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Unit 7, The Empty Classroom, page 192, reading 1.

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Teaching to the World from Central New Jersey, by Mitchell Dunier.

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A few months ago, just as the campus of Princeton University had grown nearly silent after commencement,

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40,000 students from 113 countries arrived here via the Internet to take a free course in introductory sociology.

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The non-credit Princeton offering came about through a collaboration between Coursera,

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a new venture in online learning, and 16 universities, including my own.

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When my class was announced last spring, I was both excited and nervous.

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Unlike computer science and other subjects, in which the answers are pretty much the same around the globe,

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sociology can be very different depending on the country that you come from.

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As letters and email messages,

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began arriving in anticipation of my course,

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I wondered how I, an American professor, could relate my subject to people I didn't know from so many different societies.

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Would my lectures become yet another example of American ethnocentrism and imperialism as I presented my

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sociological concepts like so many measuring sticks for the experiences of others around the world?

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Was it really possible, I asked myself, to provide

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a quality education to tens of thousands of students in more than 100 countries at the same time,

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and in a way that would respond to the diversity of viewpoints represented from six continents?

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My concerns grew deeper as I sat before the cold eye of the camera to record my first lecture.

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With nobody to ask me a question, or give me bored looks, or laugh at my jokes,

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I had no clues as to how the students might be responding.

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Staring into this void, it was hard for me to imagine that anyone was listening.

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Can we even call these lectures when there is no audience within the speaker's view?

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Aren't those interpersonal cues, those knowing nods and furrowed brows that go from the audience to the professor,

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as crucial to the definition of a lecture as the cues that go from the lecturer to the audience?

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My opening discussion of C. Wright Mills' classic

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1959 book, The Sociological Imagination, was a close reading of the text,

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in which I reviewed a key chapter, line by line.

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I asked students to follow along in their own copies, as I do in the lecture hall.

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When I give this lecture on the Princeton campus, I usually receive a few penetrating questions.

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In this case, however, within a few hours of posting the online version,

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the course forums came alive with hundreds of comments,

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and questions.

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Several days later, there were thousands.

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Although it was impossible for me to read even a fraction of the pages of students' comments

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as they engaged with one another,

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the software allowed me to take note of those that generated the most discussion.

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I was quickly able to see the issues that were most meaningful to my students.

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In addition to the course lectures,

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I arranged live exchanges via a video chat room.

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In which six to eight students from around the world,

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some selected from the online class,

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others volunteers here at Princeton,

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participated with me in a seminar-style discussion of the readings,

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while thousands of their online classmates listened in to the live stream,

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or to recordings later.

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During these weekly sessions,

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I found that I was able to direct the discussion to issues that had been raised in the online postings.

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Along with two Princeton students,

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our online seminar included university students from Nepal,

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Siberia,

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Iran,

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and Nigeria,

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a travel agent from Georgia,

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a civil servant from Singapore,

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and a fireman from Philadelphia.

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Their comments often revealed precisely how American sociology's assumptions about social life

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need to be analyzed and reconstructed in light of experiences elsewhere.

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With so much volume,

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my audience was able to listen to them,

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and my audience became as visible to me as the students in a traditional lecture hall.

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This happened as I got to know them by sampling their comments on the forums

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and in the live seminar-style discussions.

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As I developed a sense for them as people,

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I could imagine their nods and, increasingly, their critical questions.

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Within three weeks,

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I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas

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than I had in a career of teaching,

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which significantly influenced each of my subsequent lectures and seminars.

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Before the class began,

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I had played down this kind of teaching

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as, inevitably, a pale reflection of on-campus learning,

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both in terms of student-faculty interaction

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and the residential college experience.

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Yet, as I got to know some of my students,

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I came to feel that the difference was not of the sort I had imagined.

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For most of them,

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the choice was not between

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an online course and a traditional university.

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It was, as one student put it,

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a choice between online class versus no class.

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Nor had I imagined the virtual and real-time continuous interaction among the students.

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There were spontaneous and continuing in-person study groups

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in coffee shops in Kathmandu and in pubs in London.

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Many people developed dialogues after following one another's posts

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on various subjects,

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while others got to know those with a common particular interest,

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such as racial differences in IQ,

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the prisoner abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib,

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or ethnocentrism,

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all topics covered in the lectures.

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As one of hundreds who posted in the past few days wrote,

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it has been an incredible experience for me,

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one that has not only taught me sociology,

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but the ways in which other cultures think, feel, and respond.

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I have many new friends via this class.

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Another wrote,

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it started as intellectual activity,

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but it's ending in an indescribable emotional relationship

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with all my classmates.

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This is my cue.

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As I prepare to re-enter the lecture hall at Princeton this September,

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and go back online in February,

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I am asking myself

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how I can translate the benefits of online technology

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to enhance the dialogue

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with and among my on-campus students,

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and between them and my online students around the globe.

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I had begun worrying about how I could bring

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the New Jersey campus experience to them.

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I ended by thinking about how to bring the world

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back to the classroom in Princeton.