Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments The Trouble with Online College

Sorry, but such a conclusion is warranted only if College = Harvard. Is Harvard representative of "college" in the generic sense? Definitely not; not all higher ed is interchangeable. Such information is only suggestive of the idea that an HARVARD's major purpose is filtering. That tends to occur at the admissions proceedings in most selective Ivies. That's a different model than one finds at public colleges, by the way, where virtually anyone can GET in, but staying there may be another story. Faculty control who "stays" in the latter model, via course rigor and the avoidance of grade inflation. (It's a mixed bag, I'm aware... administrator want to keep EVERYONE, and your alumni want you to throw the stragglers under the bus.)

This isn't much of a secret in higher ed, by the way.

The biggest luminaries in the field are often abysmal teachers within the same field. Places which don't identify with "home of {insert luminary name here}" tend to focus on scholarship or teaching in less celebrity/brand-driven ways. The single worst seminar I ever attended was given by a much-lauded Nobel winner-- while it's anecdote, it also disproves the notion that being excited, intellectually superb, and knowledgeable is enough to transform someone into a riveting instructor.


Also-- acquiring knowledge isn't exactly synonymous with learning or gaining understanding, which explains the misgivings that most faculty have with the online model.
This goes along with Val's insights about non-content specialists helping with course development. Theoretically, that seems great... but in practice, it has ALWAYS been more or less disastrous in post-secondary to involve "educator" types in the development of course content.

There really are plenty of PhD's out there who are excellent educators. I worked with a department that was about 75% excellent educators, and before that at a research institution which was something like 40-50% good educators at the undergrad level.

By the time I earned my PhD, I'd effectively already completed a teaching post-doc. Right from the beginning, the "machine" of Gen Chem there hand-picked the most capable TA's, and ditched the ones that were awful. I'd taught gen chem, I'd revamped a lab manual for that course (yes, my name is still on it), and I'd also taught a summer session majors course in analytical chemistry. So I was well-prepared. I was a good teacher-- and the good ones get "rewarded" in grad programs with teaching experience that goes on their vitae. This is how they get faculty positions.

Or it used to be, before tenure started to go away in favor of hiring adjuncts as low-cost contract temp labor. Meh.

Sorry, but my personal opinion is that the corporatization of higher ed is what is driving the conversion to online. It has never been about "need." At least not STUDENT needs. Administrators see dollar signs, and they are eager to leap-- just as they have been in converting entire departments to adjunct staffing in teaching loads. One problem... who is supposed to be counseling and advising students? Who writes them letters of recommendation later for professional and graduate programs? Who do those students go to for help or extension activities?

I agree with the above but think that online courses with safeguards against cheating (which also occurs at residential schools) may be able to filter as well as residential schools. I do not count on this happening (and employers recognizing this) by the time my children go to college in about a decade, but when their children graduate from high school ...

I agree with some of HowlerKarma's points. Online learning is a gift for those of us who, by temperament, prefer to teach ourselves from, say, written materials and consider supplements (like a live lecture) as a nice-to-have, not a prerequisite to learning. The NYT piece focused on the failure of online learning for struggling students, which seems to be a sound point: I would think that struggling students by definition need engagement and a different set of learning strategies.

HK: I still haven't figured out how to answer you. Hmm.

Thinkin'

-Mich

Consistent with the NYT editorial:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcam...en-achievement-gaps-among-students/42521

Online Courses Could Widen Achievement Gaps Among Students
February 21, 2013, 4:28 pm

By Jake New
Low-cost online courses could allow a more-diverse group of students to try college, but a new study suggests that such courses could also widen achievement gaps among students in different demographic groups.

The study, which is described in a working paper titled “Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas,” was conducted by Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. The researchers examined 500,000 courses taken by more than 40,000 community- and technical-college students in Washington State. They found that students in demographic groups whose members typically struggle in traditional classrooms are finding their troubles exacerbated in online courses.

The study found that all students who take more online courses, no matter the demographic, are less likely to attain a degree. However, some groups—including black students, male students, younger students, and students with lower grade-point averages—are particularly susceptible to this pattern.

Online tools can be used at a residential campus to track students' progress and suggest that a human intervene, as described in an NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/e...to-the-opportunities-of-data-mining.html
Big Data on Campus
By MARC PARRY
Published: July 18, 2012

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
By STEVE LOHR
New York Times
AUGUST 19, 2009, 1:08 PM

A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.

Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,” said Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.

*****************************************

This NYT article from 2009 is more optimistic about online education than the recent NYT editorial. The article refers to
this study:

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf
Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in
Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and
Review of Online Learning Studies
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development
Policy and Program Studies Service
Revised September 2010
Prepared by
Barbara Means
Yukie Toyama
Robert Murphy
Marianne Bakia
Karla Jones
Center for Technology in Learning

Abstract
A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than
a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that
(a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c)
used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect
size. As a result of this screening, 50 independent effects were identified that could be subjected
to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning
conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The
difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the
difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was
larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face
instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended
conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by
students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with
blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the
small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning
conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to
the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other
settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

Autodidact Scott Young decided to work though all the MIT classes one needs for a degree in computer science (doing the programming assignments and taking the final exams) in one year, as he describes at
http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/ .

Some bright and motivated people can learn at a much faster pace than educational institutions, even MIT, currently allow.
One thing Young did to speed his progress was play lectures at 150% of the speed at which they were given and rewinding when necessary. This is not possible at an in-person lecture.

Technology can play a useful role without classes going fully online:

http://www.joannejacobs.com/2013/02/study-hybrid-class-works-for-college-students/
Study: Hybrid class works for college students
by Joanne Jacobs

College statistics students in a hybrid class — online instruction plus a one-hour face-to-face session — performed slightly better than the control group and spent 1.7 fewer hours per week on the course, write William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, Kelly A. Lack and Thomas I. Nygren in Education Next.

“The effect of the hybrid-format course did not vary when controlling for race/ethnicity, gender, parental education, primary language spoken, score at the standardized pretest, hours worked for pay, or college GPA,” the authors report.

Yes, so true - I just had to laugh. These days, it is not the delivery method (that is, distance vs. in-person) that makes or breaks the course. The available technology is good enough to level the field.


@ Bostonian - thank you for pointing to the MIT courses. The video lectures for 'Classical Mechanics' by Prof. Walter Lewin (the first course taken by Young) look great (so much that I am beginning to hope that I have finally found a suitable science course):
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/index.htm .