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[whipkitty]

ME: So, I am happy to sign your drop form...but can you tell me what is motivating you to drop the class?

STUDENT: Well, even though I didn't answer the question properly and didn't fix what you told me to fix, you gave me a zero and I thought I would get half credit. 

ME: I see.  Is this your first online course?

Student: NO!  [snottily] I have an Associate's Degree from University of Phoenix, so I am well prepared for online courses.

[yemaya]

Oh man...you mean we have to deal with UoP students cropping up in our classes?  Oye.

[whipkitty]

This is my first.  And she is not my problem anymore.  Is anyone else starting to see this?

[yemaya]

I'm new to online teaching, so my experience is limited.  I do have students who think that online education is basically an easy no-effort way to get that piece of paper, and I just flunked a student who cut and pasted her term paper for plagiarism (with my dean's blessing).  Most of them are decent, though.

[blackadder]

Is anyone else starting to see this?

Thankfully no, at the grad school in which I teach. All applications with undergrad degrees from online universities are placed in the circular file. It's an advanced nursing degree so we expect more than the bare minimum of competency to allow them in. Plus, the entrance essay is usually horribly written. Perhaps some online degrees are good. But it doesn't work for nursing as far as I can see.

[yemaya]

Is anyone else starting to see this?

Thankfully no, at the grad school in which I teach. All applications with undergrad degrees from online universities are placed in the circular file. It's an advanced nursing degree so we expect more than the bare minimum of competency to allow them in. Plus, the entrance essay is usually horribly written. Perhaps some online degrees are good. But it doesn't work for nursing as far as I can see.

I did wonder at how an online degree could satisfactorily address the labs required in many of the sciences.  That said, while History courses can have some degree of rigor online, I don't think that they do an adequate job of preparing these undergrads for graduate school...especially at the PhD level.  It's very doubtful that someone with an online degree - even from a reputable brick and mortar school - would get into a tier 1 or tier 2 program.  Then again, the students they attract are traditionally not of the caliber one generally sees of successful applicants to graduate school. 

[fosca]

I've been on search committees that occasionally have candidates who attended graduate school online (we haven't yet found someone who has been online their entire college career--I'm expecting that in the next few years).  As a teaching institution, we tend to not take those very seriously, mostly because these applicants not only don't have teaching experience, but they haven't themselves been taught recently, and thus probably can't even use modelling as a learning technique.
 
I taught a senior-level course at Kaplan one semester.  My students there weren't much different than the first-year students I teach here at the community college in terms of writing and reasoning ability. 

[yemaya]

I taught a senior-level course at Kaplan one semester.  My students there weren't much different than the first-year students I teach here at the community college in terms of writing and reasoning ability.  

This would be a fair assessment of the majority of my current batch of online students.  Some may be closer to first-years at a decent, but not flagship, state college.  Sadly, while most of my students are older than your typical first-years, the maturity factor isn't necessarily all that much different.

[bander40]

I've been on search committees that occasionally have candidates who attended graduate school online (we haven't yet found someone who has been online their entire college career--I'm expecting that in the next few years).  As a teaching institution, we tend to not take those very seriously, mostly because these applicants not only don't have teaching experience, but they haven't themselves been taught recently, and thus probably can't even use modelling as a learning technique.

That raises an interesting question, though. What about teaching positions that require instructors to teach most or all of their courses online? Would candidates with at least some experience taking online courses be better equipped to teach such courses?

[fosca]

Should that ever arise, then online experience would indeed be an asset.  All else being equal, having that kind of experience might make the difference.  But I don't expect we're going to get to that point (of having only online instructors, other than adjuncts) anytime soon.  All of our professors are expected to primarily teach face-to-face, with online teaching secondary.  The general feeling is, we can train good face-to-face teachers to teach online, but we're not so sure that online teachers can teach face-to-face well, particularly at first.

We do look at online teaching/learning experience when evaluating candidates.  And again, it might make a difference.  But all online (particularly since I have yet to be really impressed by the online programs I've seen) is a whole 'nother animal.

[yemaya]

I have one this term...a UoP alum.  Good grief.  I also have a racist who doesn't want to study slavery or any "ugly" parts of history, a guy who listed about 30 interests in his introduction followed with a pronouncement that he was smart and always succeeds and an aspiring TSA agent.  Booyah.

[proftowanda]

I just talked with one today, a prospective student, a veteran who did an associate's degree online.

She is having trouble coping because she has horrible writing skills, which are holding her back on her job, too.

I have to wonder, with so much of online work reliant on writing, about that online university.  (One of which I never had heard before.)  On the other hand, I have for years had veterans who did a lot of online work through the U of Maryland, apparently a pioneer in online courses for veterans, and those students were fine.

[lyndonparker]

While I tend to be very skeptical about online education, I guess I could see its value for an MA degree. But a BA or PhD? Forget about it.

[hipgeek]

While I tend to be very skeptical about online education, I guess I could see its value for an MA degree. But a BA or PhD? Forget about it.

I'm not disagreeing with you but I'd be interested to hear more about why you think this.  Is it because the MA would be shorter than the BA and PhD and requires students to have already have had face to face experience...?

I love the idea of online teaching and I'm hoping the system improves over time and becomes more like another wonderful way to share knowledge rather than a scam/ scheme/ means to an end.  However, since I've never taught online I can't say for sure what it's like beyond cultural perceptions.  I've taken two on-line courses myself and both were relatively easy (one prof had clearly checked out, which kind of sucked but the other had lively discussion, probably more than you'd get in a face to face classroom where students aren't always quite as accountable for speaking up about every single reading).  Though I found my online undergrad courses easy, I thought face to face classes were easy as well and the discussions were not always as varied. 

[neutralname]

Like it or not, online degrees are only going to grow in popularity.  So we either learn to teach them well and evaluate which institutions are doing a good job with them, or we can stamp our feet.  

I just noticed that the Walden University online Ph.D. in Management is ACBSP accredited.  I wonder if they have separate criteria for accreditation of online programs.