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Do Online Schools Provide A Quality Education?
"After the dot com 'boom' settled down a bit, and I was no longer required to work 80 hrs a week, I decided that after ten years of being absent I would go back to school and finish up that elusive CS degree. Well, after shopping around a bit I found a very good, well known, University that was offering the degree, online.
'Cool,' I thought, no classes, all on my schedule, save gas, and I could work at 2 am if I wanted. I thought I had found the perfect way to learn.
BUT, after just one semester, I am starting to have my doubts. I am sure this is the way to go in the future, but I'm not so sure that the schools has got all the kinks worked out and I am beginning to believe that the professors, and possible even the schools, see this as a way for them to teach a class with a minimal amount of effort and cost.
You basically have a public conference area (a web based discussion group for comments) that you, the other students, and the professors participate in. This works very well because your assignments are given out on a weekly basis and you have a whole week to post comments and complete your assignments. You are required to participate in the discussions and then post your answers to quizzes in a private portfolio where it is graded by the professor and then returned to you.
Most of the professors participate in the conference like you are in a real classroom; with student asking questions and the professor responding, though, it is not real time.
But some of the professors only want you to post to the public discussion groups and never have you post to the private portfolio, basically this means they don't have to do anything accept scan the conferences and give out more assignments. They don't have to look over your work and give you any feedback. I bet it takes less than an hour a week to do this. Also, this allows other students to see the answers and just repost them.
The only thing this person seems to be doing is sitting on his butt all week; telling the students to just follow the syllabus for reading; and occasionally surfing the discussions groups to see who is there. That sounds like a very good deal for them, but I am not getting much out of this.
I also feel that ALL of the professors are very behind-the-times when it comes to IT. Just today I had a professor tell me she would not allow me to post a PDF file to my portfolio because she was worried about getting a virus when she read it?!
A few questions come to mind: Is this a quality education? Should the professors be required to show what they have done because they don't have a real classroom to attend? How much effort should a professor put forth for an online class? This has always been an issue in a real classroom, but now we have a whole new twist. Shouldn't professors be required to be a little more techno savvy before they give a course like this? Shouldn't the schools be reevaluating the 'new teaching style' and making some adjustments?
I am so angry with the way the school has set this up I will probably return to a normal class environment here at a local college, at least I know the guy is going to show up!
Has anybody else been to an online college? What were your experiences?"
'nuff said.
I am starting to get a bad taste in my mouth about the amount of effort that some of my professors are putting forward in my courses. I feel like some of them are "skating" and all I am paying for is a book, a posted syllabus, and a final exam.
Sounds like they are providing a pretty darn authentic college experience.
Education is what you make of it.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
The best online class I had was inPortein Crystalography with
Brierberk College in London inpartnership with a University in Israel..
Classe were online from IUPUI campus(Purude at Indianapolis) and discussions were held in a MUD..
and this was 1994...:)
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I am starting to get a bad taste in my mouth about the amount of effort that some of my professors are putting forward in my courses. I feel like some of them are "skating" and all I am paying for is a book, a posted syllabus, and a final exam.
I feel that way about my profs. and I don't go to an online school.
This sort of slacking in education on the part of individual teachers is nothing new, and is not limited to online courses. It's human variation at its finest... Or worst, since when it's a teacher slacking, it hurts all the students under them.
I often tell about an experiment I did in college. I wrote a English Composition 101 paper with some carefully crafted mistakes and submitted it to the four teachers that taught that course. The final grades were: D, C, B, and A. For the same paper.
Of course, there's no real solution for this problem short of continuous monitoring of teacher performance. (If you are in school, fill out those teacher evaluations!)
If I were to pick an online education provider, I would look for one that has a well established evaluation system for it's professors/teachers.
~ Nonsanity
The only thing this person seems to be doing is sitting on his butt all week; telling the students to just follow the syllabus for reading; and occasionally surfing the discussions groups to see who is there. That sounds like a very good deal for them, but I am not getting much out of this.
Yup, that sounds like pretty much every professor I had! Infact, there was one "intro to unix class" where the guy just printed off MAN pages right before class and used those to "teach"!
Couple that with people who have TAs do the grading, and the fact that at research oriented uni's (like mine) the professor is busy trying to get grants, screw the kids!
A lot of university classes are like that- and in those cases you are either paying for a "name" university, or you are paying less for a non-name uni.
Now I just finished my masters from the Part Time Engineering program and I had some friends take the same classes but the on-line versions: its a mixed bag.
If the professor has a set of slides that they teach from and they are top-nothc quality, then you don't even need to go to class! (this was true in undergrad for my CIRCUITS course- the text book blew, but his bound class notes were INCREDIBLE. start studying 6 hours before the final, walk out with an A)
So I'm sorry your professors stink. Its the SAME in person.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Anyway, I don't see anything inherently *wrong* with the model -- provided
- you are someone who learns through reading or doing but at least you don't require someone to explain it to you
and secondly- the materials are high quality -- this is, of course, true for any learning endeavour: start out with subpar information and it all goes down from there
I do think it takes a lot of self motivation and discipline to do this well, though. It's also awfully easy to skate by -- theoretically, if it's not a programming course (or maybe even if it is) -- by *recognizing* the material w/o solidly *understanding* it. The difference b/n knowing it solid and having it be familiar is a vast gulf.I liked the flexilibity that it gave me -- I completed the material in no time flat which was extraordinarily convenient.
Those who give up their power willingly deserve none.
I will probably return to a normal class environment here at a local college ... at least I know the guy is going to show up!
I did my A-Level computing at a local college (UK). The tutors kept quitting, we went through at least six, and most likely more, some for only one week. More time was spent telling the tutor what we had done then learning, and there were people there who thought this was what you did after a typing course, and wanted everybody to go at their pace.
Just because the place is physically there doesn't automatically mean it will be any good.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
I attended the University of Phoenix.. I'm already in the field I want to be in so I went to UOP for the piece of paper and right to proclaim my Friday morning coffee first. Do the professors distribute up-to-date information? 50/50...a hit and miss scenario. Did the information stack up against what I already know? NO, if you are already in the field then you will have a leg up on your classmates. After tons of money poured into my education, do I feel enlightened? NO Do I feel it was worth the money, few hours a week wasted smoking cigs with classmates, time spent writing reports, performing every presentation for my group? YES I didn't go to college traditionally like some of my friends. I went to the military, then got a real job after it, then finished my schooling. The real question is what is your purpose? Do you want your degree fast? Do you need more information on how to do your job? Do you just need that paper for Mo' money? It's a fine balance for them all. Some schools offer the gambit and others do not. Whatever you do, if you are already in the field you want to be in...don't waste your money on a school you don't feel comfortable with. Nothing like paying $300 a month back for 10 years..talking about ouch!
You may as well be in a library reading the books on yur own... your simply spending your time paying bucks to get a "degree". Education is supposed to be a much more immersive experience, in which your entire world is focused upon whatever subjects your learning for certain spans of time. From the chalk-board to the many students to the profesor and all the hands on materials along with real hands on lab projects you can show to your fellow classmates and teachers in TRUE real-time.
When your simply posting and returning data from a web-page, and reading material be it online or off... you are not recieving an education, you are paying for the right to research and to attain a degree from it.
There are reasons why test taking is done in a class without access to the net and other such things. It is because you are supposed to test the actual mind and skills of a human without those resources at hand. This enables you to learn what you DONT know and to sharpen those skillsets.
Hence online education is kinda a joke. Ilearned a long time ago, i can learn anything i want without a piece of paper that says i did. So if your gonna go to school... make sure you go to the one with the biggest name.... cause thats all that matters in the end, youll learn what you want to know no matter what.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
The wife is taking UnivOfPhoenix, and I think some of the classes are laid out rediculously. I think too much time is spent "doing" things, and no time is spent actually learning anything.
For example, they have these teams "collobarate" to write a paper. The team lead, gets to write the introduction, each person gets a specific section in the body, and another poor sap gets the conclusion. What a stupid way to write a paper. The team lead is on easy streat writing a one paragraph into, each person writes something so so so so specific, as to not learn/grasp anything, or even learn how to structure an essay, and the schmuch who got stuck with the conclusion, ends up spending hours trying to cohesively tie everything together. In the end, you wind up with a paper that is poorly written, has no logical flow, etc etc. I'm all for group projects, but it seems they like to work in groups for things that don't need to be worked on in groups, and don't work in groups for things that make sense to be worked on in groups, etc.
And all the communication is done by usenet newsgroups? This has got to be one of the poorest mediums for this type of work. I hear people complain how the servers are slow, don't update correctly, lose postings,etc. And people are having a hard time even tracking threads/converstations and such, cause people keep attaching to the wrong thread, etc...
Some of my EE classes in college were also distance learning classes, but we had cameras set up in the class, etc. Then again, I had a special prof. He didn't believe in note taking, cause he said every minute you spend writing notes, is another minute you aren't paying attention. So he had all the notes, guides, tables, etc all written before hand, and organized into a big fat binder, that you had to buy from the bookstore. That and he was very interactive, but now I'm getting off topic...
Anyways, for the money that UofPhoenix charges, I think its a big rip. I think they should've had pre-recorded and/or live lectures in real/windows media/name your favorite format, and you watch those, and the assignments are assigned there, etc. Use instant messaging for live chats/lab sessions/one-one etc etc. Hell, even use email threads for conversations or turning in assignments, using PGP or equivelent.
Anyways, back to our regularly scheduled programming...
The only thing that irks me about the UoP is that there are a lot of current students and alumni basically shilling for the UoP, telling everyone how great it is, and how wonderful it looks on your resume, when in reality it's a bit dodgy.
I teach at a 4 year public university that is starting to get into distance ed. I have taught one course in this format so far. I had about 35 students in the classroom with me, and about 125 more at sites scattered across the US, from Washington State to the Bahamas. Students at the distance sites could see and hear me; I could hear but not see them. At my university, at least, this distance ed. approach to teaching is not popular at all with the faculty. The technology isn't great; for example, there is no way to play traffic cop during a discussion and call on one person at a time, because you can't see hands. Older faculty resent the fact that it was pretty much imposed on us, without the faculty being consulted. At least I was warned about it when I was hired. One's workload is often much greater during a term when one teaches distance ed. For example, I had 160 students when I did it, compared to maybe 80 in a normal term. I had someone to help with the grading, but that only helped so much. (My field is in the humanities, so most of my grading is reading papers---not scantrons.) There is a lot of time spent on logistical issues when one is doing distance ed. that one normally doesn't have to deal with. For example, like most "humanitarians" I don't normally use Powerpoint, but for these classes it is more or less mandatory. Preparing materials (exams, handouts) to be mailed to the distance sites is time consuming. Frankly, many of our distance students aren't quite as good as our on campus students. Some are excellent, but if a distance site is located near a decent four year university then you can bet that the best students are at that four year school instead of in our program. The good students are ones who have no real alternative. Furthermore, many of the distance students have a very different mentality than our on-campus students. The distance students come out of community colleges, many of which really push the (inappropriate) idea that faculty will bend over backwards to keep students happy. Not to educate them, to keep them happy. So distance students have that expectation for us also. I don't mean to say that distance students generally aren't good. I am talking about one specific distance ed. program. There is such a definite pattern of teaching evaluations being poor for the first few times a person teaches in this format that we are all told not to worry about our evaluations--they won't be held against us. None of this is to let the poster's professors off the hook. It sounds like s/he is at a different kind of institution, one that specializes in distance ed. A lot of the problems at my institution have to do with the fact that distance ed is not our main focus, and instead of having dedicated faculty who teach only in this format and master it we have people who do it once every 2 or 3 years. But I hope students will be sensitive to the fact that someone can be a good classroom teacher and still struggle when they first start in the distance format. It does take a different set of skills, and there is no way to learn them except by trying and at first failing.
I agree with you. I currently am attending, but plan on getting my MBA when I am finished at a local University... so I hope less attention is paid to my undergraduate education than my masters education.
There's nothing magical about online education. If the school is good in real life, the school will be good online. My institution, Virginia Tech, offers online courses that are taught by the same professors that teach classroom courses. They use the same materials; the only difference is that lectures are distributed via electronic mail, audio or online conferencing. The neatest courses, like our innovative Engineering Cultures class, are delivered through a tool called CentraOne that offers voiceconferencing that is surprisingly effective.
This actually improved some of my classes. For one technical writing course, my professor was blind and conducted the course through e-mail via a screen reader. It was one of the best classes I've ever taken, and I had no clue he was blind until after the course was over and I talked to a friend (I always wondered why he was so particular about what the subject lines of our e-mails were...)
The key is that all of these professors had prior classroom experience. There is no Free Lunch (tm). If the institution has a good reputation IRL, they will offer good online classes. Online only universities without real life backing are sadly not ready for prime time yet. Maybe initiatives like MIT's OpenCourseWare, and less prestigous initiatives like the VT CS department's online courseware publishing (http://courses.cs.vt.edu/ - great lecture slides on C++ there) will change that someday by providing a basis in quality courseware... until then, though, you're better off at your local brick and mortar educational institution.
I took CS 3, my school's (required) intro to computers course. Learn the fundamentals of computing, *snore. Anyway, I figured that i'd rather take it over the summer and online, rather than listen to 2.5 hour long lectures on desktop publishing and what a server is. The upshot was that for the strictly factual material we covered it was fine, especially for people who allready knew the subject, we could simply do the work at our leisure. I got an A in the class and spent only about an hour and half a week completing work. Unfotuanately, the interesting side, discussions on computing ethics, was completely horrible because of the lack of a true discussion element. The web BBS we used just didn't feel as conducive to discussion. The fact that the teacher rarely (maybe twice) chimed in just fucked it up even more. Just a note, it also makes teachers lazy when other students will often answer posted questions faster than the teacher. Although I can't see that as a bad thing as long as they are at least read by the teacher.
Photos.
University of Phoenix? You mean... that piece of shit place that fills my inbox with SPAM? I can't believe anyone could take them seriously, or consider them credible on their transcript.
You know, you make a good point.
It does depend on the class as well as the teacher, not the tools. My best teacher used online tools to teach, we used blackboard, she used the internet to assist with her lectures, and our assignments were posted on the internet.
This was best, first if you messed the lecture it means you'll have to put more effort into doing your required readings, if you make your lectures the exams are much easier.
When it comes to writing paper it requires you to do alot of research on your own and you'll need the computer to do it, however its guided research because the teacher tells you what you need to research.
Overall a teacher is supposed to be like aa coach or guide, they show you the right way to do something, then you go do it.
Sometimes they dont show you the right way, such as with writing papers, here you have to figure out yourself the right way and your graded on how well you do it.
Like I said a teacher is just a coach, they guide you, its your job to teach yourself using the materials they give you and the tools you have as your disposal.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
... would be for each student to write the entire paper, then meet together for the equivalent of a "code review", then take the best ideas and phrasing from all the papers to create a finished effort.
I have been a college Physics and Astronomy teacher for 10 years. I decided to look into the online schools as way of expanding my teaching coverage.
The entire process of "teaching" in that environment is only suitable for subjects that allow lots of "round table" style discussion. A liturature class where the plot motives are hashed out online in a forum would be a good example.
Math and science is next to impossible.
I would argue that the instructors are working in an unsuitable environment more than I would argue that the instructors are slack. It is a system that encourages a very hands off approach.
I would also argue that the degree obtained from those online schools is exactly what was purchased, a piece of paper. It has no academic merit. Like many private, for profit "schools", they exist to make money, not educated graduates. The one I was with even had incentives like those of a dot-com (stock options!).
In short, if you want an education that will move you ahead in life, go to the best traditional school in your interest area that you can get in.
If you want an impressive piece of paper that verifies you (or your parents) paid enough classes to qualify for a graduation ticket, go to a big name traditional private school.
If you want to wast several years online to "earn" a "diploma" doing the barest minimum for a big bucket of cash, go to an online school. It won't advance your career unless you dig ditches or hang off the back of a garbage truck (an completely horrid job that I am very gratefull that those people do. I always thank them when I'm out and the truck shows up.)
it's not that most literature is subjective, but more the fact that the literature professors give and then attempt to analize with those horribly obscure themes is just bad literature. In good literature, you don't have to have someone tell you what it means to understand it. The reason why most people don't understand this, is becuase there is so little good literature and they have never had a chance to read it. The trash they assign at schools is more about job security than learning. You will always have a job if you make up the answers and say they are the only right ones.
you are required to be working while taking classes? what the hell is this? I can see from their goofy rules that the school is nothing more than a corperate training center.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The whole idea is that you apply what you learn. I received an online MBA (Global Management) through the UoP last year. A significant number of my assignments revolved around issues in my workplace. Not only was it possible to utilize resources in my workplace, but I was able to apply what I learned - showing mastery of the subject matter to my professor and helping my own career. Without real-world examples of the problems and issues you are learning about, it is much more difficult (however - if your MBA is all case study based, then working while attending school is less important).
Lectures are recorded, so that you can watch them via RealPlayer; all of the online courses have pretty active BBS discussions; the professors and TAs generally make themselves available via e-mail; and most of the courses can be taken for credit or simply audited.
As with any experience in higher education, the quality of the professors varies; some are very responsive and active, while others don't exert themselves very much. However, if you do a little research and check out the websites for the courses as part of your research, it's possible to figure out which classes are worth the time.
Harvard Extension School: Division of Continuing Education
So I'm saying the problem you see is probably fairly widespread and definitely real but will take a while to fix. The universities will need to put a priority on the online classes and hire staff that focuses on them. When that happens you will see better content/participation.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
No, this has got to be a pretty stupid question. The point of college is not to just learn facts and how to problem solve. It is about social interaction, and lab work. Maybe I am just wierd, but I got a whole lot more from my lab classes than I got from classes that were like goto class listen to prof, go home read book, take test.
I decided not to use UoPhoenix after I received completely and utterly UNSOLICITED commercial e-mail from them. If they can't market without resorting to spam then I can't justify spending my money with them.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
Yes, though the classes weren't "real world project management", they were computer science courses of various sorts. Learning project management under difficult conditions is useful, however it should not consistently interfere with the other subjects being taught. This is especially true when one is paying a lot of money out of pocket for a computer science degree ("I didn't learn about finite state machines, but I can tell you all about catching flights out of Heathrow")
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
If that has been your college experience, then the institution you selected was quite weak. College is never about busy work but about teaching how to think about things. I am currently a PhD student and an instructor for classes and I never assign my students busy work. I assign problems that will make them think about how to apply the information they should have gathered from lecture to a problem.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
A couple of years ago I took an online course in developing online courses.
My impression was that the Prof worked as harder or harder than in most face-to-face classes. Everytime I submitted an assignment it was returned graded within 24 hrs. Usually if I submitted in the morning it was returned in that afternoon and when I submitted in the afternoon it was returned the next morning. This was even true when I submitted them on weekends. He responded to emails even more quickly usually in less than an hour, frequently in 5-10 minutes.
Since it was a course in developing online courses, we talked about the amount of time it takes for the instructor. It was my Prof's belief that an online course took more of his time than a traditional class. In fact he limited the number in the class after the first time it was given because of this constraint.
The really nice thing about the course was that it provided for a broad range of learning styles. The main lectures were done in RealAudio with HTML "slides". But there were plenty of optional reference materials that a person could browse at the same time: outlines, transcripts, glossaries, etc. That plus the fact that I could instantly "rewind" and review anything I didn't quite follow made it a very good learning experience.
My guess is that you have instructors who barely know the material themselves, didn't develop the course materials themselves, have no educational training and are earning a pitifully low salary. That would be par for the course (no pun intended) in todays educational environment.
I frankly doubt that a person who makes it through Calculus this way really knows Calculus. Really all this approach does for you is put a notch in your transcript. To really understand the subject you have to learn the mechanics but also come to grips with the theory and concepts, learn how to apply what you've learned into new situations, learn how to see it in everyday things... Just punching the clock in the classroom ain't gonna do it. You can get a passing grade that way but you haven't really learned anything that you'll remember.
Whoever said that the prof should be like a guide rather than a talking head was right. If your profs at your school can't find it in their hearts to help you really learn, vote with your feet and go find another college! There are plenty of schools out where teaching matters AND who can give you a state of the art education.
Incidentally, notice we're talking about the human element of a college class making all the difference... these online schools are worthwhile only insofar as they leave that human element in their pedagogy. Just emailing in downloaded homework sets doesn't qualify as a legitimate education, IMHO.
"Traditional classroom: Instructor works through some problems during class, talks about theory, etc. Assigns homework. You turn it in. Little to no conversation with your fellow students on these assignments, as it's considered to be cheating."
Quite the opposite at my college. Our lectures do consist of the professor going through the theory and presenting a few examples, but it doesn't stop there. Our homework assignments are challenging, but we are encouraged to work together - otherwise it would be near impossible to complete on time. That is to say, copying is frowned upon, but it helps immensely to work with someone who is performing the same operations and catches any simple errors you may make.
Also, the professors hold office hours in which you are encouraged to utilize to get help on homework. They give you one-on-one attention to make sure you understand the subject material. There are also tutors available in the evenings.
Now, like you I'm no math whiz, but at my college we're all required to take "core" math courses in order to graduate. This includes a half-semester courses in calculus and prob/stat as well as semester courses in linear algebra, differential equations, and vector calculus. I would never be able to complete these subjects without the resources available at a college.
Although the public forums are a valuable resource for you, I'm curious how much time it took to answer (or even ask) your questions. I know if I'm stuck on a problem it would take me 20 minutes or more to explain my question over instant messenger and another 20 minutes to receive a reply - much less understand it, whereas it would take 5 minutes to walk down the hall and visit the nearest math major.
I'm also curious what format the forums use, for submitting homework assignments as well as discussion. Do you all have to learn LaTeX to take advantage of integral signs, as well as all the superscripts/subscripts and greek characters that are useful in math? Or do you just spent a lot of time playing with the useless equation editor in MS Word, or do they provide software for editing equations?
I took a few online classes earlier during freshman year. (Statistics and some other bullshit requirements) Waste of time simply put. Its just a way for students AND professors to get out of doing any difficult work.
But completely online Universities? You miss half of what college is all about. As important as the classroom knowledge that is imparted to you, it isn't the complete picture in an education. You don't get the peer interaction, the bouncing of ideas off fellow students and professors, volenteering in a research lab to put your classroom skills to work, and the self disovery.
I don't think that's true. There are basically two mindsets towards Computer Science: the Engineering approach and the Science approach. The Science approach is basically a match course with a few language classes and maybe a database or networking course at the senior level. The Engineering approach teaches project management, coding style, lots of languages, and the like. The Engineering approach often includes an MCSE component and lots of hands on stuff. You probably took an Engineering oriented CS class. Interestingly enough, 10 years ago most CS courses in the country were Science type, and were even in the "College of Sciences" or whatever the equivelent was in the university. These days more CS departments are in the College of Engineering than anything else.
Recently Virginia Tech dissolved its College of Arts and Sciences, and the CS department ended up as part of the College of Engineering. The CS professors were all wringing their hands worrying that the college was going to move away from the theoretical and focus on the skills of the trade.
I read the internet for the articles.
If these people had the time to go to a normal college they would. They can't, it's not an option, so it was pretty useless for you to blather on about just going to one, isn't it?
That depends on the point of the exercise.
It has been my MBA class experience that these group projects are designed more to get people to function as groups - and not to see if each person can do the whole project. It's trying to prepare you for the "real world".
Most of the projects I've worked on are bigger than one person can normally do - so you are forced to learn how to organize as a group and work together and complete the project. It's in your best interest to distribute the work in accordance with each person's skill.
In the "real world", the accountant does the accounting, the graphics designer does the graphics, and the coder writes the programs. This is usually the best way to get things done. If you want the accountant to learn graphics design, send him to a graphics design class - but at work, you have him do the accounting, because he can do it better than the coder and the graphics designer.
Consider a class where there are 3 groups doing a presentation. The teacher says each group will grade the others, and the grades will be given: A for the best, B for the next, and C for the worst.
How will you organize your group? Will you force people to work on area where they are weakest just for an educational experience? Or will you assign tasks according to skill and try to beat the other groups - that's how the "real world" should work - if you want to stay in business.
Maybe the best place for these online classes is as a way to teach the things that you never really wanted to learn in the first place and that you'll likely forget about as soon as you get that diploma.
I'm taking classes at a VERY expensive college in Boston, upwards of $15K a semester (with tuition, books, paying off the expensive Boston dorm/apartment, etc.). In order to take some nice $80 credits, I enrolled at Bunker Hill Community College for some gen eds. My major requires me to take History of Art and another unspecified 3 credit gen ed course. Bunker Hill offers both of these as courses with little time spent on campus. History of Art (Bunker Hill calls it "Art Appreciation") is a web course with assigned reading and tests every couple of weeks. The nonspecified gen ed I chose was "Sociology of Film", which requires you to watch a film on your own time every week and answer some short essays about the film.
The reason I like taking these courses as web courses is because: I really don't care that much. I'm sorry, but I'm a music major. I understand that the whole history of art thing is important, but when I took History of Art 1 last semester, I did nothing but sleep through the classes. The web class allows me to work at my own pace, pick up what I can, and allow lack of sleep or other necessary courses to take precedence if I need to put something ahead of it. The Film course is actually moderately amusing, but again, it keeps me from having to spend an hour on the subway twice a week to go out to Somerville to talk about it. (Like the discussion in that class would be that great. "I ARE TEH SMARTY PANTS CUZ I UNDERSTAND MEANING BEHIND TERMINATOR 2!!!!1")
Now, if I was told that my favorite music classes were going to become web classes only, like the composition classes where I sit around and get feedback on my projects from the teacher and other students, or the project classes where I learn to work with different music software, I would complain. I would in no way take those classes at home. But I think it's safe to say that just about every college student has a class in their schedule that they're being "forced" to take. A web class allows me to work when it's convenient and concentrate on the classes that are more important to me.
Now I just pray some humorless grinch doesn't mod me down as a troll for saying I don't want to learn anything...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Hurray for you, and I mean that. I've attended several conventional colleges, and it is not unusual for me to think I could do just as well buying the textbooks and hardware and learning on my own. Supposedly, the instructor in such classes is teaching me to think on my own. Fine; I can think on my own without going into hock to some school. This is particularly true of programming, which I am beginning to suspect is never actually taught anywhere, because everyone has theories about programming, but no one has any science. All that exists in the programming world are fads and baseless dogmatic assertions.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
If the editor is not getting what he needs, then he needs to ask for more. This is more-or-less the role of a supervisor/manager/group leader... to find the most efficient way to divide tasks and make sure people are producing what they need to. If someone is slacking, then they need to find a way to redistribute that work. It's like the "real world" - not everyone at a company pulls their weight, and this means others pull more. They have to - if they want to stay in business. If you want to stay in business (get a good grade), those who care do what they have to in order to get the job done.
:)
For example, I'm in a 2 part group project in one of my classes. The first presentation sucked in a major way. I'm now the "editor" for the 2nd presentation, and I'm actively working hard to make sure each person knows what I need and when I need it. If someone slacks, well, I'll have to make up the difference, or get the others to make it up. I HOPE it will be a better presentation - but it's been my experience that as the "editor", I need to maintain an active role in the process and make sure I'm getting what I need.
God, I hope this 2nd presentation is better!
There is an excellent point here -- lectures (and, by extension, all classes) are educational only insofar as they compel the people in the audience to go out and try things on their own. A lecture teaches nothing. It's the doing things on your own (like picking up the beanbags and tossing them in the air) that really causes learning to happen. The best lecturers know this and aim their lecturing accordingly. And this kind of "lecturing" could very well take place in written form or online.
At the same time, there really is something to interacting with people at a level beyond just being in a physical room with others listening to one of them talk. Learning seems to be reinforced by interacting with others. For instance, I was at a 3-day course on Java programming recently and I was amazed at how important the interaction -- the verbal back-and-forth between us students and between the instructor and the students -- really was. I'd been trying to teach myself Java out of a book for months and had gotten nowhere (dammit Jim, I'm a mathematician, not a programmer!) but once I was able to talk through my difficulties with other people it makes perfect sense. I left that course thinking that there would be no way I'd have gotten that from an online course, or at least not as efficiently. I'm willing to give online courses the benefit of the doubt (in fact I'm doing a week-long workshop online in July to learn a software package) but humans are inherently social creatures and learning is an inherently social activity, and it takes a pretty clever design (ala slahsdot!) to reproduce authentic social interaction at the digital level.
Some things are hard to learn on your own. I mean take the idea of threads for example. Threads are not intuitive. I know quite a lot of professional programmers who have no clue what a thread is. Then you have statistics which is definitely not something one can learn on their own. At some point you will need someone with experience to explain things to you because you will undoubtedly get lost. Then you also have operating system concepts that aren't easy to learn on your own.
Just because you can read doesn't mean you can understand everything you have read. There are times when an instructor who has done work before comes in handy and if you think otherwise you are either a genius or full of shit.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
A student of mine directed me to this posting,and after reading it, I thought I would respond to it from a teacher's perspective. I always read information about the quality of online teaching because it is still so controversial, but I rarely come across an article from a studentâ(TM)s perspective. I found most of your comments enlightening. Teaching online should be a choice, never a requirement. It is a venue that many teachers are not equipped to use, so naturally students are going to come across a bad experience now and then. But that will happen in the traditional classroom as well. Taking an online class is not for everyone either. I teach online because of the one on one I can give my students. I teach traditional classes as well and I know how much more time I spend with my online students. Simply having warm bodies in a traditional classroom does not make it conducive to learning. It also does not permit all students to ask questions because of the lack of time. I use IM to communicate with students (I do so with my traditional classes as well), so they get more one on one than they would if they depended on discussion board comments and office hours only. I have to add that teaching online is very time consuming, and instructors set limits for their own involvement. They have to because it is very easy to spend hours online communicating with students. It takes hours to comment on discussion board postings, etc. I teach two sections of Composition II online year round. I wish I could teach more, but my school has a cap on hour many online class hours one may teach. But trust me. There is nothing easy about teaching online, but then if you really love teaching, there is nothing easy about teaching period. It is challenging and ever-changing. That is why I put my heart and soul into it. I am so glad online classes are available for those who desire to take their courses that way. I hope your online experience ends better than it started : )
Professor Deb Richey
Owens Community College
Toledo, Ohio
I've not seen a comparison, since a large part of these comparisons would be subjective. However, here's a fairly nice non-comprehensive list of institutions offering online, or partial online programs: http://www.degree.net/schools/bachelors.html Click on the link to the left for graduate programs.
The quality of ANY 'online' education is directly related to how well the subject material can be adapted to said online environment.
;-)
If the course involves nothing but writing/reading, or writing computer code, then yes; it should be able to adapt fairly well to being taught online.
It would, on the other wing, be extremely difficult (if not impractical) to teach, say, courses in electronics over the 'net. This is simply because really -learning- electronics, chemistry, or any of the other physical sciences requires a hands-on lab environment with specialized equipment.
Until we develop 'holodeck' technology, I don't see how it would be possible to effectively teach such courses online. However, if someone knows of a system that can teach good hands-on electronic assembly skills, or techniques of component-level troubleshooting, I would love to hear about it.
So, in summary; it sounds to me like the course you're taking, although adaptable to an online environment, is indeed suffering from incompetence or laziness at the teaching level. I would not only complain to the school involved, I would also get in touch with your local state board of education, and tell them what's going on. At the very least, they may be able to start some sort of investigation.
Good luck.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
If you already know how to think, why weren't you honing your skills by using your amazing logic-fu on them? Surely someone as smart as you could have had them all watching Fox News within a matter of days.
Sounds to me like you're afraid to think, afraid of head-on confrontation with perspectives that differ from your own.
There's no better way to figure out what you really believe than by being surrounded by people you think are wrong. That is, if you're up to the challenge.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
The reason schools are willing to just sell degrees, is because a lot of employers only want to hire degreed people, even for jobs that by no reasonable standard would require the critical thinking skills that one would ostensibly learn at a university.
How many people do you know who are stupendously competent, but have little in the way of formal certifications? How many people do you know who have a list of letters after their name, but couldn't find their ass with a flashlight and a GPS?
Now, for extra credit, which one gets promoted?
Such is life, unfortunately.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If one chooses to blow off classes and fail to cultivate a solid foundation for a mature understanding of advanced topics, he is destined for mediocrity.
There are two types of people: those prepared for the zombie apocalypse and those who will be eaten.
I think you picked an unfortunate set of examples. I think threads, statistics and basic undergraduate operating systems concepts are all so well understood at this point that instructors are really not necessary. There are several books that will teach you everything you want to know about all three.
Now take something like engineering thermodynamics. There are so many different ways to approach thermodynamics, and there are a ton of arbitrary experimentally derived constants (like emissivity of a material etc). If you want to learn to design a thermodynamic system such as a passive cooling system, or a chiller, or a thermoacoustic refrigerator or soforth, you'll definitely want lots of in-class, and in-lab experimental hands on experience.
When it comes to math, computer science, software engineering, natural language composition, ethics, economics, and soforth, you can learn most of the undergraduate topics via independent study, because they're all basically about learning to think. When it comes to engineering, physics, biology, chemistry, etc. beyond the basics you will need hands on experience and experimentation.
That isn't to say that instruction won't help you in all topics, just that for some topics it's more absolutely necessary than others.
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.