The rise of online education
How many of you have taken a college course online, or taken one where the instructor supplemented traditional classroom instruction with discussion boards, chat rooms, etc? Nearly all of my courses are now connected to programs like Blackboard, providing a way for profs to hand out course material without making copies. A recent article in the New York Times muses about whether the popularity of online courses (primarily among community colleges) is a bold advance, or problematic for robust education.
The author poses several excellent questions:
What kind of content works best online, and what gets lost in translation? Which instructors and students function best in the virtual classroom? What happens to all those brick-and-mortar dormitories? How do you calculate the price of tuition?
Right now, I’m teaching a logic class online, to a group of community college students. We’re using a textbook that comes packaged with a logic program and a link to a website where students can get additional help. The way the class has been taught previously, instructor presentation of material was minimal. But I found that even the best students seemed to be struggling to apply the concepts.
While programs that have students drag and drop terms of arguments are very visually appealing, they can turn logic into a multiple-choice puzzle. Eventually, even without knowing why, you can get the “right” answer. So I began to design some plain-English language summaries of the chapters and give a few practical pointers on how to do the homework (without the computer program). The results of these changes will show up on the next chapter exam, but I think it’s been helpful.
I’ve also had online “office hours” where I can chat with students. A course like this, which focuses on propositional knowledge, lends itself easily to this sort of help session. I would rather have a whiteboard to diagram on, but all of the students who have come to visit have found the time helpful. And that brings us to the question–what kinds of students and instructors benefit from these courses?
Starting with around twenty students, the roster has diminished to just over fifteen. Of those, there are a few who are genuinely struggling. In an online course, the instructor has to take the initiative to find out why. Or the student needs to contact the instructor. If either party does not have the motivation to reach out and make more than passing contact (via discussion boards), educational opportunities disappear quickly. As well, because there is no set meeting time for the class, students can move at their own pace. If they want to work through the entire course in a few weeks, they can.
For the exceptionally organized and motivated, this frees them up to do other things. But for those students who have problems remembering deadlines, the class can quickly become “out of sight, out of mind.”
At least for my style of instruction, which relies heavily on getting students to buy into the value of what is being taught, an online logic course has a handicap. I have to convey my excitement verbally, without any benefit of body language. As much as logic texts try, it’s very difficult to get students interested in paragraphs that seem to have no connection to the “real world.” And at a community college, explaining why a class fits with the students’ goals is crucial.
So, while I can see the benefit for community colleges moving to online courses, I think it’s a tricky proposition. I would require (as my employer does) students to have demonstrated a certain level of academic maturity by attaining a threshold GPA before they can sign up. And I think instructors need to have significant training in what kinds of educational techniques translate best in an online environment. The little things we rely upon in the classroom–humor, facial expressions, connections with students–are extracted from a purely written exchange of information. Perhaps YouTube style video lectures could help, or Skype chat sessions.
Any thoughts?
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