Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Yes. At most institutions I've had contact with, distance/online education is done as a cost-cutting measure. It is forced by administrators with little regard for proper implementation or academic soundness. The implementation is done by instructors who aren't necessarily sure it's a good idea in the first place and don't have the resources to do it right.
It sure is cheap to do, though. No buildings to maintain; pay the instructors a fraction of a regular course and charge the students the same (plus a "resources fee" in some cases).