Professors as Spies?

June 16th, 2009

How would you react if you found out that a student in your online course was really your professor in disguise? Would you be outraged or unfazed? Perhaps your response would depend on the level of the offense. Try these transgressions on for size:

• When Indiana University – Purdue University at Indianapolis Professor Barbara Christe felt disconnected from her online students, she decided to create a student alter ego by the name of Bill Reed. When she logs onto Bill’s account, Christe can see messages students send to “all students” and therefore flag potential problems in her courses. But Bill is just a silent observer – he doesn’t participate in discussions or respond to students’ queries.
• As part of a one-time study at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Instructor Lynette Nagel invented Jane Malan to improve student engagement and prevent dropouts. Unlike Bill Reed, Jane was an active participant in class discussions. In previous offerings of the master’s level Web-based learning course, more than 50 percent of the students vanished before the course ended. But when Jane Malan came on the scene, 80 percent of the students passed the course. Do the ends justify the means?
• At the University of Hartford, Professor Frederick B. King created Joe Bag O’ Donuts to stimulate participation in his online classes. When King posted comments under his own name, discussion died down. But when Joe speaks, students listen. King even discloses upfront that Joe Bags is bogus (as if there could be any doubt), but Joe still manages to get students talking.

Personally, I don’t think it would bother me if a professor invented an alter ego because I don’t envision myself sharing deep, personal information with every student in a course, anyway. If the prof was truly using the alias to spark discussion and improve the learning experience, I probably wouldn’t give the ghost student’s presence a second thought. On the other hand, if it seemed that the faux student was being utilized for cyber-spying, I would obviously be upset by the invasion of privacy. The issue for me would likely be level of intimacy – as long as the professor didn’t use a fake student to connect with me on a personal level, I don’t think his or her presence would affect me too deeply.

What’s your take on online professors posing as students?

Read more about it at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

– Robyn Tellefsen

Entry Filed under: College Craziness