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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,639
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I think this is an interesting discussion of what technology is likely to make a difference in education. http://www.american.com/archive/201...nionated-guide-to-educational-technologyMany-to-One vs. One-to-Many: An Opinionated Guide to Educational Technology By Arnold Kling The American Wednesday, September 12, 2012
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Joined: Feb 2011
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This is a thing of beauty. It's the first time that I have seen a truly balanced write-up of the issues surrounding MOOC implementation. New Yorker: Is College Education Moving Online?This is really fascinating reading-- and as you spend the time, consider what "college education" actually means, particularly in the latter 2/3rd of this (IMO, well-written) article. Peter Burgard is quoted in the article: “To me, college education in general is sitting in a classroom with students, and preferably with few enough students that you can have real interaction, and really digging into and exploring a knotty topic—a difficult image, a fascinating text, whatever. That’s what’s exciting. There’s a chemistry to it that simply cannot be replicated online.” Burgard also worries that MOOCs may slowly smother higher education as a system.
“Imagine you’re at South Dakota State,” he said, “and they’re cash-strapped, and they say, ‘Oh! There are these HarvardX courses. We’ll hire an adjunct for three thousand dollars a semester, and we’ll have the students watch this TV show.’ Their faculty is going to dwindle very quickly. Eventually, that dwindling is going to make it to larger and less poverty-stricken universities and colleges. The fewer positions are out there, the fewer Ph.D.s get hired. The fewer Ph.D.s that get hired—well, you can see where it goes. It will probably hurt less prestigious graduate schools first, but eventually it will make it to the top graduate schools. . . . If you have a smaller graduate program, you can be assured the deans will say, ‘First of all, half of our undergraduates are taking MOOCs. Second, you don’t have as many graduate students. You don’t need as many professors in your department of English, or your department of history, or your department of anthropology, or whatever.’ And every time the faculty shrinks, of course, there are fewer fields and subfields taught. And, when fewer fields and subfields are taught, bodies of knowledge are neglected and die. You can see how everything devolves from there.” This is the concern. Or part of it. One criticism that I have as a physical scientist is the disquieting observation that ALL sciences are now being interpreted as being computer science, or at least amenable to the same pedagogy and goals. That is NOT true. Science is not engineering, and computer science is quite binary in outcomes which makes it far more like engineering than any of the other physical sciences. This is something that most of the people spearheading these MOOC efforts (and even the humanities faculty who are critical of them) simply do not seem to fully appreciate. Science education is just as inherently Socratic as the humanities are. An undergraduate course in synthetic organic chemistry or advanced optics has far more in common with a course in the fine arts than either does one in computer science. Similarly, mathematics. Those are process-driven learning experiences, not outcome-driven ones. They cannot be reduced to multiple-choice right/wrong assessment. No more than the nuanced understanding expressed in a stellar research paper for a philosophy course can be considered in that light. Who in their right mind would possibly make the claim that YouTube is a "performance art" lab class? And yet, this IS what is being claimed by those driving the MOOC movement relentlessly. Frankly, this is about untapped MONEY, not education. It may benefit a segment of the population, all right-- and key among them are younger PG students, but I worry even there about the fact that those autodidacts are missing out on all that an authentic experiential, interactive learning experience can provide. Is Khan Academy really a substitute for all mathematics instruction? Really? If it doesn't work, why not? This is a pretty pressing question at the moment-- and I think, personally, that when you SCRIPT learning to this degree, you've constrained the students mentally to such a degree that all you can really do is rote learning, or solopsism in one's own echo chamber. I don't think that ultimately serves GT students well either. They are often the very students who MOST need higher-level unscripted, unexpected interactions. Removing those messy, unexpected things cheapens education and turns it into operant conditioning. Also addressed in this write-up: data mining, inefficiency driving costs, and a developing two-tiered system. It's a great read. 
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Science education is just as inherently Socratic as the humanities are. An undergraduate course in synthetic organic chemistry or advanced optics has far more in common with a course in the fine arts than either does one in computer science. Similarly, mathematics. Those are process-driven learning experiences, not outcome-driven ones. For at least some science courses, I disagree. If you ace the final exam in quantum mechanics, I don't think it matters much if your undertanding was gained Socratically or by reading and re-reading your QM textbook(s) and doing lots of problems.
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
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Joined: Jul 2012
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Playing devil's advocate here...
I'm finding it interesting that while there are many on this forum who don't like the idea of online degrees because there is little or no interaction which takes away an important aspect of higher education, at the same time I've read through numerous threads that want to reduce college entrance to purely test scores. If a strong portion of the value of education includes direct interaction, should not part of entrance to higher education be demonstrating one's ability to interact effectively?
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It matters a great deal, actually, because one can't ask a textbook a question that it didn't anticipate and get an answer from it that reflects all of the knowledge, expertise, and experience of the presumably erudite author.
You can ask those things of living humans in a teaching/learning environment, however, and get answers. Whether they are good answers or not is not the point (yes, it's important that they be good but not for this particular reason).
Ergo, creative problem-solving, being more than rehashing what you've seen/encountered previously, requires a more thoughtful educational process in order to truly educate.
The other reason why this is important is that the diversity of thought that a master in any field is exposed to when teaching... is truly FUEL for innovation and lifelong learning and exploration for the instructor, too. Even people at Caltech and MIT are learning about new ways to see things when students ASK QUESTIONS.
Ergo, creative problem-solving, being more than rehashing what you've seen/encountered previously, requires a more thoughtful educational process in order to truly educate.
If it were all just about ability to read and absorb it from a book, then nobody would still be TEACHING mathematics or classical mechanics in the first place.
There is also a huge difference between regurgitation and understanding sufficiently to tackle novel problems set before one. Eidectic memory is not mastery. Knowing the PROCESS of working a particular infinite-potential well problem is one thing, but the problem is understanding it well enough to model novelty-- and to recognize when the model is valid, when it isn't, and when it MIGHT be and might not be.
I realize that it seems like science is all right/wrong and very binary, but that is not the case. Textbooks, video clips and canned instructional modules do not capture "yeah, but... what if... what about... what happens if..." questions, and good, engaged students ask those things as they explore.
I think that the push toward MOOC has asked fundamentally wrong questions. It has assumed that the process of learning is inherently autodidactic, and is about absorbing a body of facts and being able to generate "the" answer to questions that one person (or a group of them) has decided are "important" about that body of knowledge.
It has then asked "are there things that cannot be done using this tool?"
Instead, I'd argue (and have, I realize) that the better question is to look at the tool and say "it teaches bodies of information and facts very well. Which fields of study can this be used in?"
There are ways to use this idea in a flipped classroom. But assuming that it can REPLACE classrooms (or interactive learning environments) is simply wrong.
Books didn't manage that, by and large, and neither can MOOC's. The danger is in thinking that they can, because there is a more nuanced difference here-- competence versus mastery.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Playing devil's advocate here...
I'm finding it interesting that while there are many on this forum who don't like the idea of online degrees because there is little or no interaction which takes away an important aspect of higher education, at the same time I've read through numerous threads that want to reduce college entrance to purely test scores. If a strong portion of the value of education includes direct interaction, should not part of entrance to higher education be demonstrating one's ability to interact effectively? Yes, and honestly, I don't think that anyone who is suggesting that there is something very very very wrong with the system is actually intending to imply anything that is inconsistent with that notion. MORE personalized is probably better there. Honestly-- a heavily groomed but merely average student is pretty easily differentiated from an HG one in about ten minutes time by someone who sees a lot of high school students. Just let them talk a while and ask leading questions. LOL. The one sounds like a parrot or someone reading from a teleprompter, and the other like a real person.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Jul 2012
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I can certainly see the benefits of either system. Not everyone who can attend classes in person, yet access TO the class online and doing the mechanical portions of the class still has strong value. I could see different degree designations as a possibility, just as I'd like to see varying High School diplomas that better reflect the accomplishments or areas of focus of the student.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324807704579087840126695698.htmlJob Market Embraces Massive Online Courses: Seeking Better-Trained Workers, AT&T, Google and Other Firms Help Design and Even Fund Web-Based College Classes By DOUGLAS BELKIN and CAROLINE PORTER Wall Street Journal September 26, 2013 Big employers such as AT&T Inc. and Google Inc. are helping to design and fund the latest round of low-cost online courses, a development that providers say will open the door for students to earn inexpensive credentials with real value in the job market.
New niche certifications being offered by providers of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are aimed at satisfying employers' specific needs. Available at a fraction of the cost of a four-year degree, they represent the latest crack in the monopoly traditional universities have in credentialing higher education.
"The common denominator [among the new MOOC certification programs] is that there really is an interest in finding credentials that don't require a student to buy the entire degree," said Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford University computer-science professor who co-founded Udacity, a MOOC with 1.6 million enrolled students in 200 countries. "This is really democratizing education at its best."
MOOCs began gaining wide popularity two years ago when three providers started offering high-quality online courses free to anyone. Millions of people have taken the classes, but most MOOCs don't lead toward degrees or help students land jobs.
That is beginning to change. Last week, Udacity announced the Open Education Alliance, which allows students to earn a free certificate based on a series of online courses developed with input from Google and AT&T, among several other companies.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with its MOOC partner edX, is starting a course sequence called the XSeries, and plans to ask for input from a consortium of about 50 companies, including United Parcel Service Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. For up to $700, students will be able to take a test and earn a "verified certificate" in subjects like computer science and supply-chain management.
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Joined: Sep 2008
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Great idea. Instead of recruiting people and then having to train then, insist that they train at their expense to your specification!
Email: my username, followed by 2, at google's mail
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