Poet Ponders the Digital

Online education is an accommodation to life's realities. For years I denied that online education was in many ways inferior to physical campuses. But, now that I'm working at a research university, my views are evolving. There simply are things that online education cannot do. Denying the differences, the strengths and weaknesses of various "locations" of education, can lead us to become promoters of either online or physical campuses. We should instead admit the space in which an institution exists matters. I once argued that online degrees awarded by leading universities could improve a regional economy. Now, I admit that the most a handful of degrees can do is improve the lives of a fraction of residents. A quick tangent: most online degrees aren't from leading universities. I've taught in an online program at a regional university and online was not equivalent to the on-campus degree. I don't blame the instructors who did all they could to ma...

Can computer software evaluate student papers? The debate has waged for about three years in higher education, and lately it has taken on a new urgency. This article from 2012 raises the question. According to a new study [ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44416236/NCME%202012%20Paper3_29_12.pdf ] by the University of Akron, computer grading software is just as effective in grading essays on standardized tests as live human scoring. After testing 16,000 middle school and high school test essays graded by both humans and computers, the study found virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software in some cases proving to be more reliable than human grading. While the results are a blow to technology naysayers, the software is still controversial among certain education advocates who claim the software is not a cure-all for grading student essays. — http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/714-study-robo-readers-more-accurate-in-scoring-essays , April 23, 2012 Now, a recent New Yor...

I have been contemplating if online learning differs by discipline, especially after reading a few studies on the topic. One of the studies (Xu & Jaggars, 2013), found: The subject areas in which the negative coefficients for online learning were weaker than average in terms of both course persistence and course grades (indicating that students were relatively better able to adapt to online learning in these subjects) were computer science, the applied professions, and natural science. Are the STEM fields that different, in terms of pedagogy and goals, from the humanities? Of course, we could certainly argue that the sciences are often taught divorced from ethics and humanistic concerns, but the teaching methods, objects, and outcomes assessments are my primary concern when reading such studies. Do Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) work better in the STEM fields than in the humanities? The coding course I'm currently working through is offered by a Russian institution...

Online education still represents a "digital divide" between socioeconomic groups. Notably, young male minority students seem to struggle in online settings. We are now 30 years into the personal computing revolution, now marked by smartphones with more computing power than early mainframes. Yet, familiarity with technology does not necessarily lead to academic success with technology. I found this new research paper online while working on a book chapter (sadly, after I submitted the draft). The study raises some old, familiar questions about online education and presents a challenge to people like myself with a vested interest in digital pedagogy. Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars February 2013 Community College Research Center Teachers College, Columbia University Abstract Using a dataset containing nearly 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 community and technical coll...

As some of you know, I decided against renewing my contract with the university where I work. Basically, the choice I faced was either stay in a place where I did not belong or not renew my contract so I could look for work elsewhere. Schools need to interview in the spring so they can hire new faculty and update course catalogs. It is a gamble to change jobs, but one my wife and I agreed would be best for me. Because my doctorate research focused on higher education and technology, I consider myself qualified to state that we are in the early stages of a major revolution. The upheaval is painful as some colleges rush online, while others outsource their online courses. Some top-tier universities and many community colleges are making these transitions well, but the vast majority of institutions are going to experience unrest. As a colleague told me, research like mine might encourage universities to trade classrooms for websites. The clock is ticking down as June approaches. In a ...

One of the serious questions facing proponent of online education is if the current nature of online courses encourages poor teaching methods. The qualities of online courses that contribute to "taking the easy path" exist in some traditional courses. Also, we need to be admit that some instructors are lazy, poorly trained, or truly dedicated to models that others might not endorse. The issues instructors and critics of online education should consider: 1. Class size. When you have too many students, it is easier to assess students via multiple-choice exams and other forms of memory recall testing. If you rely entirely on assessment of memorized data, but have only a dozen or so students, I'd wonder if you are lazy or have an out-dated pedagogy. But, if you teach 100 or more students, nobody can expect you to assign massive individual research projects and reports. The larger the class size, the more automated the assessment we have to adopt to remain sane. 2. Cla...

WETAKEYOURCLASS.COM-  We Take Your Online Class! We Do Your Homework, Tests, Classes For You! What needs to be written about the above link and dozens more like it? Online and distance education are at least slightly more prone to cheating, and I wonder if they are not significantly more prone to dishonestly than their traditional and hybrid counterparts. Students have been able to purchase papers for as long as instructors have assigned papers. We all know that friends "help" each other, and sometimes even parents help compose a paper. Yet, buying a paper reveals a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of an education. Now, we have to deal with students buying class attendance. Forget cheating on tests or buying papers, students aren't even attending the online lectures. Cheating is bad enough, but at least if you were in a classroom there was a chance (maybe only a slight chance) that you would learn something. You might hear one new idea, one inspiring comm...

This column offers solutions with which I disagree, but it is thought-provoking. The Fiscal Cliff for Higher Education - Next - The Chronicle of Higher Education : Moody’s notes that the number of students accepting admissions offers from colleges that the agency rates has been dropping at a fast clip since 2008. That comes even as those institutions are spending more to enroll those students. The trend, Moody’s said, is particularly serious at the lower-rated private colleges, “which are increasingly competing with lower-cost public colleges and feeling the most pressure to slow tuition increases and offer more tuition discounting.” What bothers me is that online education is viewed as the savior of struggling campuses, not for pedagogical reasons but because online courses can generate revenue. Southern New Hampshire could easily have been one of the many struggling small private colleges in the Northeast, but... it has transformed itself into a test-bed for ideas on the future ...

I agree with this, and hope we eventually realize that technology-driven education (often how online is marketed) is a mistake. Technology should support pedagogy, not drive it. And, no matter what some universities claim, they are letting the technology lead, especially because they view online education as a revenue stream. Technology Has Its Place: Behind a Caring Teacher - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education : After millennia of experimentation, we know a great deal about how people learn. We know that the best learning involves practices—lots of them. We know that effective learning is best achieved through the engagement of other deeply attentive human beings. The learning might occur in a traditional classroom, but it might happen in a different space: a lab, a mountain stream, an international campus, a cafeteria, a residence hall, a basketball court.  No PowerPoint presentation or elegant online lecture can make up for the surprise, the frisson, the spontane...

What does it mean to "teach" an online course? This question might be the most serious question facing colleges and universities as they migrate more courses online. It should be of even greater concern as we move some K12 learning online. When I teach online, I find that students have to write and interact much more than they might in a traditional "face-to-face" course. In a classroom, it is easy for the quiet student to say only a few words. Even the best teacher can call on students only so many times. I prefer groups with lots of discussion, but those can be dominated by a few students. Online, when carefully structured and moderated, can engage more students. It is also easier to determine who is or is not comprehending some topics. At the same time, you must balance moderating against letting students feel like the online space is theirs. It is easy for a teacher to dominate a classroom, real or virtual. Yet, if there are too many or too few studen...

Is it a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) if there is a fee for credits? What should such fees be? Another post to follow with my own thoughts about MOOC designs and practices. UW to offer fee-based courses through Coursera | Local News | The Seattle Times I'll be posting about my own role in a MOOC project later this month.

I teach at a small regional and it is making some positive moves to foster online and traditional courses that are compelling for students. We know we have to compete or we will slowly fade. Continuing from my previous post, the challenge facing regional institutions serving the mid-tier student population: what makes your online program special? Or, what makes your on campus programs distinctly "tech enabled" for the future? To thrive online, and on campus, regional institutions must embrace faculty training, cutting edge technology, and an entrepreneurial attitude that embraces quick revision to degree programs. We can survive, and even thrive, but we cannot do so without substantial investments — especially if online education is going to be part of our degree programs. The for-profit Big Box Retailers of higher education are a real and substantial threat to the regional campuses that dot our map. Hundreds, if not thousands, of regional institutions are struggling t...

While I am a proponent of online education, some "market realities" are starting to concern me. Education is unlike most products in several ways, but it is still a service-based product. Let me first explore the traditional higher education markets, the rising "Big Box" market, and the current challenges. Then, I will explain how I see the future and why bookstores and computer shops offer some warnings. What is the traditional "market" for higher education? There are at least four major, and countless minor, markets. The following are the four major traditional higher educations markets: 1. The "nearby and affordable" model of most state colleges and universities. For most students, these institutions were chosen based on price and location. As with grocery stores, discount retailers, and other commoditized goods, price and location become the primary criteria for selection for a significant percentage of consumers. My wife and I comple...

Those of us specializing in new media, digital composition, writing technology or whatever we might call our courses and research projects sometimes fall into the same idealistic fad-think as tech prognosticators. Remember interactive fiction? Our students don't. SecondLife? Not a single one of my university students has seen it or cares to see it. The list of gone and forgotten technologies seems endless. This week I made a reference to MySpace, something wildly popular only seven years ago among my composition students. Turns out, the MySpace of today is unpopular and doesn't even resemble the old version I knew. LiveJournal? Yahoo Groups? Don't even try to explain Usenet newsgroups or Internet Relay Chat. Remember AltaVista? GeoCities? Tripod? My students don't. In 1992, I operated a Fidonet BBS, first with WildCat and then RoboBoard. Boardwatch was a thick magazine. Internet meant dial-up at 2400 or 9600 baud. Does anyone say "baud rate" today? ...

This fall, I resorted to using "anti-plagairism" tools for the first time in at least six years. One reason for this is that what I had been teaching at the University of Minnesota didn't lend itself to plagiarism. My technical writing students had to design a new toy or board game, create a prototype, and develop a product pitch. It's hard to steal another person's LEGO project that uses randomly selected bricks. However, teaching a literature class I found that students either had problems with understanding citation norms or they simply assumed an instructor wouldn't check to determine if a passage was a copy-paste effort. I learned this is a great reason to have two mandatory drafts before a final paper, too. My department head and other colleagues were supportive and I'm now working on a reusable lesson module that will address citations. Student don't quite grasp that simply because you can copy-paste doesn't mean it is acceptable. ...

Over on Slashdot, the following question has 165 comments in under ten hours: Ask Slashdot: Is E-Learning a Viable Option? - Slashdot Once again, we should remind ourselves that technology and other materials depend on the teacher's ability to use those tools wisely. Technology alone is never a panacea. Also, technology does come with its issues. Students working online, either at home or in class, can and do get distracted. We all do. It's hard for me not to skip over to check the latest headlines or skim science news RSS feeds. Do you really expect students to be disciplined? Technology, used wisely, offers amazing new potentials. But, I've seen what happens when a teacher doesn't realize Twitter and Facebook have become the favorite topics of the class period. Ideally, we teach students to focus. That might be with a book or with an iPad, but focus matters.

One of the questions facing colleges and universities is "Can Anything Be Taught Online?" The simple answer is, no. But some of almost every topic can be taught online. I ask the question, "How Much of Topic X Can Be Online?" When an institution wants to take a topic online, it should ask the following: How much of the course content will work online, in the time allotted?  How will that content be delivered?  How will knowledge and skills be evaluated? What technologies will be required? Do potential students have access to the needed technology? While a school cannot have a veterinary surgery practicum online, they can provide simulations and much of the background material leading up to the physical practicum. Someday in my lifetime I imagine "robot-assisted" surgeries will be common. (They exist now, but are limited to a few procedures and there are physicians present.) Still, I'd want a surgeon to have performed "real" surger...

This story explains some of my doubts about online education. It is not online education that concerns me, but the poor oversight and administration that threatens to further erode confidence employers have in online degree programs. GAO report finds cheating, plagiarism and other violations in for-profit colleges’ online classes - Politics - The Boston Globe First, the obvious question: if the GAO is examining for-profit institutions now, how long before they investigate “non-profit” colleges and universities? I have plenty of questions about education in general, including higher education quality, regardless of the charter of the institutions or their settings. State, non-profit, or for-profit, any institution is only as good as its administration and faculty. Online, oversight is even more challenging than on-campus. It requires more time and energy because it is easy for students (and some faculty) to cut corners online. The GAO examined enrollment, cost, financial aid, cou...

At the university where I teach we are engaged in a debate familiar to online educators: which delivery methods will we embrace and why? When discussing online education it is important to clarify how the experience will be "delivered" to students and how well the delivery method complements the instructional styles of various instructors. I have a decided preference for courses that include either some face to face meetings or live "synchronous" communications between the instructor and students. My preferences as an instructor reflect my preferences as a student, but only when I consider the best instructors I had throughout my education. Online education can refer to any of the following: Distance learning via teleconferencing technologies hosted in a traditional classroom setting; Synchronous learning conducted by an instructor specifically for remote students only; Hybrid learning, in which students meet sometimes in classrooms and sometimes online; Co...

As the second week of courses ends at my university, and I have prepared for the third, I finally have a bit of time for reflection. First, let me state that the department in which I work is dedicated to delivering an online degree program that is equal in value and student experience to the on-campus degree. This task is not easy, since online courses by nature are different. From the delivery method itself to the nature of assessing students online, there are differences we cannot ignore, so we must adjust to ameliorate those imbalances. Unfortunately, the university is running an ad campaign in local media that suggests online degrees are "convenient" for students. Nothing could be more misleading, in my opinion, than suggesting that an online degree is somehow more convenient or in any way "easy" compared to traditional studies. Online education requires more time, not less, and requires more self-discipline of students. The accelerated pace and the lack of...