Online courses need feminist teaching styles.

Students like online courses for the flexibility they offer around a busy life. Schools like them because they save on the costs of bricks and mortar. But can online courses match traditional classrooms for educational quality? That depends on how they're taught.

Just posting lecture notes and assignments online won't do it. Neither will allowing huge enrollments per class, a temptation for schools looking for a cash cow.

Dr. Mary K. Culver, associate clinical professor of educational leadership at Northern Arizona University, teaches students over a broad expanse. Many are Native Americans in rural areas. Bringing courses via computer creates new educational opportunities.

Her challenge has been to make sure students learn as much or more than they would in a classroom setting. She's done that by applying feminist pedagogy--not bra-burning or a political stance, but a discussion-based approach built around experience, voice and empowerment.

Culver compared student evaluations from three online courses she taught this way and a fourth, taken over from another professor who'd set it up along more traditional lines. The results affirmed the value of feminist methods for distance learners, she said at the Women in Educational Leadership Conference in Lincoln NE in October.

Her online courses value student experience as a source of learning. They encourage students to make meaning by relating the information from the instructor to their lives and emotions. That's how learning happens, she said.

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