The University of Wherever

[FarCenter]

FOR more than a decade educators have been expecting the Internet to transform that bastion of tradition and authority, the university. Digital utopians have envisioned a world of virtual campuses and “distributed” learning. They imagine a business model in which online courses are consumer-rated like products on Amazon, tuition is set by auction services like eBay, and students are judged not by grades but by skills they have mastered, like levels of a videogame. Presumably, for the Friday kegger you go to the Genius Bar.

It’s true that online education has proliferated, from community colleges to the free OpenCourseWare lecture videos offered by M.I.T. (The New York Times Company is in the game, too, with its Knowledge Network.) But the Internet has so far scarcely disturbed the traditional practice or the economics at the high end, the great schools that are one of the few remaining advantages America has in a competitive world. Our top-rated universities and colleges have no want of customers willing to pay handsomely for the kind of education their parents got; thus elite schools have little incentive to dilute the value of the credentials they award.

...

Thrun’s ultimate mission is a virtual university in which the best professors broadcast their lectures to tens of thousands of students. Testing, peer interaction and grading would happen online; a cadre of teaching assistants would provide some human supervision; and the price would be within reach of almost anyone. “Literally, we can probably get the same quality of education I teach in class for about 1 to 2 percent of the cost,” Thrun told me.

The traditional university, in his view, serves a fortunate few, inefficiently, with a business model built on exclusivity. “I’m not at all against the on-campus experience,” he said. “I love it. It’s great. It has a lot of things which cannot be replaced by anything online. But it’s also insanely uneconomical.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/opinion/the-university-of-wherever.html

[MadHound]

1. There is a reason that online education at universities hasn't take off,

You don't get the same quality product as you do with brick, mortar and human institutions. You don't have the same kind of tangents, the ability to question your professor if you don't understand something, nor does the professor have the ability to reword a thought or present a lecture in a different manner for better understanding by their students.

Online courses work for some folks, but by no means all of them. It is appropriate for some subject, but by no means all of them.

Online universities are going to continue to divide our students into a two tier education system, those who can afford it will attend a traditional school, those who can't will take crappy, one size fits all courses on line.

[patrice]

3. MS Ed. here AGREES strongly!

Once again we see the assumption that QUANTITY is of the essence and the different unique individual QUALITIES (of persons/places/events/objects/actions) are IR - RELEVANT

[FarCenter]

5. It depends on the student and the course

Some students are much better at self-directed study and learning. Some subject matter is more easily learned independently.

For example, computer science and similar courses are amenable to independent learning. Students who are self-motivated and talented in the field can access a huge amount of resources on-line. In fact, it is these characteristics which have spread expertise in information technology globally, since students with fairly meager resources in Asia and Eastern Europe have been able to learn the new technology quickly and become competitive in the labor market.

However, many of the science, technology, engineering and math fields have the same characteristics. So student who are autodidacts now have a terrific advantage over other students in a distance learning situation, but they also have a distinct advantage in an on-campus setting as well.

[MadHound]

6. Some, not all, and certainly not the majority

And as far as the lab courses go, chemistry, biology, etc. etc., how are you going to teach that?

A relative few students thrive with online learning, most don't.

[FarCenter]

7. Once they go to work, the ones that can't learn on their own will fail anyway

Nobody is going to hold your hand in business, so you have to know how to learn by the time you get out of school.

True, lab courses have to be taught in person for the most part. Although access to the equipment and supplies is what is most needed. Students usually do the labs in teams and pretty much on their own, with occasional help from a grad student lab instructor.

Part-time work in a research lab is typically more instructive than the lab work done as part of classes.

[FSogol]

2. Go to a real school. Life is about getting outside and meeting other people. n/t

[n2doc]

4. The biggest problem with all of these is that, IMO, most students don't learn online

They need the focus that a good teacher brings in person in a classroom setting. Yes, some students have the drive to get a full education out of on line learning. But in my experience they are far from the majority.