A Neophyte About Online Teaching: Almost Done

Abstract

The following autoethnography reflects a neophyte instructor's obsession with teaching an online graduate course. The experience forces her to move ethnographically forward and backward with students in a novel, and sometimes, more intimate fashion. She struggles to balance a serving of technology with a dollop of human interaction, but finds online teaching can be time consuming. Though students are physically dispersed and isolated, they sustain and bond in new and different ways in an online community. Her narrative reveals how technologies are created, apprehended, and used in everyday life. Online learning has become ubiquitous at all levels of education. Teachers and students need to question whether technology in their lives represents a force for good or evil. In the end, autoethnography becomes trans-formative as the author gains a heightened awareness of the social, cultural, and personal influences shaping her online teaching experience.