemail? Do you even use the Web?"
He just smiled.
"I e-mailed you the proposal last week," I said. "I don't understand why the topic change came as a surprise."
"I didn't get it," he said simply.
"I'll be honest; I don't check my e-mail."
I paused. "Ever?" I asked.
"Ever. Can't stand it."
"Right. Should I have called?"
"I don't check voicemail either."
My brow furrowed as I contemplated my next move.
"So how exactly do you stay in touch with your students between classes?" I asked.
"Well, I expect that they'll hunt me down on campus if they need anything."
I sank back in the chair and stared at his desk, scattered with haphazard Post-Its and torn notebook paper. A cassette-tape answering machine gathered dust in the corner. An overstuffed planner bulged near my seat. I thought of my own desk at home-neat, sterile, a laptop and a Palm Pilot.
"So you're serious? No e-mail and no voicemail? Do you even use the Web?"
He just smiled.
Though we sat just four feet away from one another, the distance suddenly felt light years apart. I would find out, in subsequent conversations, that my professor-a relic of the Greatest Generation-did, indeed, surf the Web when it was necessary. But he preferred the newspaper over CNN.com, the weatherman over WeatherBug, and face-to-face visits over e-mail exchanges. He dusted off journals from the 1980s and flipped through their pages, and, if you asked him, he actually knew how to load one of those microfiche machines on the second floor of the university library. He represented, for me, a world I could scarcely remember-a world before driving directions on MapQuest, book buying on Amazon.com, and making plans on Instant Messenger–a world when tasks were managed one by one instead of all at once on multiple Web browser windows.
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