next »

[misterx]

You've never poured a sequencing gel, have you?

No... but if this, then, remains the last vestiage of the only argument about the pending
dominance of on-line universities... then the Harvard's are, indeed, dying dinosaurs.

It is, actually, only the beginning. However, I'm not interested in explaining it further.  Good luck.

Ah... this must be an example of that classroom wit.
"There is more, but I will not tell you and I will take my toys and go play somewhere else."
Oh... the dinosaur is bellowing.

Come back when you've met the enrollment criteria and have paid you tuition. I'd be happy to educate you.

I really am trying to learn why you think the on-line's are not working.
So... I just met my enrollment criteria... um...yes... I did... and I also paid my tuition... yeah...

So... your turn... educate me.

Explain why the on-lines will not succeed... That is, after all, what this is about.
Go ahead.... I'm listening...

[sanjoaquin]

Hi, forum folk,
I see here an unfortunate polarization of us-and-them, in that there are a wide range of higher education delivery options between the extremes of Phoenix and Harvard that are not being acknowledged here.  Perhaps this is for purposes of discussion, and certainly I do love a good debate, but it hardly seems fair to condemn the many on the basis of the few (on either side of the spectrum - I'm sure there must be virtues to Harvard's ilk...<grin>).

Online, hybrid, and nontraditional student higher education programs have to meet the same accreditation criteria as any other educational organization to receive their accreditation.  If those are substandard criteria, which the DoE is apparently claiming in this week's negotiations with accrediting bodies, then perhaps that is the watershed that needs examining.

In at least one case I know of, the non-trad side of the house got significantly better accreditation ratings than the SLAC with whom it was affiliated.  Quality is about quality...

SanJoaquin

[twofish]

I really am trying to learn why you think the on-line's are not working.

There are some missing pieces that online universities need to put into place in order to teach science.  If you want to teach astronomy, you need to get the students hands on a telescope.  You need to teach the student what it *feels* like to collect data.  You also need to get a student in front of a group of people presenting their results and interacting with the audience.  Again, the purpose is to teach the student what if *feels* like.

This is stuff that you can't do online or simulate.  For example, with telescopes, you need to learn to deal with equipment malfunctions.  With presentations, you need to learn how do deal with pointed and sometimes rude questions.

However.....

There is also nothing that keeps an online university from providing similar experiences through internships and field trips, and online education provides a lot of new ways of arranging things.  If you want to learn astronomy, you can do your course work online off hours while you are actually at an observatory taking data, and you can interact with people that are at other observatories.

The big barrier to this actually has nothing to do with the online nature of the universities, but rather with the fact that they have a business and educational model that discourages community building. 

I'd love to get in contact with other AST 301 instructors at the University of Phoenix and set up field trips to observatories and scientific conferences, but UoP discourages adjuncts from organizing to do that sort of thing, because once you organize to do academic stuff, you will organize to do things like complain about salaries and working conditions.

Explain why the on-lines will not succeed... That is, after all, what this is about.

The problem with places like University of Phoenix is that they have institutional rigidities that are different from the ones at Harvard.  For UoP to seriously compete with Harvard, there are going to have to be some very difficult conversations over the distribution of power in the university, and the people with power at UoP now (the administration and the full time faculty) are going to lose a lot of it to the adjuncts and the alumni. 

Whether UoP is willing to do that or not is their decision, but if they won't, someone else will.

[spork]

I think an indicator of how well online universities are doing is the use of apostrophes in non-possessive plurals by people who should know better.

[misterx]

I think an indicator of how well online universities are doing is the use of apostrophes in non-possessive plurals by people who should know better.

Ain't you, like, so totally clever; like, you know, another example of that academic wit I keep reading about (I was waiting for someone to come in and base an entire rebuttle on casual errors that can be fixed on a first proof read).  Posts like this make me think the system
is dying faster than I thought; posts like this make me really determined not send my kids to, like, traditional academic places.

[whiteknight]

Done right, traditional universities allow students to enter an insular environment in which they are allowed the time and luxury of thinking critically and thoughtfully about issues that affect society. In the humanities, this is particularly, as the emphasis (hopefully) is not just learning material or mastering a set of skills in order to obtain a job, but to encourage critical thinking, analysis, argumentation, explanation, etc. Another added benefit is that people actually talk to each other in person rather than typing on a computer screen, as I am doing now. There is something to be said for the perosnal interaction, which allows discussion to be organic in response to the reading of body language, the introduction of peripheral topics, etc.

IMO, it is difficult to do those things in the scattered way that online education seems to encourage. Let me post for a few minutes here, then go away for a few hours before returning and picking up where I left off. That is not an easy thing to do.

Then again, I am a traditionalist who thinks that higher education should be more humanistic than career-oriented.

[big_giant_head]

I don't think most of us are really all that opposed to each other's ideas here.  For myself, as I stated before, I think online education is great _for some students_.

I'm not in a scientific field, and we have no labs.  In theory, students in my major should be able to read and think and respond to each other and the instructor exactly as well (or poorly) as students do in traditional classrooms. 

But what I see in my experience actually teaching online, and what schools like Phoenix also see but don't like to talk about, is a much higher number of students who simply fade away.  This semester, my class began with 22 students.  A few never logged on or decided to do something else and I was left with 18.  But of this 18, 7 (seven!) are failing because they haven't turned in assignments or participated in discussions.  That's a much higher rate than I see in my CC classes.

Online education is--at least in its current form--isolating.  To do well, a student needs to be highly motivated, able to stick to a schedule even when there are no external cues (no fellow dorm-mates, no faculty one might see on campus and try to hide from, no friends in the bars who are upset about their test scores, etc.), and perhaps most important, they must be able to read and follow directions with very little assistance. 

A recent assessent of adult literacy showed that far fewer than half of Americans with a bachelor's degree can accurately comprehend and summarize a typical newspaper editorial.  This fits with my experience of young college-aged students.  They need a lot of help understanding what they read, especially if it's complex.  (I will also say that having to help with this has caused me to make my assignments much, much clearer, so it's not all bad.)   Until that changes, I think a lot of students who begin an online class will not finish it. 

And that is a problem that technology might not be able to solve.  As for the isolation factor, the only way I can imagine it could be lessened is if there were a group teleconference (with video) required at regular intervals, but that would cancel out one of the main advantages of online ed--being able to work whenever one's schedule permits. 

Clearly, traditional education will change.  I don't think any of are saying it won't.  But we are a gregarious primate species, and online education is going to have to figure out a way to capitalize on that.

[menotti]

Here's an article on why teleconferencing hasn't replaced face-to-face meetings.

http://www.slate.com/id/2158571/fr/flyout

[misterx]

Here's an article on why teleconferencing hasn't replaced face-to-face meetings.

http://www.slate.com/id/2158571/fr/flyout

... yet.

Show the article to your kids 20 years from now after they have been meeting each other on myspace and facebook.

[twofish]

Show the article to your kids 20 years from now after they have been meeting each other on myspace and facebook.

And then flying to conferences to meet in person the people that they have met online....

My experience is that being online actually increases face-to-face communication since you make connections to people that you then want to meet face-to-face, or you meet someone face-to-face and then continue the conversations online.

Where I think the facebook and myspace generation will be different is that they will be much less shy about posting semi-personal details about themselves online.

[msoexpert]

Speaking as someone who teaches both on-campus and online, I don't think that these schools are taking away students.  Why not?  Because many, if not most, of your traditional on-campus schools are now offering online classes.  So whether or not you've got students in the classroom, or online really doesn't matter.  What does matter is that they're attending your school.

So if I teach at one place online or in the classroom, I'm still teaching there and have their students.  But personally, I don't think there's any beating taking classes on-campus with an actual instructor right there with you.  While online learning can be effective and valuable, I still think doing it on-campus is the better way to go.

[misterx]

Speaking as someone who teaches both on-campus and online, I don't think that these schools are taking away students.  Why not?  Because many, if not most, of your traditional on-campus schools are now offering online classes.  So whether or not you've got students in the classroom, or online really doesn't matter.  What does matter is that they're attending your school.

So if I teach at one place online or in the classroom, I'm still teaching there and have their students.  But personally, I don't think there's any beating taking classes on-campus with an actual instructor right there with you.  While online learning can be effective and valuable, I still think doing it on-campus is the better way to go.

Today.

[twofish]

Speaking as someone who teaches both on-campus and online, I don't think that these schools are taking away students.

Not yet, because the online schools are focusing on populations that wouldn't have gone to any school in their absence.  But what will be interesting is to see what happens when the online schools start trying to challenge traditional schools on their home turf.  UoP is interestingly undergoing a round of campus building, and they will end up competing against community colleges.

The question that people need to think about is the situation in ten to twenty years.  Are there any *inherent* reasons why a major online university wouldn't be competing against Harvard in that time, and I can't think of any.

Because many, if not most, of your traditional on-campus schools are now offering online classes.

But the selective universities are slow on this, and it will hurt them.  The basic problem is that the incentives at UoP, community colleges, and state universities encourage serving more students, whereas the incentives for Princeton encourage serving fewer.

But personally, I don't think there's any beating taking classes on-campus with an actual instructor right there with you.

The trouble is that I've seen a lot of courses where the instructor is there in body but not in spirit. 

While online learning can be effective and valuable, I still think doing it on-campus is the better way to go.

I think there is an apples to oranges comparison here.  Off-line courses have not changed much in the last fifty and are unlikely to change in the next fifty, whereas on-line courses have been around for only about ten.  People are merely scratching the surface with on-line learning, and I suspect that twenty years from now, people will be a little shocked at how primitive the tools and systems for online interaction are today. 

[cc_alan]

Those criticisnig on-line universities take the path of criticising what
they see TODAY TODAY TODAY!

I'll play play devil's advocate and say that people who are criticizing traditional colleges and universities are taking the path of criticizing what they see TODAY TODAY TODAY.

Both online and traditional classes are changing. I teach chemistry and I don't see the chemistry lab portion of the general chemistry classes going away for quite some time. Pushing the buttons in a virtual lab is not the same experience as using the equipment and mixing the chemicals together.

The students need to be in a setting with supervision and other students. they need to learn to fix their mistakes and to help each other.

And as for content delivery, the current platforms need serious work. We also need better and cheaper access to broadband.

Alan

[dark_globe]

Speaking as someone who teaches both on-campus and online, I don't think that these schools are taking away students.  Why not?  Because many, if not most, of your traditional on-campus schools are now offering online classes.  So whether or not you've got students in the classroom, or online really doesn't matter.  What does matter is that they're attending your school.

So if I teach at one place online or in the classroom, I'm still teaching there and have their students.  But personally, I don't think there's any beating taking classes on-campus with an actual instructor right there with you.  While online learning can be effective and valuable, I still think doing it on-campus is the better way to go.

It will most certainly be a fusion of the two. To be honest, I don't know why anyone would want to go my college; from my perspective it's a waste of money. I would have preferred to take most of my courses online when I was college age. But we turn down 60 percent of our applicants every year because we can't accomodate them. There is some intangible about the on campus experience that many kids want. I don't understand it myself, but it is definitely real.