My Global Philosophy Course

The Great Books class that I teach on the Web has convinced me: Real learning is possible online.

By Michael S. Roth

When I mention online learning to my colleagues at Wesleyan University, most respond initially with skepticism. But based on my experience, I know that real learning can take place on the Web.

I am currently teaching a massive online open course, or MOOC, on Coursera. Most MOOCs have great attrition, and mine is no exception: There were almost 30,000 students registered at the start, yet 4,000 remain active as we near the end of the semester. Unlike most MOOCs, which focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, mine is a classic humanities course. "The Modern and the Postmodern" starts off in the 18th century with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, and we work our way toward the present.

When I tell people about my course, they often fixate on its size, and I have to admit that initially I was awe-struck by the number and variety of students. Study groups in Bulgaria and India, in Russia and Boston made me giddy at the reach of this kind of class. Yet despite the diversity of my students' academic preparation, age, national origin and economic status, most of their concerns echo those I've heard over many years of teaching: Can I get an extension? My computer ate my homework. I don't like my grade.

But there are other comments that I don't regularly hear in the classroom. One of the more interesting threads on our online discussion board focused on the question: "Why do you feel that you need to learn at all?"

The first response, from a graduate student in the Netherlands, quoted Hegel about knowledge healing the wound that knowing created. Another adult student, in Germany, wrote in about the "runner's high" she got when she understood a difficult text. A young woman in Singapore described the course as "igniting the fire for learning."

Reading the comments on the discussion board or on the class's Facebook page gives me a sense of connection to students I have never met face-to-face. An American woman wrote to me that she was taking the class with her husband and two other couples; all had Ph.D.'s. Politely, they wondered whether I was really committed to connecting the idea of the modern to the Enlightenment, which was not what she remembered being taught in graduate school. They also asked if I would make the video lectures available after the official end of the class. They were falling a little behind and didn't want to miss anything.

This month we organized a Google Hangout in which several students (chosen by lottery) could participate in a free-flowing discussion about the reading and lectures. We recorded the hour long session and made it available to everyone else in the class. Our hangout included people in Calcutta, São Paulo, southwest France and . . . Rhode Island.

The first question from India was about the 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire. We'd talked about his notion of the flâneur, the happy wanderer in the modern city. The Indian student wanted to know how I'd connect this idea to his notion of the way many of our senses can be activated by powerful works of art. The student from Brazil said the week's reading by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ludwig Wittgenstein was "mind blowing," and she asked how their ideas of memory related to those of the other modern authors we'd read.

This hour long, intense discussion wasn't a "massive" conversation; it was a colloquy mediated by technology. Thousands of other students would watch the hangout, and many of them would resume these conversations in different forms—from face-to face meetings in cafes to virtual encounters in online chat rooms.

Students on college campuses weave classes into a holistic learning context that, at its best, can be transformative. I have never expected that my MOOC would be a substitute for the courses I give on campus. But I am sure that many of those enrolled in the online version have also discovered texts and people that are having profound effects on their lives.

Teaching this MOOC has shown me that online courses will be increasingly viable and valuable learning options for those who can't make their way to campuses. Taking a course online is clearly not the same thing as integrating study with residential experience, but it is a powerful mode of learning that is already enriching millions of lives across the globe.

Mr. Roth is president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. and the author of "Memory, Trauma, and History: Essays on Living with the Past" (Columbia University, 2011).