<p>I am talking about the traditional learner - the 18 to 21 year old that this college confidential traditionally addresses, the one who leaves home for the first time, not all of the post bachelors learners or non-traditional learners that have already had the brick and mortar experience. </p>
<p>Isn’t a big incentive for online learning the COST. If traditional college students can afford to travel the globe, ski in Aspen etc. while furthering their post high school education, then they are the very students that have been able to afford the dinosaur brick and mortar school. </p>
<p>I really don’t see why we should limit online learning to college and beyond. If we are moving in this direction, we should be be prepared for the American education system in general to change drastically. Now high school students can start taking online college courses well ahead of college and may find a brick and mortar high school education is, in fact, a dinosaur.</p>
<p>This will not be a panacea. There will be costs to our society.</p>
<p>The on-line college experiment isn’t ready for prime time with respect to undergrad classroom instruction, much less with respect to replacing the social growth and learning aspects of a real college education:</p>
<p>"Sure, gaining experience is good. And there’s nothing wrong with experimentation. It’s a sure bet that somehow, at some point, online instruction will indeed reshape higher education, if perhaps in more modest ways than its most ardent backers assume. Missteps are part of the process.</p>
<p>Still, this is not the first heavily hyped online-learning venture to make headlines for going dramatically awry. The question is, what university will be eager to offer up its students as the next lab rats in what amounts to a massive pedagogical R&D program by for-profit Silicon Valley startups?"</p>
<p>But “respected old schools” don’t necessarily want to increase the number of degrees they confer. Their very cachet is in the scarcity value of their degrees. I believe that elite schools will dabble in online courses as a revenue enhancer, but at no point will they allow this vehicle to be the medium by which they grant degrees. The community extension school is not the same as the college of arts and sciences. Online education will be the practical equivalent of community ed. It’s just not going to command the same respect.</p>
<p>The four-year residential college experience provides 18-22 year olds with a certain gloss. It is a form of academic and social finishing school that online instruction cannot replicate. I realize that many students are not going to participate in the 4-year residential model, and for them, online options may be helpful. But the online university will not replace the brick and mortar institution. I also don’t think an online PhD in most subjects is going to fly either. </p>
<p>I use the online platform at my college as a virtual filing cabinet and as an easy mode of communicating evaluations of student work. Certainly my students have no excuse for not knowing what is going on or where they stand. But I still feel the core of my job is face-to-face interactions in the classroom. I wouldn’t want to teach online most of the time, and I don’t think my colleagues would either. It would be exceedingly dull. I wonder what kind of professoriate an online college would be able to attract.</p>
<p>If the 100% online model becomes a thing, I’ll begin the transition to doing something else and so would most of the other teachers (at least in fields like mine) I know who are truly brilliant at what they do. </p>
<p>No online classroom platform can replicate the experience of having two students who have never met before cross paths in my office hours and, with my gentle facilitation based on my deep knowledge of their passions and interests, find themselves in a two-hour conversation where they give each other ideas and begin building relationships. This happens in my office at least a couple of times a week. </p>
<p>The classroom is a place for me to give students some of the basic knowledge and methods that their high schools should have given them, a place for me to begin figuring out what makes my students tick, and a recruiting ground for students of true intellectual curiosity and quality. The real act of educating and of helping them reshape how they see the world has to be completed elsewhere. </p>
<p>I will take the fact that my former students have begun laying the foundations for an endowed fund that would be at my disposal to allow me to help continue educating others by defraying the cost of travel and research experiences as evidence that they believe what I’ve done for them has had real value.</p>
<p>^youre both correct. This isn’t for the tippy top; it’s for the great bulk of the rest. Just like brick and mortar stores still exist, Amazon has made a nice small niche for itself - selling the exact same product as those stores. Now, I still shop at stores that offer superior service and knowledge and I would have loved to be educated by both of you. </p>
<p>Creative destruction is an economic fact. Just like the current HS system replaced the one room school house (to furnish the clerks and managers needed in a new era); thinking that the present entrenched system cannot be improved to meet the current needs and problems is ignoring the lessons of history.</p>
<p>It’s nice (really great) to nurture two minds at a time. We need a system that nurtures many magnitudes more. Education - quality education - should be available to all at a price which is affordable. When a motivated student can take a course on the Big Bang theory from Japan, delve into the mathematics of relativity from Stanford, develop an understanding of the banking system from Columbia, learn intro physics from Georgia Tech, listen to a professor offer theories on Humankind from Jerusalem, hear views of climate change from British Columbia (just to name a few), interact live with fellow students and the professors through google hangouts, I believe that the future has some very exciting potential for those willing to embrace change.</p>
<p>But, this is not a one size fit all solution.</p>
<p>Sometimes too much of a good thing is just that. The internet is bombarded with information as it is. Having the world of education at our disposal online does not ensure that we are actually learning any more ultimately, as the focus becomes so broad, it becomes hard to grasp it all, especially when we take into account different educational models from all over the world. </p>
<p>As far as online education being accessible to everyone so as to put us all on a level playing field, I find it very hard to believe that this will be the case. History does not bear this out either. Those who can afford more education will most definitely end up with a better online experience - more exposure to the better classes - and the rest will be left no better off than they are now as a lot of these classes they will have access to will be useless in the job market as there will be a way to quantify the most relevant information in the form of degrees or certificates or whatever you want to call the new package of information.</p>
<p>My D’s have been inspired the most to learn by direct interpersonal connections that they have had with teachers and other students.</p>
<p>One thing that online education is going to find impossible to replicate and very difficult to provide in anything but the most watered-down form is the incredible intellectual, cultural, artistic, and athletic richness that the college campus provides to both the students and the surrounding community.</p>
<p>Scroll down through the richness that this college provides. Until that Star Trek Holodeck comes along, a kid sitting in his bedroom staring at a computer screen is not going to enjoy anything even remotely approaching the intellectual and cultural feasts that are routinely available everyday at thousands of colleges all across the country.</p>
<p>UCSD is nothing like a typical state college (for those unfamiliar with UCSD it basically requires >4.0 W GPA for acceptance, is world renown in certain science fields, and is located in an extremely desirable area). A typical state school has a minority of students living on campus if it has dorms at all, and of those that do live on campus a good majority go home on the weekends (same with many private schools btw).</p>
<p>^^Okay if my local state school, UCSD, it too high brow for you, let’s consider say Long Beach State. It’s a Cal State with significantly lower academic stats than UCSD. Many students are commuter rather than residential students, and it’s in a rather grittier neighborhood compared to UCSD.</p>
<p>Do they provide their students and the surrounding community with events, learning opportunities, activities, and cultural enrichment that would be difficult or impossible to impossible to replicate on a computer screen:</p>
<p>Well, they don’t concentrate as much of it on one handy list like UCSD does, but I’d say that online education is going to have a tough time keeping up with the enriching activities and programs this Cal State campus routinely offers.</p>
<p>Harvard Magazine. Derek Bok. Covers the pros of technology/online courses in education and also the need for continuing residential college. Leaves out the non-traditional student, but does a good job of explaining technolgical innovations possible.</p>
<p>^While I don’t put much stock into studies which don’t reveal their metrics, the articles conclusions actually support the thesis that employers are trending to accept the alternatives which MOOCS offer.</p>
<p>“The majority of employers (56 percent) prefer a job applicant with a traditional degree from an average school over an applicant with an online degree from a top university (just 17 percent say they’d prefer the latter).”</p>
<p>This means there is a significant percentage which are accepting to online.</p>
<p>“At the same time, 80 percent of employers say that online-only degrees and certificates provide opportunities for older students to get valuable college credentials. Half say online degrees help younger, first-time college students get a high quality education.”</p>
<p>Half say that it helps traditional aged college students “get a quality education.” Wow! And so early in the development of this new model.</p>
<p>“61 percent of community college students say online classes require more discipline from students than traditional classes, yet four in ten (42 percent) believe students learn less online.”</p>
<p>Again, over half believe students learn at least as much as traditional learning in a traditional class. This is an unreal figure given the early stage of the model.</p>
<p>There is no argument that the residential college community - with the cultural, athletic, social events cannot be exactly duplicated (or even closely matched) by MOOCS. On the other hand, UCSD runs about 30k per year. It’s a great school. (in fact, I MOOCed a fantastic Drug Development course from it.) it’s so popular that getting classes in impacted Majors often extend a student’s experience to 5 years!</p>
<p>What this thread clearly shows is some adamant opposition to a degree consisting of a blend of traditional and MOOCS classes. What I don’t hear are solutions to the incredible economic burden now facing the middle class family ( e.g., 30k in costs to California residents at a top school like UCSD) desiring simply to give their kids the opportunity to live better then their parents.</p>
<p>Here’s another one from Harvard Magazine, this one on the relative merit/stigma of extension/online classes/degrees at Harvard Extension School.</p>
<p>I’m not sure the 61 percent figure is an endorsement of online learning or that it means that students feel they’re learning as much as they would in a bricks and mortar classroom. What it may mean is that students feel that online learning requires them to be more disciplined in their attendance and study habits than a b&m student. IOW, they may find it easier to skip lectures than they would if they were required to fill a seat in front of a professor or that getting extra help is more of a challenge.</p>
<p>I think online learning is great as a supplement to the classroom or for nontraditional students who can’t afford to attend a residential college full time, but I agree with posters who say that online students miss out on aspects of a traditional college that can’t be duplicated over the internet. I look at the new experiences my own freshman son has had in the first month of school and I’m amazed. He’s arguing politics with his new best friend from Georgia (the country, not the state), taking an EMT course on campus (encouraged to do so by the leaders of his freshman trip), and learning about sports and music to which he is being exposed by the kids around him. </p>
<p>I was one of the 99.8 percent who took a Harvard Extension School course without pursuing a degree. The course was fine but it didn’t compare in any way to my undergrad experience at another traditional college or with my experience as a traditional graduate student at Harvard.</p>
<p>It should also be noted that the Extensions School is used by many Harvard administrators to keep up their teaching appointments. So while you may be taking a course with a world-famous professor, you’re just as likely (and far more likely than the traditional student) to be taking a course from someone whose primary focus is not teaching and research, or who does not have the credentials to get a teaching appointment in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Some faculty have no more than a BA or BS degree.</p>
<p>In fact, I checked out the offerings for the department in which I used to work at Harvard. Of the 53 members of the department only two are teaching a course in the Extension school this term (out of a total of 27 courses), and none of them online.</p>
<p>This is not to say that you can’t get a good education through extension learning, just that it’s really not the same experience as the full four year undergraduate academic experience.</p>
<p>Bok says it perfectly in that quote (post #56).</p>
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<p>I don’t disagree with some level of blending of online and traditional education. That’s already happening pretty well, and I’m sure it will continue to grow. I’ve said on this and other threads that online can be a useful supplement to traditional college education. What I disagree with are the “Dinosaur” headlines, the over-hyped articles proclaiming The End of College, that soon nearly all college will be online because Computers Can Do Everything. </p>
<p>The residential university model of higher education has been around for nearly a thousand years now. It has proven flexible and useful through all manner of social, cultural, and technological advances advances and upheavals. I’m sure it will adapt to this new technology as well and continue to be as vibrant and useful as ever</p>
<p>I certainly know of some high ranked schools who do not state that a degree was earned on line when it was.</p>
<p>It just will not matter in the future. Either you have the skills and knowledge or you don’t.
Employers will spend more time testing applicants with the exact knowledge they are looking for.</p>
<p>Students determined to learn will learn. </p>
<p>Even now industry spends many man hours teleconferencing and getting things done virtually. </p>
<p>Team work is across the globe…no longer in the same lab. It is a new set of skills highly valued by worldwide and nationwide companies.</p>
<p>Our children are already learning with their computer games. Little kids learning without a teacher in their bedroom. Kids playing computer games with kids across the globe. They are already well entrenched in virtual learning and working with others in real time on line.</p>
<p>There is no stopping it…and it is so exciting to watch happen.</p>
otherwise, (according to this poster) we’re going back to snail mail for “effectiveness”.</p>