I had an excellent, thought-provoking discussion last week at UC San Diego courtesy of iGrad with a really well-chosen group of professors: Dr. Beyer of National University, a nonprofit online university that is the second-largest private institution in California; Dr. Allison Rossett, a professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State; Joe Safdie, a poet who teaches at San Diego Mesa Community college; and Monte Johnson, a philosophy prof at UCSD whose field is Aristotle.
Johnson was especially good to have on the panel because he's a principled, absolutist opponent of online education. He said repeatedly that while he could abide the use of hybrid models and online resources to supplement the classroom experience, he thought it was "absurd" to pretend that a degree granted entirely online could possibly approach the quality of one in the traditional classroom. He handed out a Xerox (not available online) of a list of references to research critical of the quality of online classes; on the opposite side was this letter signed by hundreds of professors objecting to Washington State's "2020 Commission on the Future of Higher Education" , strenuously objecting to the commission's recommendations about accountability, productivity, and increased availability of online classes.
It's easy to satirize the position of someone defending the status quo, who trivializes and dismisses "education by CD-ROM and internet" out of motives that include inherent conservativism and fear of losing one's own job and respected position in society. There was more than a whiff of that spirit in the room. But I think Johnson made some really good points that should be taken under consideration, not to stall this transformation but to guide it.
1) Open educational resources don't equal education. Access to a video of a lecture is not the same as access to a class. Content is infrastructure -- the first step.
2) We can't codify exactly what might be lost in the transition from online to in-person learning, but it pays to look at what goes on in the classroom really really closely so we can either replicate it or enhance it in the online environment, or supplement it with real-world experience in hybrid models. At one point I asked Johnson what it is exactly that he does in his philosophy class that he thinks can't be done online. "Do you teach through the laying on of hands?" No, he said, but I look people in the eye, I call on them, we converse back and forth. Safdie mentioned then that he teaches through videoconference, which also involves a form of eye contact; platforms like Moodle allow for plenty of either real-time text-based chat or posting on a Facebook-like wall, which seems like a fine way to discuss philosophy to me -- not too different in fact from the promulgation of ideas through a series of written papers in dialogue with each other, like at a symposium for example.
3) From the Washington letter: "One of the problems with the newest crop of distance-learning institutions is that they are motivated entirely by profit."
This is true. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Public institutions need to get involved in defining online education or it will be defined for them by a set of institutions with very different agendas.
4) "In reality a privileged few will continue to enjoy the personal and economic benefits of face-to-face instruction at schools like Stanford, UC Berkeley, and M.I.T. The less fortunate citizens of our state will make do with downsized and underfunded campuses or settle for inferior and dehumanizing "virtual" alternatives."
The thought of a two-tiered system like this makes me queasy. Online-enabled higher education doesn't have to be inferior or dehumanizing. It can represent the best of what education has to offer today. Yet there's a danger that this will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The DIY U future allows community college students anywhere in the country to access the same number of library books, the same lectures and course materials as are available at MIT and Stanford. It can also allow students to collaborate across institutions and form networks of peers and mentors outside the state and city where they happen to live and go to school. In this way there's a potential to overcome old hierarchies. But it's not a given that things will turn out this way.
The reality today is that students with the fewest resources are at the institutions with the fewest resources, and that those who are accessing online-only educational programs are doing so largely because they have to work while they go to school.
If people who care about both quality and equality in higher education don't get deeply involved in the use of technology to stretch the resources we have in order to educate everyone to the best of our ability and their abilities, then the future will be shaped by people with worse motives and visions.
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Andrew K. Miller: Online Education: A Word of Caution
I don't need a babysitter to get my assignments completed online, but I do miss the pretty girl who sat next to me in English 121.
I'm not against online education. However, what happens online tends to be about information, not education. The difference matters; informed, I make better decisions, but to stretch my boundaries of thought, I have to be educated. And that's a process that needs the durability of personal relationship.
at the end of the day, everyone learns differently. I know my needs for learning are much different than my co-workrs, my friends, my family.
My mom, who is still trying to raise two 14 year olds, is enrolled in an online school. I am so proud of her and for her this totally makes sense. She is so busy with the kids and their schedules and taking care of my grandfather, that the liberty that online school gives is incredible.
I on the other end want the human interaction and I want the structure. And I want to know the face behind the assignments and the information. However, online classes may be in my future...we shall see.
Then the "interaction with peers" argument. Adults with a full-time job, family, hobbies, and church don't need any more peer interaction in their lives. They certainly don't need the social network of a group of 17-21 year-old 'tweens' found in the traditional classroom. These online programs and for-profits are serving an entirely different audience that doesn't generally include those 17-21 year-old students.
How about the interaction with professors? We're talking about the sort of interaction gained from sitting in a lecture hall while a 23 year-old grad student that has yet to see "the real world" teaches some veterans all about history, other cultures, or politics or teaches the general manager at the local plant about how business works in a text book. Is that really appropriate?
Then the for-profit argument. I'll bite, what part of being a for-profit impacts educational outcomes differently than being a non-profit or public? We're talking about a mode of operation and tax status, not pedagogical methods. If we want to argue that some of these use poor methods then let's say so.
I'm just biased, I suppose, having had generally poor experiences with traditional brick and mortar institutions. I have an online degree, and I only felt the need to take one class on campus. I won't go back for an MBA; I don't see what value that would add to my life or career.
I would love to see online schools become just as prestigious as colleges and not something put into place just for convienence. I also hope that undergrad schools do not move to online. I think that would really hurt young students who need human interaction to mature and teachers to look up to as role models.
That 40 year old retired USMC vet also goes to college. How does he benefit from socializing with students the age of his children? He and those like him are who these programs are really suited for. We need to remember that college isn't "advanced high school" and there is no upper age limit in there.
hope that clears up some issues...
Also, two things I’ve noticed that in my on-line classes I don’t feel like another number like the big universities and all of my professors answer my questions in clear English.
I have five degrees at the bachelor's and master's level - earned traditionally, online, and hybrid from tier-1 to tier-4 and including one "unranked". I'm here to share that the online experience wasn't the poorest education, it was among the better. One of my 'in-the-seat' traditionals was the most tremendous waste of time and money you can imagine.
My real point though; if you haven't done both then it doesn't matter what you think about them because you have no real frame of reference. How many of the anti-online critics have done both? For that matter, how many have done either in the 21st century?
A little improvement, please.
Harris Miller, president of the Career Colleges Association “tries to remind reporters "that for profit is a tax status, not a financial status. Harvard has to run a profit every year. Otherwise, they'd shut down." He reminds his critics in not-for-profit education that "I don't think it's in our collective best interest to be shouting at each other." For-profits, he said, are "serving a group of students who have been abandoned by the higher education system."
For-profits charge more than state universities but less than private universities, at least in terms of sticker price. For-profit students tend to carry more debt after completion than their counterparts in other sectors. That's partly because for-profit students are more likely self-supporting and, well, poor.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/05/for-profits_frontline_and_coll.html#more