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The idea of students working largely on their own, getting canned instruction (either printed or video) and getting automated feedback as they work problems, has been around for a long time. I don't know if it is unpopular because
(1) it does not work well for most students -- they need live instruction or feedback (2) school administrators don't want some students getting much ahead of others (3) automating instruction threatens teacher employment
According to this paper, to which I do not have access, programmed instruction is unpopular for reasons (3) and maybe (2) but not (1).
The Programmed Instruction Era: When Effectiveness Mattered by Michael Molenda TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, v52 n2 p52-58 Mar-Apr 2008 Abstract: Programmed instruction (PI) was devised to make the teaching-learning process more humane by making it more effective and customized to individual differences. B.F. Skinner's original prescription was modified by later innovators to incorporate more human interaction, social reinforcers and other forms of feedback, larger and more flexible chunks of instruction, and more attention to learner appeal. Although PI itself has receded from the spotlight, technologies derived from PI, such as programmed tutoring, Direct Instruction, and Personalized System of Instruction have compiled an impressive track record of success when compared to so-called conventional instruction, paving the way for computer-based instruction and distance learning. PI innovators developed methods of instruction that were amenable to objective examination, testing, and revision, welcoming empirical testing of their products and demanding it of others. Today, the PI legacy lives on, mainly in corporate and military training, where efficiency and effectiveness matter because savings in learning time and cost have direct bearing on the well-being of the organization. As public purse strings tighten, the day may come when learning time and learning costs are subjected to close accountability in public school and university education also.
The first two pages of the paper are at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11528-008-0136-y#page-1
Yes, it works for some types of learning. But I'd also submit that the current version of it incorporates far LESS interactive feedback than human-based feedback mechanisms once did.
The part of the feedback loop which is important is time-dependent. I don't have the reference handy, but that is something that PI/online-learning proponents have touted as a reason to demonstrate that it works BETTER than "conventional" instruction. One problem is that they don't bother to tell what they mean by "conventional" instruction, and often when you dig into this research, the "conventional" methods look very little like moderate classroom practices.
Computers can monitor students’ facial expressions and evaluate their engagement or frustration, according to North Carolina State researchers. That could help teachers track students’ understanding in real time, notes MIT Technology Review.
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Perhaps it could even help massively open online courses (or MOOCs), which can involve many thousands of students working remotely, to be more attuned to students’ needs. It also hints at what could prove to be a broader revolution in the application of emotion-sensing technology. Computers and other devices that identify and respond to emotion—a field of research known as “affective computing”—are starting to emerge from academia. They sense emotion in various ways; some measure skin conductance, while others assess voice tone or facial expressions.
The NC State experiment involved college students who were using JavaTutor software to learn to write code. The monitoring software’s conclusions about students’ state of mind matched their self reports closely. “Udacity and Coursera have on the order of a million students, and I imagine some fraction of them could be persuaded to turn their webcams on,” says Jacob Whitehill, who works at Emotient, a startup exploring commercial uses of affective computing. “I think you would learn a lot about what parts of a lecture are working and what parts are not, and where students are getting confused.”
Computers can play chess, drive cars, answer Jeopardy questions, and do lots of other complicated things better than humans can. In the long run I think they will teach many subjects better.
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
I’ve been collecting Massively Online Open Cours (MOOC) blog posts for a while now, with the intent of doing a careful response to each. There have gotten to be so many that I can’t do a careful response to each. At best, I’ll do a short summary or critique of each one. If the number of links here is overwhelming (as it was for me in writing this post), read the summaries to pick out a few that seem likely to be worth your time.
Shall we count the ways? Books are mobile, ubiquitous and comprehensive. A student devoting the requisite time and attention to a book will acquire as complete an understanding of the course material as from a MOOC. For the most part, books covering material in any course are readily available in libraries -- and where an older edition suffices (as it does for most courses) can be purchased at minimal cost.
Books are available throughout the world, and if we count the number of people who riffle through the pages of a new book (riffling being the equivalent of the tens of thousands of people who try a MOOC and drop it at once), books readily qualify the “massive” designation as well.
Students can, and have, mastered college courses studying alone from books, and the same will be true for MOOCs. More likely will be the use of MOOCs as supplementary and support material for a conventional course -- again, just like books. It also follows that the same kind of students who come to class unprepared, not having read the text, will probably come to class not having followed a MOOC.
In essence, MOOCs and books are part of a continuum. MOOCs aren’t a new technology as much as an improved technology. Just as a frame of reference, the excitement surrounding MOOCs resembles the hype that welcomed television as a teaching medium.
I agree with the author that books and MOOCs have many similarities, but access to information about books and curricula on the Internet can make a big difference. Twenty years ago I was a good math and physics student, but I had no idea what textbooks were used in college by physics and math majors (for example "Electricity and Magnetism" by Purcell and Calculus by Apostol). They are qualitatively different books from what I had studied. Students who have exhausted the offerings at their high school can get much information about what lies beyond.
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
Most recently (in the past 3 years), in local public high schools (in CA) where there are budget cuts and lack of funding for several programs, school managements adopted the "flipped classroom" model in order to cover as much academics as possible with the least number of teachers on their payroll. As you said, automating instruction threatens teacher employment, and in this case, actually helped when a lot of the teachers got laid off.
