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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?"
I had an excellent experience at university of Phoenix Online. While I did experience a couple lazy instructors, there were requirements for daily discussion and interaction with other students about the material. This led to a situation where the material was covered in great depth almost in spite of the instructor.
With online courses you get exactly what you said. The biggest thing you are getting is credit. I have read lots of books, just reading them doesn't mean I learned anything. Credit is good.
It depends on the course.
Calculus - yeah, read the book, do the assignments, complete the exam. Hooray, you know calculus - you pass.
Literature - much more subjective, requires more work on the part of the professor/TAs.
It's important to note that many professors "skate" in real life university as well. They give the lectures, and the TAs do all the actual work. Some make themselves available between classes, some dont.
Quit whining.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Never took an online course myself, but I was pretty amazed at the amount of work some profs did for some of the distance ed courses I took. Just out of curiosity, does this so-called prof have a number where you can give your own fedback?
Democratic USA - Government of the corporations, by the Corporations, for the corporations.
...which was interested in moving a few of their courses over to the web. I was hired to do much of the programming. At the end of the year when they did standardized tests and satisfaction surveys they found that the courses where they cut the in-class physical face time down to 20% of what it had been before and replaced that other 80% with interactive web content, the knowledge acquisition was almost identical and student satisfaction actually increased.
On the other hand, for the courses that they offered entirely on-line both knowledge acquisition (by performance on standaraduzed tests) and student satisfaction declined (something like 15 and 10 percent respectively, IIRC).
Now they have switched several other courses over completely to the 80/20 format, but offer fully on-line courses only as correspondence alternatives.
lysergically yours
Basically, in addition to the book, the sylibus, and the final exam, an online class should provide you with work (which you are supposedly motivated to do) and rapid responces to your work. Therefore allowing you to quickly learn by example and understand your mistakes. If you are able to motivate yourself, and already know enough about the subject to find your mistakes, you would be better off simply buying a book.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
I have looked into the on-line thing a bit, but the ones I have encountered are pretty high. In the range of $375 per credit hour, so a single course ends up costing about $1125. Thats a lot to take a course. What kind of prices is everyone else paying?
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'm sure we've all had professors in our day that have been sub par. That is when you must take it upon yourself to learn the material on your own. In my opinion a professor should only be used as a back-up tool for your own learning... no matter how good or bad the professor might be.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
For example, my last class was a law and ethics class. I probably spent 20 - 25 hours a week working on my papers for that class. However, I was greatly appreciative of my professor of that class because he provided me with detailed homework assignments. In addition, when I got feedback from him, it was on the order of 3 pages long. However, my class before that was not as good. The professor in that class would just give me a grade and not tell me why I received that particular grade. However, all the of the professors that I have had have been very open about communication. In fact, my current accounting professor and I have talked every weekend since the class has started.
Maybe some schools take it seriously and others don't? But, I can tell that I am working my butt off. I haven't had a whole lot of slack time.
I did a C++ class on line. I withdrew and got a refund when I could.
My problems were partly due to the way the class was run and partly due to my own nature. I had a tough time getting work done because there was no 'scheduled' time for me to show up any where. Rack this up as a failure on my part but I just tend to be more successful at getting work done when I've got to show up to class and turn it in.
The lack of in class time was tough because I couldn't sit and look at examples while the instructor was there to talk about how things were done. I missed that time to discuss with the instructor and other students. I know I'm not the only one who struggled in that regard. I did meet up with another student early on and help her learn how to set up and use her compiler. (free borland compiler)
On the class failing side- when I emailed the teacher with questions, responses were not prompt. His lectures were posted and there was no good method for getting further information to clarify points made in the lecture, etc. It was basically as you describe. Read a book, do homework, take a final.
There may be some who can use the format to advantage but it did not work well for me.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I do have some complaints, though:
- The whole curricula was the standard texts and notes "grafted" onto an online interface. The material and method of moving through it was a "transplant" of a traditional class lecture, lifted onto an online format. This does not work well - kind of like taking a book, scanning each page into a graphic file, then posting this as an online version.
- We were provided PowerPoint lecture notes taken from "live" lectures, though without the benefit of seeing the lectures (my suggestion : record the "real" lectures and have online students purchase as DVDs or VHS)
- I missed office hours and the ability to chat with knowledgeable graduate students when I got stuck. With some conceptually difficult material, you really have to hash over it with a live mentor to understand how it works.
- No real socialization with other students, owing to geography.
- "Group" projects were a nightmare of conference calls, online chats, emailing drafts back and forth, etc.
The good side is it allows folks with full time jobs to get degrees. It also allows folks to get specialized degrees that may only be available at a handful of institutions."dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
I only took 2 courses so far, and I am very impressed with how they handle and treat the program. Everyone invloved is very professional. The teachers actually go out of their way to accomodate both on and off campus students. My experience has been extremely pleasant, and I'm very satisfied with what they offer.
I went to the university of phoenix online for a few classes. Though I do believe in the fact that school is what you make of it, I found a few problems with this school and therefore discontinued.
1. books were chopped up to fit the five week per class format - resulting in five chapter books
2. if class mates needed to, they could procrastinate quite easily and still get full credit.
in the case of (1) alot of the subject material was diced up and not in the greatest of formats. In (2) the problem is that alot of your grades are based on team effort, and with teamates habitually procrastinating this causes sever group problems. Just this morning I was reading about a law school online, sounds to me like they are getting the format right, they had streaming lessons from the instructor, and lived in a similar region so that if they needed some intensive group study, that could take place.
I took the traditional route and went to a brick and mortar school for my CS degree. While there, I met a number of very interesting people. Some of these people asked me to help them revive the school's sailing team. A boatload of CS and physics students engaged in a non-profit startup in the middle of the Hudson river is hardly what I expected, but I'm very glad that it happened to me.
Along the way I learned that graduate work is fun and picked up an MS degree as well.
While my education allows me to check the "has a BS" and "has an MS" boxes on job applications, the real benefit came from the faculty and students I met over the course of my four years.
That having been said, I think there is an enormous opportunity for online education. My education was expensive, and in this economy there is no guarantee that you will have a job on graduation. High quality schools have can accept only a limited number of students. The Internet is an incredible way to inexpensively disseminate information to a large number of people.
The original universities expanded substantially as books and paper became more and more available. Surely the internet will change education to an even greater extent.
Is anyone aware of a website that compares and contrasts various online university programs? Or allows people to discuss their respective experiences in some sort of forum? It seems that would be useful. But that could also be extended to "real-life" colleges as well.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
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"
Likely those professors feel exactly the same way about the students taking online courses.
There is an ongoing conservative perception in academia (not without merit) that, quite simply, people that are dead serious about obtaining a quality education are willing to make time for classes and all the homework they entail. I have spoken with a few of these teachers myself; they all felt that anyone whose schedule was already so packed that they couldn't find time to physically attend lectures and discussions was probably better off postponing their enrollment altogether until a point when they had the time and resources to properly devote toward a formal education, rather than risk acquiring something of potentially lower quality.
One of them went so far as to speculate on the much more involved feeling one gets when actually sitting in a classroom surrounded by dozens of students and with the professor lecturing authoritatively at the front. Basically, such a setting makes it all seem more real and therefore adds unconscious pressure to the participating students to take the class and its material seriously--as opposed to viewing absolutely everything to do with the class on your own comfortable monitor, in your own comfortable home, where any pressure to succeed in the class has to be entirely self-generated. And don't kid yourself: motivation can often be totally unreachable without a kick in the pants. Hence why some instructors penalize for non-attendance. They don't do it out of meanness, they do it because such a policy helps students to learn when the students are not willing to help themselves.
The coolest voice ever.
I enrolled at Mississippi State University through their distance learning program. There's a good chance someone you're watching on TV has been through this course. It's three years, 17 courses, 50 some odd credits. Until I'm totally finished, there's no need to go to Starkville, MS or anywhere close.
I am impressed with the idea and execution. My lectures are delivered on both VHS tape and DVD (I watch the lectures on DVD, though at double speed!). My textbooks are standard issue, same as are used at brick and mortar colleges. Each course features weekly untimed quizzes (10%), quarterly timed tests based on homework (30%) and a timed midterm (30%) and timed final (30%).
The lecturers/professors aren't polished TV people... but which of your profs were? There are different instructors/proctors online who monitor a bulletin board, answer questions and ride herd. They are mostly attentive and helpful.
The tests and quizzes are administered online and are multiple choice.
The courses are run using WebCT software, which I am told is pretty standard with distance learning.
As in "real" college, sometimes I have to study, other times I do not. I have learned some interesting things (having gone most of the way through my first year)... even one or two useful things.
After the first semester, my wife asked if I had learned anything? I said yes. But, she noted, "how important could it be if you didn't need it in the last 20 years?" And, of course, she was right.
I found it interesting that before I was accepted, I had to send my transcripts and SATs to MSU. I was surprised the College Board still had my numbers, taken in December 1967 (back when SAT scores ended in single digits and not tens). I'm curious what these ancient records could possibly say about me now? It is living proof that when your teachers said something would go on your permanent record, they weren't kidding!
As a 52 year old, in the middle of my career, with a wife and family, this is the only way to go back to school. I'm a proud to say I'm a straight "A" student, something I never even approached during my first, ill fated, trip to college 35 years ago.
I'm in an interesting dilemma. I just finished my master degree and I am looking at a PHD/ Doctoral program. I have work/time constraints so full time PHD work is not an option. Looking at online distance self paced education has large benefits. I received the brochure from Kennedy-Western University and Cappella University. I concerned that they are just diploma mills yet from all I have seen they are legit. While the cost is pretty steep, the convenience I receive from going this route makes it worth it. Any graduates from these institutions have feedback that my sway my decision?
I talk about some of these subjects from the instructor side on my own weblog, The Intuitive Life, in particular you might want to check out I thought students had lots of opinions? and Lazy students, a rant, both of which address the same basic question of student interaction.
If anyone has further questions that I can answer, please feel free to drop me a note!
I'm taking Ph.D. classes at the University of Idaho Engineering Outreach. They send you DVD's of the live class, and you follow 1-2 weeks later. The 800 number to the instructor and email to the class and instructor work well.
I've heard good things about Univ of Pheonix, but last I checked, they don't offer Ph.D.s in Computer Science.
What I don't like about U of Idaho is how fast the papers come back to you graded. (Sometimes a month or so, depends on the instructor.) At first I was upset about it, and now I just figure that is how distance learning at the school works.
I've got only 18 hrs worth of Ph.D. work. It would be better to work off a local university, but if you don't have the option, this isn't bad too. The classes are entertaining and educational.
I've also heard it is a good idea to make sure that the instructors haven't graduated from the university they teach at. Inbreeding is a bad thing.
The only thing I miss is the "what didja get" discussions after tests and homeworks are handed back and the other interactions with other students. Other than that, the experience is identical to my traditional undergrad education and much more convenient.
This space intentionally left blank.
Shouldn't professors be required to be a little more techno savvy before they give a course like this?
Are any CS professors really techno savvy?
Now, before I get jumped, I'm a teacher. You have to understand that most professors are either current in their field or are good teachers. Those that are current probably aren't going to be tapped for what is already a dysfunctional classroom environment. That leaves those that are good teachers. They know the theory, but aren't necessarily up to the cutting edge.
You aren't going to school to really learn, judging by what you've written. You're going to earn piece of paper confirming what you and your boss have known for the past 10 years: you know your CS.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't always expect more from educators, but you need to keep your goals in mind.
I've never taught an online course before, but from talking to a lot of my colleagues (and my wife, who's a teacher), reality seems to be exactly the opposite of what you're saying: it's typically much more work for the professor to teach a course online. Look, teaching a traditional lecture course is an easy gig, if you don't care about doing a good job. You have a set of canned lectures that you deliver every semester. You drone on and on, pausing to ask for questions, but never pausing for long enough that anyone will really go ahead and ask one. If you want to, you can also engineer things so that you don't have a lot of grading to do: don't grade homework, don't require papers, make all the tests scantron, etc.
Teaching online is a huge amount of work the first time you do it, because you have to create a cr--load of stuff on the web.
At my school, people seem to have had very mixed luck teaching things online. A lot of them report that they end up getting all the worst students in the online sections, because the students perceive it as an easy way to take care of the course -- you don't even need to show up for lecture? -- kewl! It also tends to be more reading- and writing-intensive, which is a problem for a lot of students at less selective schools, who are operating at a remedial level in English, or who may not be native English speakers.
Find free books.
I am currently working on a masters in aero at ODU, and my biggest gripe is that the students are complete lumps in the classroom. It seems like they just come in to take notes, don't understand anything, and then try to figure it out on there own later. Yeah, I know this is how the majority of universities are.
I guess I'm spoiled from going to small schools in the past-I miss students actually interacting with the teacher in class. Then again, I slept through most of my classes in HS and college.
Let's face it, the only way you learn anything these days is on your own. Most teachers are just there to provide structure and material, with the institution proving "credit." Rarely, you'll get a class where the teacher that actually teaches you something, or classmates who aren't vegetables. (And good luck retaining any of it.) So you're not missing out. It's all just for a piece of paper so you can get a job where you'll learn what you need to by doing.
----
PudriK
I actually had a horrible time in an online economics course I was taking for my university. I really hate driving for thirty minutes to get to my classes and I figured I'd knock out some of the easy courses online and work with my "own" schedule.
We had a similiar online forum or web board to discuss with other students and get help from the teacher. The problem was the teacher was supposed to answer any questions and reply to each of your posts, ours never bothered. This wasn't too bad, as some of the students had a better grasp of the subject than others.
The worst problem I encountered, was that our teacher was not computer literate. She had problems opening my RTF, TXT, and PDF files. Claiming they were "too large" for her computer or giving her "virii." These are only little paltry 100K files, and she's griping.
She would assign 0's for these assignments without any dispute because they violated her "on-time" policy. Out of all the worst experience I had with her was with deadlines. When Christmas vacation rolled around, I synced all of the January dates in my PDA and on my wall calendar so I could do them on-time when the break ended. When I came back to turn them in, the datches were mysteriously changed to the last day of the break.
Now assignments are always spaced by almost three days a piece, and these were too before the change. When I tried to contact her about the late assignments, and why the dates were changed (especially why I wasn't notified) she said I should have been checking the calendar during Christmas when they were changed. Sure. An email would have been nice.
Finally she gets feud up of my complaints, and writes my course liasion (the guy who sets you up for the course). The irony is that she forged the date on the email to look as if she sent it a week earlier. Sadly headers proved her horribly wrong and caught in a lie. I showed the liasion and he called the "school." Her claim was that she doesn't make sure her rig's clock is set appropriately. Sure. Her clock magically jumped a week back.
When the course ended, I had failed miserably, I would get the correct answers but 0's for her inability to open (or willingness to do so) my files. I called the school and asked for a refund to which they complied.
Sadly to this day she still spams me with "You are late," emails...
Just finished my Ph.D. at an on-line University. As some have said, you get what you put into it. With this particular uni, there were no semesters, but you were given a time limit to finish all the required courses and final paper (dissertation in my case).
Some of the courses were easy, and related to my interests, others made me get out the Calculus and DiffEQ books from 20+ years ago when I went the formal route for my BS/MS.
While its true that there were no formal classes - the professors/tutors were available upon request, and there is an on-line chat capability for others taking the same course.
I busted my butt harder in this program than I had in the two previous ones where I was attending meat-space classes. Of course, this time I was working full-time with a wife and a 4yr old son (at the start).
My biggest complaint is that my employer would not reimburse me because their policy was if a local uni is available, they don't pay for distance learning.
jerry
"Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
HSD official obtained Ph.D. from diploma mill
A high-ranking career official in the Homeland Security Department apparently obtained her doctorate from a Wyoming diploma mill.
Laura L. Callahan, now senior director in the office of department CIO Steven Cooper, states on her professional biography that she "holds a Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems from Hamilton University." Callahan, who is also president of the Association for Federal IRM and a member of the CIO Council, is commonly called by the title "Dr."
Callahan's resume says she began her civil service career in 1984. Before joining HSD, she was deputy CIO at the Labor Department.
Hamilton University, according to an Internet search, is located in Evanston, Wyo. It is affiliated with and supported by Faith in the Order of Nature Fellowship Church, also in Evanston. The state of Wyoming does not license Hamilton because it claims a religious exemption. Oregon has identified Hamilton University as a diploma mill unaccredited by any organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
[...]
I disagree with several of your points, which are quite similar to lots of current professors/instructors who either don't understand teaching online or are scared of it. [Background: I'm just completing my masters online from Western Governors University in Learning and Technology, which focuses on using technology as a tool to learn.]
I infer that your central point is that you need face-to-face, real-time experiences to have an effective education. My point is that, done right (and it often isn't), online education can be as effective or more effective. I'll ignore your point that posting material and reading, online or off, is research and not really education, because that doesn't make sense to me; research really is considered education to the vast majority of academia.
Now, point by point:
Education is supposed to be a much more immersive experience, in which your entire world is focused upon whatever subjects your [sic] learning for certain spans of time. From the chalk-board to the many students to the profesor [sic] 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.
Sometimes I was immersed in my meat-space school, but often I just wanted to get emmersed and back to something fun. I have found that with many of my online courses, which I could take asynchronously, let me focus my attention when I was in the mood, or wanted to. That was much more liberating to me, and my education was more effective as a result.
Your point about being in TRUE real-time maybe holds water for teaching psychomotor skills (I don't think online pottery classes would work very well), but in most cases that doesn't matter for many students, according to their learning style. (Online learning is not for everyone, and most online courses give proper warning that if you crave face-to-face learning you might regret it.)
When your [sic] simply posting and returning data from a web-page, and reading material be it online or off... you are not recieving [sic] an education, you are paying for the right to research and to attain a degree from it.
How is this not receiving an education? The way you say it, I don't see much difference between what you describe and cramming material the night before an exam to regurgitate it and take the grade. One of the strengths I've seen in my courses has been the online interactivity. I've been amazed that the course discussion online is much more robust and inclusive than in meat-space. The shy student who never talks in class CAN get a word in edge-wise online. The guy in the front who monopolizes the discussion by shouting the first thing that comes to his mind WON'T monopolize online discussions and can be easily ignored. For me, that's worth the money right there.
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 [sic] know and to sharpen those skillsets.
I'm inferring that your point is you can cheat during online tests. When I've taken tests, it's been in a proctored environment where they monitor if you're surfing, etc. I've also had open-Web tests that are timed, so if you don't know the material it's easy to see because you're spending too much time Googling for the answer.
More importantly, though, is the idea of portfolio assessments, which tests the actual mind and skills of a human. For each area I studied, I had to actually use what I learned in a performance environment, and I was graded according to how well I did. This is easy
--Sig? Uh, it's in my other pants.
I teach at a Junior College and have encountered a wide range of misconceptions about online classes. The biggest is that it requires less time/attentino by the instructor. Nothing is further from the truth.
Typing out an answer to a question requires a lot more time and effort than if you can say it orrally while visually checking to see if everyone understands it
Additionally, an instructor is much harder pressed to find ways to check students for understanding. In a classroom I can just call someone to the board to work out a subnet problem, or have everyone do it on their own peice of paper independently. Then we go over it and if anyone has questions or didn't get the same answer I can quickly find out why. I have faces I can look at and people I can easily build relationships with to know what they're level of undersatnding is.
This all goes out the window on an Online format. New techniques have to be developed. Instructors who have PHDs and have been teaching for years and years may be able to handle things in a live room based soley on their teaching experience, but are totally lost when they have to rethink the entire process after moving online.
Just Designing an online curriculam is different than simply assigning a book to buy. If you are going to teach a class effectively online, you need to find materials and delivery methods that take advantage of the online format. Most instructors don't realize that.
I havn't personally reviewed any online classes I thought were well done. I've seen some of what we're doing at my school, and am pretty dissapointed. My wife signed up for them. She did fine, and learned, but only because she was motivated to put in a lot of extra personal effort that normally isn't required by students in a classroom (the drop rate was somehting like 60-70+% for that online class)
On the plus side, if you don't read the book, you ain't passing!
The big public (i.e. they have listed stocks) companies are DeVry (c'mon, techies should know this one), Strayer, Corinthian College, Career Education Corp, Education Management Corp, and Apollo Group (owner of UoP) and parent of separately-listed UoP Online.
UoP is the "gold standard" because they only do degree programs. The rest have greater or lesser participation in "diploma" programs, which could be anything from art school to diesel mechanics. (Think Sally Struthers, and I'm not talking about hungry kids.)
Two-thirds of the all the for-profit enrollment goes to these institutions. The rest mostly go to numerous privately-owned for-profit colleges.
The big guys all have online programs to some extent, while the little guys are also developing them thanks to online service providers like microcap EVCI, which used to be a videoconference company but now licenses software and acts a service provider for online education to many colleges, including some of the big ones.
All the big colleges are expanding by buying up the smaller institutions. However, already owning 2/3 of the space, they are now finding it tougher to expand profitably and have started buying things like Caribbean medical schools (Ross U.). Because of the way Title IV federal funding for education works, it is much more favorable to by a branch already in operation that to open a new one. To continue to expand, they have to gain students from the non-profit colleges, namely the community colleges.
At quick glance one can't tell a for-profit from a non-for-profit unless you check it out. And it's not clear that you should care too much--many non-profits are run basically for the benefit of administrators and faculty--that's who gets the economic profit!
The big difference used to be the aggressive recruiting by the for-profits, which has since been disallowed because the institutions would price whatever program (degree or diploma) at the level of the government loans and just sing people up, telling them that they didn't have to front any money. Then the poor bastards would graduate (or more often, not) 18 or 24 months later none the wiser, default on their loans, and the institution would still get paid, because the loans are government guaranteed (besides which, they already collected their money). New York state is now changing the law to at least withhold 1/3 of funds until the student actually graduates; it's a small hardship for students to raise the cash ( a few thousand) but will make a huge difference in eliminating the "no-money-down" type programs that really take advantage of people who believe everything they read in subway advertisements.
As you would expect, the for-profits are quicker to sell what they know people want to buy. And many people want cheap, easy degrees. Particularly in government service, it doesn't matter where you get your degree, as long as it's from an accredited institution, which almost all institutions aside from pure diploma mills (and a number of law schools) are. Like people said, I'm sure you could learn a lot online if you were really excited about the material. But most people aren't paying for the material; they are (or should be) paying for the structure and feedback that they need to help (force) themselves to learn the material, just like hiring a personal trainer.
The online degrees may be a great deal for the first people to get them, before employers get wise to the average level of learning completed. Then the backlash will come.
--
I have written some courses, and been a paid consultant to help a small graduate school put some seminars online. I will try to answer some of the questions from the original post before going on a rant. :)
A few questions come to mind: Is this a quality education?
That depends on what your goals are; if you need to get the paper to get a better job then sure! If you need to really do real work with the knowledge you gained, probably not.
Should the professors be required to show what they have done because they don't have a real classroom to attend?
Professors should be required to meet whatever criteria happens in a physical classroom. Sometimes that is not much, if you feel like the professor is not getting watched, your gripe is with the school, not the professor.
How much effort should a professor put forth for an online class?
A great deal. Making a class online is pretty hard, under estimating how much time, effort, and work it takes is common.
Shouldn't professors be required to be a little more techno savvy before they give a course like this?
Absolutely. Either that, or have someone around who is participating in what is going on who can teach the professors, or simply do the work for them. (Especially for a CS or technical class, the Prof. should have good to excellent computer usage skills, their students probably have them.) I constantly ran into not only technical ignorance, but arrogance about the techonology, like somehow if they could not push a mouse in the right direction it was the fault of the mouse. Not the fact they were inept and in way over their heads.
Note however, that the school also has the responsability to put forth enough effort to make the departments capable of teaching online (i.e. $$$). It is not as easy as getting a server farm, buying an expensive whiz-bang pile of software and a couple of grad students to admin the thing. It takes massive effort to teach the professors, the students, and generate the material correctly.
Shouldn't the schools be reevaluating the 'new teaching style' and making some adjustments?
No. They should be rebuilding the entire method used to transfer information from one brain to another.
Ok, here's my rant.
Every single client I ever worked with doing online classes severely underestimated the amount of work the presenter and the institution would need to put forth to put classes online. Not one came to me with even an INKLING of how much work it takes.
Even a "1 day" or "2 day" seminar takes a man-months to produce. Each point, concept, conclusion, idea, and so on has to be articulated in a scripted way (HTML, PDF, images, video, sound or whatever) and put together in a massive outline.
Most clients had the attitude "well, give it to the tech guy and he'll put it in there" without ever once thinking about the fact that the whole classroom model they are used to using is busted and needs to be planned out, created and put back together.br>
Once the big outline is done, THEN the whole thing has to be crammed into whatever method use to present the stuff. Next the professor has to figure out how to run all the stuff, and on top of dealing with their material in a new way, learn to deal with the interface, the new "24-hour" nature of the item, figure out how to keep the student's attention, run discussions and chat, and so on....
A few of the presenters were not even able to articulate themselves differently than their habititual ramblings in a classroom. They would say things, but couldn't TYPE them in a way that was understandable.
Struggling through this, they bitched the whole time about how much money it was costing. My response was, "well, hire your own full time geek or put up." (not in those exact words)
Web pages, and the companies that sell the "online classroom" services are only a
a big part of going to school is learning to do new things--getting better at the things you're not already good at. Focussing on the stuff you already do well kind of makes the whole exercise moot.
I checked with some online schools (*cough* Phoenix *cough*) and some of them wanted the same amount of money as a regular college. I mentioned the fact that I don't get use of their facilities, gymnasium, extracurricular, etc and questioned why it was the same price. They didn't have an answer.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a ripoff.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I was asked to teach an online course at San Jose, for about $2,000. I'm not a professor, and don't have a graduate degree, but my name had been passed along as someone with expertise in the field. From the negotiations it became clear that online studies were seen by the university as a money-making operation, on a par with the continuing-education classes that most schools offer. I ended up passing on the job because of other commitments although it seemed like easy money (just a few hours per week). It certainly seemed like students got a lot less out of the online course.
That said, learning programming, even in a traditional classroom setting, is primarily a student-driven experience. You don't learn how to code setting in a lecture, you learn by practicing on your own.
So, I would not want to take an onloine course in the humanities and certainly not in biology or chemistry, but I would consider it for CS. Sometimes all you need is a little motivation. Having a deadline provides that, and an online course may be end up being little more than the minimal structure you need to learn the stuff on your own.
every stain tells a story
But i do know about an online highschool, specificly, Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. Its a public high school (free) that i go to. It uses a realtime "classroom" program with a "whiteboard" for everyone to write on, voice chat, and text chat. The program is called Centra client (or something like that) and is hosted by Nexus Learning. Most of my classes are an hour long, and are quite enjoyable. Ive met some nice people and teachers, and some weird people too. Overall its pretty cool, i only have one more day of school left this year!
Read my comment again. "Learning the material" quickly is a great skill but that's job training, not education.
The best course I ever took was Art History. "Learning the material" would've involved memorizing 1500 works of art. The teacher knew better than to try that. Instead, he forced us to think -- harder, deeper, broader, and faster than I ever thought possible. In the end, my brain had gained a new mode of operation, one that most engineers don't have. Repeat this process with a dozen other "useless" subjects, and the result is that today I'm a well-paid kernel developer and my friends who went to a techy college are unemployed Javaheads.
Oh, and the whole class ended up remembering the artwork, too. But that was incidental, see.
By the way, professors learn new stuff by going to conferences. Or, if it's a totally new subject, they may start with a book -- and then walk down the hall and chat with the author. And yes, they've even been known to attend classes.
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.