Inside the Global Classroom: MHC Launches Online Courses for Alumnae

By Hannah Wallace ’95

Online learning is one of the latest trends in higher education. Institutions such as Bowdoin, Duke, and Wellesley are offering downloadable lectures on iTunes U, while MIT is posting entire classes—exams and readings included—on its OpenCourseWare Web site. “Coursecasts,” such as the popular lectures of physics professor Walter Lewin, are not for credit, but they’re free.

Mount Holyoke is taking a slightly different approach. Last fall, the college became one of the first in the country to launch online courses in conjunction with the New York Times Knowledge Network. The two classes—Ruth Lawson Professor of Politics Vinnie Ferraro’s “The End of History or the Clash of Civilizations?” and “Inside the Art and Craft of Film,” taught by associate professor of film studies Robin Blaetz—were open to the public, though MHC alumnae got first dibs. Because these classes were more interactive than mere lectures—including live Web chats and e-mail contact with professors as well as readings and other resources (including movies for Blaetz’s class)—they came with a small price tag: $140 for four sessions.

Choosing which class to take was tough—I hadn’t studied with either Blaetz or Ferraro during my years at MHC, and I found both subjects equally compelling. Ultimately, wanting to immerse myself in the current debates surrounding globalization, I signed up for Professor Ferraro’s.

In early October, Ferraro sent students (a staggering sixty-three of us registered) an e-mail welcoming us to the class and encouraging us to familiarize ourselves with the Epsilen Environment—the online learning platform in which we’d be “meeting”—before the first class. I logged on and easily found our virtual classroom and the two primary texts that Ferraro had structured his class around: Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay The End of History? and Samuel P. Huntington’s 1993 article The Clash of Civilizations?

The classes were to be conducted on Wednesdays from 7 to 9 pm in an Epsilen chat room. For the uninitiated, this is like Instant Messaging with dozens of people simultaneously, with comments appearing on the screen one after the other, complete with typos and the occasional smiley face.

The first session was chaotic, with provocative IMs ricocheting back and forth, making it challenging to follow any one thread. Many students got fed up; the numbers in Ferraro’s class dwindled. “The lag between statement and response was a bit frustrating,” admits Mary Baton Marx ’59. Di Pagnotti ’98, however, loved the chats’ discursive nature. “It wasn’t nearly as disorienting as I thought it would be,” says Pagnotti. “Usually having ADD is not an advantage. But it doesn’t occur to me that following six to ten trains of thought is unusual.”

Those who hung in there were rewarded. By the second chat, there were only a dozen or so active participants— which kept discussions more measured and focused. (However, Felice Nudelman, director of education at the Times, points out that there were many more students eavesdropping on classes without actively chatting—a common phenomenon in e-learning.) Ferraro reined us in, too, posing three questions about the readings a few days before each class in an e-mail and—to add a human touch—on short videos posted on the Epsilen site. He also began calling “time-outs” during our chats so he could summarize the main themes of our conversations.

Our chats ranged widely—from how globalization may be forcing China to adopt democratic values to the question of whether globalization threatens the diversity of human cultures. In one session, we brainstormed about how to institute international environmental standards that both poor and wealthy countries can afford to follow. (See an excerpt.)

Overall, the two classes—a pilot program—were a resounding success, with 90 percent of students saying that they’d take another such class. “This was truly a steep learning curve,” says Patricia VandenBerg, the college’s executive director of communications and its unofficial liaison with the Times. “Vinnie and Robin were incredibly flexible and tenacious—they were real troupers.” Ellie Miller Greenberg ’53, who took Ferraro’s course and who has developed online master’s programs, agrees. “Ferraro’s congeniality was especially welcome,” she says. “To do an online course when people are out there and you don’t know who they are—you have to have a personality that allows you to build a relationship on thin air.”

However, Greenberg thinks it would’ve been useful to have an online orientation—using the medium itself to walk students through the Epsilen system. Jill Agruss Breckenridge ’65, who considers herself fairly computer literate, agrees. “You should use the technology to teach the technology,” she says. Both Greenberg and Breckenridge wished the course had more than four sessions.

The Times and the college will expand MHC’s e-course roster this summer with additional faculty and classes, yet to be determined. (Ferraro and Blaetz will reprise their courses.) And based on students’ evaluations, says Nudelman, Epsilen is making improvements such as adding audio and real-time streaming video of both professors and students. Courses may be extended by two weeks. VandenBerg notes that the online format has a lot of potential—faculty could do one-off lectures or “evenings with” that would later be posted online for alumnae clubs around the world.

The online format is ideal for alumnae who live in different time zones because it allows them to take the course on their own time—even if it means they’ll miss scheduled chats. “The chat room part is optional,” points out Nudelman, who says part of the appeal of e-learning is that you can access the class (in the form of archived chats) anytime you want. So, even though the number of chatters in Ferraro’s class hovered at twelve, the number of log-ons—students downloading texts, browsing the course material and resources, and reading chats—was much higher.

As for me, I’ve already seen the benefits of taking Ferraro’s class. The other day I was editing a Q&A with scholar Parag Khanna, author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, and I knew exactly what he was talking about when he referred to Fukuyama’s utopian vision of globalization and Huntington’s more fatalistic view that it will lead to a clash of cultures. Neither of these scenarios, Khanna, said, has come to pass. After four animated discussions in Ferraro’s online class, I tend to agree.

Hannah Wallace ’95 is a Brooklyn-based journalist and the senior editor at JANERA.com, a new online magazine and social networking site for global nomads.