http://chronicle.com/article/MIT-Dean-Takes-Leave-to-Start/235121/
Her goal is to have on campus learning centered around big projects and all lectures on-line (no in-classroom lectures).
There is a blog response to her idea that hits all of the holes in her plan, but I won’t link it bc of the rule against blogs. But, even with all the objections, even the blogger notes that there needs be a way to re-vamp the system; he’s just not sure how it can be done.
Sounds like what Olin is doing but with more online learning.
Very interesting . . . looking forward to following.
I am skeptical, but curious.
It will be interesting to see what happens. There is so much more to a university education than lectures. Back in the precomputer dark ages I had many smaller group courses. Discussion groups, less than 30 students listening to a professor explain how to do math problems at various level, labs…I have done projects for various courses over the years. One problem I can see with student directed learning is gaps in knowledge. Standardized lab experiments with time to do a project means the basics are covered thoroughly and not assumed to be picked up. This applies to elite students- much of my learning was in Honors classes so I can see why just doing projects doesn’t cover everything.
Sounds like the Minerva Project.
Lectures in large lecture halls are dinosaurs. I would not under-estimate a MIT professor!
Yes she is joining the Minerva Project. A few months back there was an extensive article in The Atlantic magazine about this new concept in higher education. It has been accredited, classes will be online, limited to 19 students and all will be conducted in seminar format, no formal lectures. The writer of the article participated in a class and found ti very intense and thought provoking. Students will be studying in 4(?) international cities each academic year where housing will be provided. Cost $25,000 per year.
I agree with @wis75. I’m always skeptical about online-based or online-only classes. Most students may just slack off – but it may work for a very small size school aimed at ‘a few genius’ students who don’t need a teacher to motivate/require them to study/work. In other words, school of geniuses. For classes, it will be like a conference of webinars exclusively – no need to be physically present. I always find myself slacking off at webinars I-)
lectures in live large lecture halls are still alive and well. CS50 at Harvard and now Yale will probably be around 1500 in the fall
dadofs,
based on the experience of the Atlantic article author, the class session was totally the opposite of a webinar experience. some excerpts: “it was exhausting”, “no relief in the form of time when my attention could flag”, “I felt my attention snapped back to the narrow issue at hand to answer a quiz question or articulate a position”, “He(the instructor) split us into groups…at the push of a button…leaving my three fellow debaters and me to plan, using a shared bulletin board on which we could record our ideas… . Bonabeau bounced between the two groups to offer advice as we worked.”, He(Bonabeau) asked us which of four possible interpretations of the article was most accurate…Within seconds every student had to provide an answer, and Bonabeau displayed our choices so that we could be called upon to defend them." One student who chose Minerva over Duke did do in part because of the “level of interaction and intensity” of the on-line instruction experience, reinforcing the author’s experience.
We shall see if this education experiment will be a success. The pedagogy may be sound but there a fierce institutional headwinds they must overcome.
The Minerva model requires minimal investment in physical or institutional infrastructure (no labs, no support for faculty research and writing). I’ve already said elsewhere that it’s parasitic on the current model. Ortiz mentions in the article that there are a lot of underemployed and desperate PhD holders who will work for next to nothing. All the rich privates and state-funded flagships will educate and support the education and research of the surplus faculty who will go work for Minerva et al. while it still exists. When it all shakes out, face-to-face will still matter more than distance/online ed.
The article doesn’t say that Ortiz will be working for Minerva per se. In fact, the nuts and bolts of this proposed new system are remarkably vague.
She said that there will be a giant lab for projects. That would require money for land and lots of equipments. Her lab will probably be much bigger than this one:
I’m skeptical but optimistic.
This does sound amazing on face - I think project-based learning in blocks (kind of like Colorado College’s block schedule) allows for some really deep, immersive learning. And project-based learning is more applied and I think will prepare students better for the work world rather than the theoretical lecture-based learning they tend to get in college these days. That said, I’m concerned about the last part - geared towards a graduate-education model, allowing students to work on what they wanted to work on from the get-go. While I think some 18-year-olds are sort of uniquely positioned and know exactly what they are interested in, others need more time to explore, and I’m not sure how I feel about pinning college students down so early. That said, I suppose those students would simply choose to go somewhere else.
The online lecture thing she’s talking about sounds like the “flipped classroom” - where students watch lectures in their own time and they do the more active learning (what would normally be homework and take home projects) in class, collaboratively, with the professor’s involvement and supervision. It’s probably a better environment - gives students more time to ask questions and explore deeply with the professor, and involves much more dialogue and back-and-forth communication.
Sort of wondering where non-science/technology/engineering majors fit in here, though, including pure math and theoretical pursuits in the sciences. You don’t need large centralized laboratories to do the work in those fields.
She’s right that she won’t have any trouble attracting faculty, especially not in the Boston area. In fact, she’ll probably have more applicants than she needs, and they will be high-quality from great programs.