An alert EMUTalk.org reader and colleague sent me a link to this article in the online and free version of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Online Professors Pose as Students to Encourage Real Learning.” Here’s a long quote from the beginning of the article:
Jane Malan and Bill Reed are cousins in deception. They infiltrate online courses and secretly collect information about students by blending in with them.
She comes off as a clever thirty-something, with a photo that shows strong features. He poses as a silent twenty-something with some skill at fishing — his photo depicts him holding what appears to be a large rockfish.
A classmate once asked the goateed fisherman to get together, a doomed romance for one reason: He does not exist.
Both Mr. Reed and Ms. Malan are the alter egos of real professors. They belong to a small group of “ghost students” that academics in Indiana, Connecticut, and South Africa have injected into online courses to kick-start discussions among students, keep them from dropping out, and spy on their communications.
The deceit has provoked questions about faculty ethics. Two of the professors admit that their unreal students teeter on an ethical precipice, because the technique could be abused. Others in the distance-education community accuse them of falling over the cliff. The critics worry such behavior could scar the image of an education sector many still regard with skepticism.
On the one hand, I have some sympathy with the professors here because it would be nice sometimes to be on the student-side of things. I think being in on some of those conversations would help me be a better teacher. On the other hand, it is pretty much being a nar(c)k.
This also reminds me a bit of a book that came out in 2005 called My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student by Rebeckah Nathan. Nathan, an anthropology professor, concealed her identity and enrolled at the university where she taught as a new freshman. She lived in the dorms, went to classes, and did all she could to blend in (although being a 50-something freshman meant she could only blend in so much).
I thought it was a pretty good book, albeit based on a potentially problematic research method. I guess the difference is Nathan didn’t hold the position of power of disguising herself as a student in her own class, and there is something to the difference between online and face to face concealment.
Anyway, interesting stuff. Are there teachers out there who are (or who would like to) pose as a student in their own online class? Are there any online students out there who have a problem with this potential posing?
