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Bringing Convenience and Open Source Methods To Higher Education
Business Week has a piece discussing the effects internet-based technology and open sharing are having on the standards of higher education. The author says every product's success or failure depends on its fidelity — the overall quality of experience — and convenience. Since the internet has made the sharing of even expert-level knowledge convenient, he wonders how long it will be until some school or company raises the fidelity enough to have their degrees accepted alongside those of professional-grade colleges. Quoting:
"Once in a while, a market gets completely out of balance. Forces conspire to prevent either a high-fidelity or high-convenience player from emerging. All the offerings crowd around one end or the other. Eventually, someone nails a disruptive approach. Customers and competitors rush in and the marketplace wonders why that great idea didn't come sooner. The higher education market is a lot like that. For centuries the university model dominated because nothing else worked. No technology existed that might deliver an interactive, engaging educational experience without gathering students and teachers in the same physical space. ... These days broadband Internet, video games, social networks, and other developments could combine to create an online, inexpensive, super-convenient model for higher education. You wouldn't get the sights and sounds of a campus, personal contact with professors, or beer-soaked frat parties, but you'd end up with the knowledge you need and the degree to prove it."
Small problem with that idea in the physical sciences, a simulated lab isn't much use for hands on experience.
One potential problem:
How does the school prove the person who took whatever tests over the internet is the person they were said to be?
Another thing brick and mortar schools do is allow for some extremely basic filtering of students...students must be able to attend a classroom with other people, work collectively in some cases, and have some basic competition in general, without being too disruptive.
Otherwise, it's a no-brainer. Many brick and mortar schools now have some online component.
The University of Phoenix which is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, is partway there, though it's a hybrid of online and campus learning.
Um, "partway there"? If someone came to me with a University of Phoenix degree, I would reply, "Well, that DOES prove you like to pay a lot of money for toilet paper."
The University Of Phoenix education is a complete and utter joke. What they teach is worthless and best and counterproductive at worst(and yes, I have seen some of the content of their masters programs, assignments that include algebra I was doing in 7th grade and homework questions like, "What is a MAN?")
These articles don't want to point out the fact that entrepreneurs have already tried, and failed pretty miserably, at taking on the higher education market before, and other than using the internet, I don't see much difference between what was tried then and what this guy is proposing.
Monstar L
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Conferences are another similar situation. I've attended and been involved in organizing numerous conferences. The one next month is 14 timezones away. Hundreds of people will still make the trip because of the value of talking to people face-to-face, and especially the value of talking to many people simultaneously face-to-face. Video links are also terrible at providing lucky chances for unplanned conversations. I can't count the number of productive partnerships that have germinated over a stale lunch and a cold beer in between sessions.
It's precisely this fact that makes me discourage students from online distance education whenever possible. Both in undergrad and grad school, I learned way more from random discussions, be they with other students or professors, than I ever did during the official class time. So much of an education is had by being around others who are also interested in the same things and eager to talk about it.
You can take The Open University in britain as an example of why I don't believe this is ever going to work. "The Open University is the distance learning university founded and funded by the UK Government." So, you would imagine a degree from here carries at least some weight in academics and business, but unfortunately that's not the case. Perhaps not so bad as the example of University of Phoenix above, as some professional bodies do accept their legitimacy, it is a sad fact that OU degrees are sneered upon in britain today. This is likely due to the high percentage of students who sit courses "for personal interest", i.e. for fun, instead of as part of their professional career. As such, I imagine the drop-out rate is rather high. So, a government sponsored university that has been established 40 years this year has not truly broken through to be considered 'legitimate' or perhaps 'competitive'; what hope can there be for an online university?
"You wouldn't get the sights and sounds of a campus, personal contact with professors, or beer-soaked frat parties, but you'd end up with the knowledge you need and the degree to prove it."
Personal contact with professors. Don't need that. I realize this is supposed to be provocative and snarky but --
He's suggesting a two-class society, in which some of us will be alphas and go on to first-class colleges, while the rest of us will be betas and memorize pages from the Internet.
When you go to college, you're in an educational environment 24/7, getting exposed to more ideas and experiences than most people get otherwise in a lifetime.
Can you imagine spending all your waking hours for 4 years on the Internet hooked up to the University of Phoenix?
To me, the classic moment of college was standing up in a classroom having to defend a position that people disagree with. And then arguing about it later in the cafeteria or dorm. If you've never spent all night arguing over the existence of God, then you never had an education.
Most of the important things I learned at college -- computers, biology, art, music, new sexual positions, fixing cars -- I learned bullshitting with my friends over at my house, or over somebody's dining room table, or just hanging out. And yes we did have a few drinks or a joint. And yes it's nice to have some girls join you in your intellectual explorations. It was also nice to have a library where books were arranged according to the LC call number so whatever you were interested in, you could find a whole shelf on the subject, and read whatever you wanted (even if it was under copyright). And it was nice to go over to the computer lab or physics lab and try to crash the system. And it was nice to run into my professor in the supermarket.
This model of an education is like a factory worker punching in a time clock and sitting on an assembly line for 8 hours. Talk about obsolete models.
University is more than a bunch of classes and tests. It's a life experience including: moving away from home and living on your own for the first time, meeting and getting along with people who are more talented than you (a shock if you aren't used to it), establishing friendships and the beginnings of a life-long network, finding out where professors come from, buying some Staedler instruments and spending hours admiring them (partly because you can't afford to do anything else after you paid for them with that month's food money), and discovering the university library.
I can't be the only one who's outlook on life was modified by spending time in a library like the Robarts. There's an atmosphere of concentrated truth in a place like that you just don't find anywhere else. First, you find out that the world is full of people who know a whole lot. Second, you learn that people have spent a lot of time writing down what they know. And the scale of what I'm talking about only really becomes clear when you stand in a library stack with books stretching off forever and ever, each one some person's passionate little gem.
To me, higher learning is about more than just getting some facts straight so you can get a job.
But having said all that, it will be true that other models of learning will bring education to people who otherwise wouldn't get it, and who can argue with that?
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
I don't see what the big deal here is, although I haven't RTFA (of course).
One of the things I learned from college was that if you don't do the reading, you won't know what's going on in class.
One of the things I learned in college is that if you show up in class, you can pretty much postpone the reading until the exam preparation, and even then you can use your book as a reference rather than reading it pages 1-n.
YMMV.
(one example: the compiler class had the entire Java Language Specification, ~800 pages, as the curriculum. I read ~ten pages, and got the best grade.)
I am in it for both personal and professional reasons. I left school in 1982. I have no tertiary education at all (barring 3 months of A levels). And yet I have travelled the world, learned computing - both hardware and software, met thousands of interesting people, and had a pretty fulfilling social life. And I have earned a living while doing those things. Now I am bored, and frustrated by the lack of challenges I have signed up for a BSc (Hons) Degree in Computing and Systems Practice. I want to learn as much about the area I work and play in as I can. But this time, I will have something at the end that will prove that I did the work. I already know lots more than your average student in lots of areas, but other than being spot tested, I have no means of proving it.
I can't afford to take 3 years off work to attend a physical university. I am 43 years old, the "student life" is part of my past. So I have enrolled with the OU and start next month. Maybe I'll find it hard, or maybe I'll love it and do well. I don't care at this point. It's for my own education, and as I will be nearly 50 when I finish this course, I seriously doubt it will help me find employment. But combined with my existing knowledge, my existing contacts, and my desire to progress in my chosen field, I think it will be worthwhile. You "real" students can scoff all you like, it isn't really relevant. And I will also have the means of discovering whether educational standards have really dropped over the last 27 years. Considering a course I have just taken was rated as equivalent to A level, and I already knew most of the content before I started, I'm not too optimistic on that count. No wonder 95% of students are passing Advanced level subjects. Or maybe I should have listened to my father when I was 18 and stuck with college then gone to university. Guess I'll never know. I have no regrets though. Computing is a completely different subject now than it was in 1982. The horizons have expanded greatly. The greatest exposure to it at school was the fat geeks playing with their ZX Spectrums instead of sports, girls and alcohol. I knew then I wasn't ever going to willingly be part of their world.
I live in a University city, and am surrounded by arrogant little fucks who a) think they are gods gift to the world, b) think they are superior to everybody who isn't a student and c) are basically clueless about life. These people have a shock coming to them. Their elitist attitude explains a lot about the so called "professional" world. Maybe they should have classes in basic humility alongside their other work. They all complain about student loans and how much debt they'll have when they graduate, but they spend more in the bars than I can afford to, and I work 60 or 70 hours a week. Cry me a river.