Defining a Third Dimension in Online Learning
Three friends have forwarded me the link to a NY Times article "Online Courses, Still Lacking That Third Dimension." It was written by Randall Stross, "an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University."
He kicks it off with a sentence that must have caught their attention: "When colleges and universities finally decide to make full use of the Internet, most professors will lose their jobs."
He is talking about online courses, but you need to look at his definitions.
He says that he "began teaching classes online 10 years ago" but then defines his online teaching as being hybrid - "part software, part hovering human."
Then what is an "online" course? For him, a "genuine online course would be nothing but the software and would handle all the grading, too. No living, breathing instructor would be needed for oversight."
Does anyone have those courses at their college? Is that how you would define a genuine online course?
I don't think that the examples given - from the Gates Foundation vision, to the Open Learning Initiative, back to Plato software in 1960 - would really be attempts to get to courses without instructors. Even the "computer-aided instruction" and CBT that was once a big topic, seems to have pretty much disappeared from discussions.
There are online offerings of course materials without instructors. Academic Earth and Open Courseware sites from MIT and other universities offer videos, syllabi, assignments and presentations, but I have never heard them presented as an online course.
In fact, whenever I talk to faculty about using such sites, it's as a resource for themselves to see what is being done in their discipline elsewhere.
"And why would professors give up their "intellectual property" online?" is something other less-open professors will always ask me? Besides the openness concept, I think it's partially because they know that having the materials is not having the course experience with the original teacher. A student using MIT's OCW is not getting an MIT education.
Stross mentions the book Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses
by Taylor Walsh which I have added to my to-read list. The book looks at the OCW efforts by MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the University of California, Berkeley, and others. What piqued my interest was the comment that "course credit can be earned at other institutions" if instructors send their students to these OCW sites. I was not aware that students could pay registration fees ($15-60) to Carnegie Mellon and the university would send "data about each student’s progress" to the instructor at the student’s home institution.
That third dimension of teacher and student interaction may not be the biggest change that this online content will drive. When courses are offered without credit or degrees, I think we are moving towards School 2.0. That school (high school through graduate) is one that exists in a world that does not value a degree as much as before.
As businesses begin to prefer new employees with good learning skills who can be easily taught what they need to know on the job, I think the degree will lose favor. Certifications and credits will still have value because we will need to validate the student's work, but the degree itself will lose its value.
The dimension of engagement with the instructor and with other students in the class will still be valuable in this School 2.0. It certainly is valuable in online courses. It is frequently the missing element in those courses and a reason why students feel disconnected and we see high dropout rates online.
I have been designing, teaching and taking courses online since 2000. I teach in a graduate degree program that is earned entirely online. But there is a teacher and a high level of interaction in all the courses. If all it took to educate someone was to deliver content, we would have never developed the schools we have. If all it took to put a course online was to deliver the content online, the concept of online learning would have disappeared years ago.
Are there face-to-face courses that lack that third dimension? Yes. Are there online courses that lack that third dimension? Yes. Are there differences between the two? Yes.
He kicks it off with a sentence that must have caught their attention: "When colleges and universities finally decide to make full use of the Internet, most professors will lose their jobs."
He is talking about online courses, but you need to look at his definitions.
He says that he "began teaching classes online 10 years ago" but then defines his online teaching as being hybrid - "part software, part hovering human."
Then what is an "online" course? For him, a "genuine online course would be nothing but the software and would handle all the grading, too. No living, breathing instructor would be needed for oversight."
Does anyone have those courses at their college? Is that how you would define a genuine online course?
I don't think that the examples given - from the Gates Foundation vision, to the Open Learning Initiative, back to Plato software in 1960 - would really be attempts to get to courses without instructors. Even the "computer-aided instruction" and CBT that was once a big topic, seems to have pretty much disappeared from discussions.
There are online offerings of course materials without instructors. Academic Earth and Open Courseware sites from MIT and other universities offer videos, syllabi, assignments and presentations, but I have never heard them presented as an online course.
In fact, whenever I talk to faculty about using such sites, it's as a resource for themselves to see what is being done in their discipline elsewhere.
"And why would professors give up their "intellectual property" online?" is something other less-open professors will always ask me? Besides the openness concept, I think it's partially because they know that having the materials is not having the course experience with the original teacher. A student using MIT's OCW is not getting an MIT education.
Stross mentions the book Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses
by Taylor Walsh which I have added to my to-read list. The book looks at the OCW efforts by MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the University of California, Berkeley, and others. What piqued my interest was the comment that "course credit can be earned at other institutions" if instructors send their students to these OCW sites. I was not aware that students could pay registration fees ($15-60) to Carnegie Mellon and the university would send "data about each student’s progress" to the instructor at the student’s home institution.That third dimension of teacher and student interaction may not be the biggest change that this online content will drive. When courses are offered without credit or degrees, I think we are moving towards School 2.0. That school (high school through graduate) is one that exists in a world that does not value a degree as much as before.
As businesses begin to prefer new employees with good learning skills who can be easily taught what they need to know on the job, I think the degree will lose favor. Certifications and credits will still have value because we will need to validate the student's work, but the degree itself will lose its value.
The dimension of engagement with the instructor and with other students in the class will still be valuable in this School 2.0. It certainly is valuable in online courses. It is frequently the missing element in those courses and a reason why students feel disconnected and we see high dropout rates online.
I have been designing, teaching and taking courses online since 2000. I teach in a graduate degree program that is earned entirely online. But there is a teacher and a high level of interaction in all the courses. If all it took to educate someone was to deliver content, we would have never developed the schools we have. If all it took to put a course online was to deliver the content online, the concept of online learning would have disappeared years ago.
Are there face-to-face courses that lack that third dimension? Yes. Are there online courses that lack that third dimension? Yes. Are there differences between the two? Yes.
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