Students must wrestle with the books; they must write about them; they must respond to their classmates and the instructor’s ideas and see how they fit into or reflect their own. In a virtual way, it is close to the kind of instruction traditionally given at Oxford, where a small group of students meets with a tutor, gets reading and writing assignments, and then returns to discuss them. That’s how we do it. Mediated by the online environment, our discussions must be composed and framed and put forth. Each week, the students read one or two titles together and one or two others from a list of choices, and we argue themes and uses as well as pleasures. We bring in reviews, criticisms, searching, and scholarship, but all the while our focus is on these books, to instruct and to delight. In order for it to work, students must be willing to put all that thought in writing and online, just as in a live seminar a student must participate in order for the discussion to blossom.

There are many ways that I prefer online teaching to teaching live. One of those reasons is the powerful use of writing responses in a forum where everyone else’s responses are visible, so a vibrant exchange can take place.

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