Post by jeffolie on Aug 2, 2013 7:39:44 GMT -6
Online education doesn't work for every student: Editorial
08/01/2013
Online education is a nominally good idea that is fast proving itself as problematic as ... well, most other supposed revolutions in pedagogy.
Just because a new concept is part of the technological miracle -- changing the way we communicate, work and learn -- doesn't mean that it's better, any more than an e-book on your Kindle is better than a tattered paperback. There is packaging, and there is content. And sometimes the former can spoil the latter.
Two of the latest troubling reports about online learning at the college level came last month. First, San Jose State University suspended its relationship with the online teaching company Udacity after it found out that more than half of the students in those classes failed to pass the courses. That is a simply abysmal record, the likes of which would never be tolerated in a traditional classroom setting. Then, in a commentary published in the Los Angeles Daily News, a Cal State Northridge professor reported an alarming increase in cheating in the classes she is now teaching online.
"This past semester, I caught quite a few of my students at Cal State Northridge engaging in academic dishonesty -- more so than I've ever seen in my 17½-year tenure" at the school, reported sociologist Kristyan Kouri.
She ties that to the huge numbers of students she is now required to oversee, with no increase in help in grading their tests and papers.
The problem is the lack of face-to-face interaction between teacher and student: "As a result, one can never be sure that the students are doing their own work ..."
Online education is by no means an entire disaster that can be dismissed because of these early problems. In fact, it holds great promise when properly used. Millions of eager students around the world who formerly had little access to higher learning have availed themselves of classes they otherwise would never have been able to take because of scheduling and geographic problems.
Highly motivated learners with technical skills do particularly well with the online format. But online classes may not work well for everyone. Many of those students in the Udacity program, which had been highly touted by Gov. Jerry Brown, were in fact not formally San Jose State students themselves, but rather high schoolers from underprivileged backgrounds trying to get a leg up before they entered college. And that was part of the problem. Many, according to a Los Angeles Times story, were from an institution called the Oakland Military Institute, a supposed "college prep academy," and didn't even have access to their own computers, a fact teachers only learned three weeks into the semester. The problems of plagiarism at Northridge are part of a troubling trend exacerbated by access to search engines that has nothing to do as such with classes being taught online.
But it's becoming increasingly clear that for some courses there is no substitute for gathering teachers and students in a physical classroom in so-called real time -- getting to know one another, being able to ask questions as they come up, even for professors to be able to read the body language of a student that indicates she or he is puzzled about material. Some big lecture-hall classes are probably just as well taught through a computer screen. Some intensive seminars will always be better real-face-to-real-face.
www.presstelegram.com/opinions/ci_23779696/online-education-doesnt-work-every-student-editorial
08/01/2013
Online education is a nominally good idea that is fast proving itself as problematic as ... well, most other supposed revolutions in pedagogy.
Just because a new concept is part of the technological miracle -- changing the way we communicate, work and learn -- doesn't mean that it's better, any more than an e-book on your Kindle is better than a tattered paperback. There is packaging, and there is content. And sometimes the former can spoil the latter.
Two of the latest troubling reports about online learning at the college level came last month. First, San Jose State University suspended its relationship with the online teaching company Udacity after it found out that more than half of the students in those classes failed to pass the courses. That is a simply abysmal record, the likes of which would never be tolerated in a traditional classroom setting. Then, in a commentary published in the Los Angeles Daily News, a Cal State Northridge professor reported an alarming increase in cheating in the classes she is now teaching online.
"This past semester, I caught quite a few of my students at Cal State Northridge engaging in academic dishonesty -- more so than I've ever seen in my 17½-year tenure" at the school, reported sociologist Kristyan Kouri.
She ties that to the huge numbers of students she is now required to oversee, with no increase in help in grading their tests and papers.
The problem is the lack of face-to-face interaction between teacher and student: "As a result, one can never be sure that the students are doing their own work ..."
Online education is by no means an entire disaster that can be dismissed because of these early problems. In fact, it holds great promise when properly used. Millions of eager students around the world who formerly had little access to higher learning have availed themselves of classes they otherwise would never have been able to take because of scheduling and geographic problems.
Highly motivated learners with technical skills do particularly well with the online format. But online classes may not work well for everyone. Many of those students in the Udacity program, which had been highly touted by Gov. Jerry Brown, were in fact not formally San Jose State students themselves, but rather high schoolers from underprivileged backgrounds trying to get a leg up before they entered college. And that was part of the problem. Many, according to a Los Angeles Times story, were from an institution called the Oakland Military Institute, a supposed "college prep academy," and didn't even have access to their own computers, a fact teachers only learned three weeks into the semester. The problems of plagiarism at Northridge are part of a troubling trend exacerbated by access to search engines that has nothing to do as such with classes being taught online.
But it's becoming increasingly clear that for some courses there is no substitute for gathering teachers and students in a physical classroom in so-called real time -- getting to know one another, being able to ask questions as they come up, even for professors to be able to read the body language of a student that indicates she or he is puzzled about material. Some big lecture-hall classes are probably just as well taught through a computer screen. Some intensive seminars will always be better real-face-to-real-face.
www.presstelegram.com/opinions/ci_23779696/online-education-doesnt-work-every-student-editorial