I agree it’s absolutely going to happen…there are been some exceptional post-graduate courses and degrees for at least a decade where all the work is done offsite and on-line with perhaps a few weekends on campus (Notre Dame and Northwestern have such programs) and the weekends are probably not even necessary anymore. My son took an on-line course this summer from his uni while he was home and loved it. And like romanig there is nothing, absolutely nothing that says his section was any different than the sections that on-campus kids took that semester. Same prof, same texts, same exams. This semester his housemate is taking all but one of his classes in the B-school on-line. His roommate likes the idea of not having the schlep across campus in the snow to a lecture hall. Factor in the fact that younger people are very used to being ‘social’ and can engage one another without being face to face and the reality of on-line education becomes even more tangible. Respect will come along the divide between ‘young’ and ‘old’ and tradition and the new reality.
Technology has a way of breaking down preconceived ideas about what is or isn’t ‘the best’ method.
“How are lecture classes with hundreds of students currently graded?”
Graduate students or qualified undergrad TA’s, both working under the supervision of the professor.
I haven’t taken any MOOCs, but I seem to recall from browsing through them that any grading was being done by fellow classmates. Just my recollection. But unless you are going to move to an entirely multiple choice exam format and provide proctored testing centers at many locations, there isn’t any practical way for a MOOC provider to assess 10,000 students.
I also didn’t say that online instruction cannot be done well, though I think it’s more difficult than most people assume. But the question being asked is why it’s often not as respected. I think it’s largely a matter of trusting the assessment.
As others have written above, I think it is necessary to clarify what is meant by “online”.
Online as in a distance-ed version of an on-campus course?
Online as in a distance-ed version of an on-campus degree?
Online as in a distance-ed course that doesn’t have an on-campus equivalent?
Online as in a distance-ed degree program that doesn’t have an on-campus equivalent?
Provided those are offered by a fully-accredited college/university, they are going to be treated as any other course or degree program offered by that college/university.
When the online coursework is offered in a non-credit version, or by an unaccredited college/university, then it is a whole different thing.
@mathyone, but why can’t TA’s grade online classes? No one says that the typical currrent MOOC will be what online classes are like in a generation or even near future.
BTW, I thought the question was whether they will become respected (some already are, IMO), not why they aren’t.
MOOC’s aren’t typical of most online classes. In the online classes my kids and I took, you submit a paper in dropbox and get it back graded with comments. Many in person classes don’t have exams but have papers. I have only taken one online class that had an exam but it wasn’t counted for much and there were a number of papers, two long and some short.
MOOC’s get so much press. I really don’t understand it. Are there people out there still who think MOOC’s are the only kind of online class there is? I really don’t understand why Harvard et al get so excited about these.
I tried a MOOC in modern poetry. To me, it was total chaos. Some people in certain communities arrange to meet to discuss, I heard. They are free, which is great. But most of us pay for online classes for credit and the quality, while variable, is often very high.
That’s not always true. In the STEM classes I’ve taken, the grading was done by machine. In some cases that mean multiple-choice questions, but in most cases, it was a matter of “write a computer program that does X,” and the programs would be graded by computer.
Multiple choice homeworks sound easy, don’t they? Not so fast. One of the hardest (and best) classes I took was a machine learning MOOC from CalTech, which was allegedly exactly the same as the on-campus course. Each week we’d have a homework that was ten multiple-choice questions. Each question had five possible answers. The difficulty was, the questions were either difficult math problems, or questions like “Write a program that does X. Run it 10,000 times and compute statistic Y. Is it (A) 10. 5, (B) 8.2…” There was no way to guess the answer. Or, “Write a program that does X. Write another program that does Z. What is the ratio of statistic Y from X to statistic Y from Z.” I spent a lot of time on that class each week.
“why can’t TA’s grade online classes?” They can. But only if there aren’t 10,000 students–unless it’s the sort of class where you can do some kind of automated online assessment.
In the class described by @CardinalFang, there is no possible partial credit, which in my experience is an unusual situation for a higher level STEM class, where the problems are indeed hard. If no one looks at your work, no one knows whether you got 99% of the problem or 0%. The professor (or TA) doesn’t get to know your work, and can’t write a meaningful letter of recommendation for you. I’d be unhappy paying CalTech tuition for that level of personal attention.
Actually in the CalTech class I mentioned, the professor got to know some students’ work. He got to know mine, for example. He monitored and participated in the online forum, where some students, including me, shared information and asked questions. When I emailed him later about another issue, he remembered me from my postings and complimented me. Or maybe he looked up my postings, but I think he probably remembered me, because there were so few women and IIRC I posted under my own name.
I of course didn’t pay CalTech tuition for the course; I paid nothing.
That is not just a feature of on-line CS courses these days. Writing a computer program to grade students’ computer programs is not that unusual in normal college CS courses. Actually, it is analogous to the industry situation where the software quality assurance person (instructor) writes a program to do automated testing of the product program that the software developer (student) is writing (both are writing from the specification).
@mathyone, OK. But online courses don’t all have to have 10K students.
As I said before, I don’t see any reason to conflate online with scale.
And even if there is a huge size, there are more ways of teaching and assessment than the traditional American college method (of frequent assignments and tests). For example, the Brits base grades almost solely on year-end tests. There are lectures and some of unis have tutorials as well, but, outside the tutorial-based unis like Oxbridge, students can study however they want. Then grading is done, but results may not be known for weeks or months. It’s a system that is perfect for distance learning (and thus also online learning) and indeed, the University of London External Programme is both cheap and serves a lot of people all over the world (and have for about a century or so). It also counts a few Nobel Laureates among its alums.
@purpletitan, I am not conflating online with scale. I clearly said that online can be done well but people are wary of online credits because there are inherent difficulties with assessment if the classes are huge or not proctored. Not really interested in hearing you keep saying this to me.
My daughter took an online class at her high school. The quality of the curriculum and instruction was pretty bad. The teacher can’t keep an eye on the students online, so in order to ensure the kids were paying attention, there was an enormous amount of busywork. She didn’t receive a single comment on her work from the teacher. They never met. Moreover, the teacher had no idea whether the any of the work was actually done by her. I could have done all her assignments and the teacher wouldn’t have known. I think this was the worst class either one of my kids took in high school, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it was online. I’ve heard nothing but complaints from other parents whose kids took other online high school classes, some run by the school district, some by the state. Oh, just remembered, she took a second online class. The “teacher” was away on vacation for half of the class duration. No way to contact her with questions. Nice.
This article from Higher Ed discusses Georgia Techs year old program in computer science. Georgia Tech is trying to do this the right way and not diminish the value of their diplomas by offering their program ( same link as my earlier post).
It answers some of the grading questions that are being asked.
@mathyone, you can have awful online classes but you can have awful in-person classes. I would think that many of us have had classes where a prof was barely comprehensible, doesn’t organize his/her thoughts and lectures in a manner that aids understanding, and in general is worse than a textbook. Does that devalue an Ivy degree then? Because you can find faculty like that at every Ivy.
I guess my point is, you can always point to the worse examples of something and say that that something won’t take off because of that, but I don’t find that argument terribly compelling.
@purpletitan, getting a little tired of you putting words in my mouth. I said that online classes can be done well. I also said that the reason why they tend not to get the same level of respect is due to issues and uncertainties about assessment standards. In some situations that can be resolved. I also said that doing an online class well is not as easy as some people assume. And I gave examples of our bad experience with online classes that had nothing to do with them having 10,000 students. I can add to that the much vaunted Khan academy SAT prep, not great in my opinion or my daughter’s. I can also add online classes which I checked out over the years but didn’t think were all that great, not worth the bother, including some from MIT, Coursera, and Khan. I have yet to find one I think is as good as the typical class my kids have at their high school.
Just looking at your last commentary on my posts, I was not “point[ing] to the worse examples of something and say that that something won’t take off because of that”. I was describing the total experience of our family and a few friends–albeit limited, they were not cherry picked worst case examples. It’s not as simple to do well as most people imagine but I also have repeatedly stated that I believe online classes can be done well, but the format does create obstacles which need to be overcome. That’s the last time I will respond to your putting the words into my mouth that online courses “won’t take off because of that”.
Let me share a little more.
Poor camera work–one of the classes I started, but abandoned was flawed by poor camera work. At inopportune times, the camera would be focused on the professor and not on the graphics being discussed. Or the camera would show the prof writing on the board and then cut to the prof’s face just as he moved aside so you could not see what he had written. (This, incidentally, was also a big flaw in the videotaped classes from my college days.) Also, the electronic pointer didn’t show up well on the video, so could not tell what features were being pointed at on slides.
Poor sound quality. Sometimes it was difficult to understand or hear the professor. Not possible to wave your hand and point out that the mike isn’t working well and get it fixed immediately.
Poor editing. Sometimes important parts were simply cut out.
Poor content–observed this on Khan–I know some people love it and I’m not saying it can’t be helpful, but I was not impressed by videos where he makes mistakes and goes on for a while, or does other things that are quite confusing to students struggling to understand. Also had some problems reading the handwriting. Heard part of the SAT prep videos. Would have been mad at my daughter for using them as a backdrop to her exercise routine and not even watching, but he went on and on about completely obvious stuff–she was right–it would have been a waste of her time to give it her full attention.
Absent and inaccessible professors–A problem in both my daughter’s class, and a friend’s completely different class.
Broken internet links–Ditto. Online classes are oh so modern with their internet content but what do the kids do when their assignment isn’t on the web any more and “prof” is unreachable?
Silly filler content evidently designed to hold the interest of high school students but which wouldn’t be caught in any high school text I’ve ever seen.
Video content which is dumbed down over actual textbooks and slows down presentation of material. Instead of reading assignments, because it’s web based, the reading tended to be “lite” while emphasis was more on watching videos. So, instead of quickly reading an assignment in 10 minutes, student has to slog through a 30 minute video conveying similar information but aimed at and paced for the lowest common denominator. Better students can read faster, but they can’t watch the video faster.
Disjointed, inappropriately leveled content–Course content cobbled together from random stuff found on the web, which may be way too easy or sometimes too hard or presented with inadequate background, instead of a cohesive presentation which builds logically on itself, knows what the students already have learned and what they haven’t, and is appropriately leveled for the audience.
Poorly designed assessments. The idea that an online course has to use online tools whether or not they are actually the best way to assess or learn the material, because it’s online so it must be good. Never mind that it’s Pinterest. It’s online so that’s the important thing. Doesn’t matter if the student has any idea what the content means. They pinned it!
On the Coursera site, you can watch the video faster. I love the 2x button and the 1.5x button, and use them frequently. How often I’ve wished for a 2x speed button when I’m sitting in an actual lecture.
The pause button is another great feature of online lectures. Sometimes when I’m watching a complicated derivation, I can’t quite follow it in real time, so I hit pause and work through the derivation myself.
An advantage of video for me is being able to play a section over again. What’s often happened for me in lectures is they go like this: easy, boring, easy, easy, obvious, easy, boring, easy, huh, wtf, what is this, what is he talking about … Ok so I’m not a Rhodes Scholar. But man do I love being able to slide back that slider bar two minutes for an instant “come again?”