This is where we’ll discuss Todd Gilman’s “Combating Myths About Distance Education,” David Glenn’s “Online-Education Study Reaffirms Value of Good Teaching, Experts Say,” and Marc Parry’s “They Thought Globally, but Now Colleges Push Online Programs Locally.” All three are from the main trade newspaper for higher education in the U.S., The Chronicle of Higher Education, and I think that all three are pretty accessible reads that touch on some commonly brought up issues regarding online classes.
Just a couple of thoughts to get you going:
- The experience that Gilman describes in his “Do Your Job Better” column closely mirror my own. I too have had many colleagues think that teaching online must be some kind of scam and not “real” work, I think online courses have the potential to be just as bad as the worst kinds of face to face courses (and vice-versa), and I think online classes demand a high(er) level of participation and organization from both instructors and students. The comments on this piece are pretty interesting too, by the way.
- The Glenn article sums up a “meta-study” about the extent to which online classes are “better” or “worse” than face to face classes. As the article points out, the question is a clumsy one for all kinds of reasons, and there are some good reasons why online classes might appear to have greater student success when they don’t necessarily. But what I personally find convincing is that it isn’t really the “online” versus the “face to face” experience that is the defining factor in “better” or “worse,” if that makes sense, and that online classes are a real and viable thing.
- Finally, the short Parry article is interesting because it contradicts a lot of the reasoning that originally went behind online classes. A few years ago, the thinking was that we need to get classes and programs at places like EMU online so that students in Alaska or wherever could take classes from us. Well, that just hasn’t come to past. In fact, in my years of teaching online, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve had fewer than 10 students who weren’t in Southeast Michigan. And those students were, for the most part, former EMU students who had moved away and who were trying to pick up some online classes to finish degree programs.
I really appreciated Gilman’s article on “Combating Myths in Distance Education.” In fact, I am entirely set on making this my blog entry for the week!
There is definitely a stigma surrounding online classes; I don’t think the stigma necessarily rests in younger generations, but perhpas moreso in older ones. (As Gilman points out, it was his colleagues who were making jabs about him teaching online.) This may be because they are more aware of such things as shady online colleges being “diploma mills”, or because they think traditional education is best, or because they have never actually experienced an online course themselves, or because they do not realize the potential technology has now to produce really interesting, in-depth courses all via the web. My favorite comment by Gilman was, “…any classroom, whether it’s the face-to-face, online-only, or hybrid variety, is only as good as the people in it.” This is so true! And, this is what, I believe, is a good point garnered from this week’s discussion. Yes, online classes — and “on ground” classes!– can be good or bad with how they are structured, but even structure can’t fully save them if the teacher or the students taking part simply don’t give their all.
Summing up, people need to experience online classes before they judge. And, really, I think online classes are harder because the teacher needs to try even more to organize things to encourage/require student involvement. You can’t really dismiss online teaching as a whole because, just like traditional teaching, it has to go on a class-by-class, teacher-by-teacher basis.
Ashlee; I agree there’s a stigma about online classes. I wonder how many bad online classes there are though? I think our class is a pretty great model for how online teaching can work really effectively, I know I’ve learned a lot from being a part of this class. However, at this point, I can’t really say if I’ve learned “more” than I would’ve in a regular class. Also, being at EMU on a regular basis my perspective is a bit skewed. I see the class in some ways as being just as “real” as a standard course, however, I’m not sure how much that has to do with my actually being at EMU and knowing quite a few of the class members in other settings.
Also, what about places like Phoneix University? I don’t know a thing about them, but I have to admit I have a bad impression of them simply because they seem to suggest an online Masters is as good as a standard one. Maybe that’s true, but I still find it hard to believe. I’m not saying this because I think it’s true, rather I’m just expressing some of my own inner-concerns, doubts. I’m still willing to reconsider the entire thing.
I totally agree that there are loads of bad online courses out there! I wrote in another post about my fear of taking an online course because so many of my friends have hated them! I just don’t like how people sometimes automatically discount them when they don’t look into what they really entail. But that pet-peeve extends way beyond just online classes for me…
As for Phoenix, a family friend teaches for them and I know that he goes hardcore on his students. His class is tough and it requires them to read a lot and do multiple assignments, etc. So, I think that it depends, once more, who you have for a teacher. But, yes, I completely understand where many would have reservations about online colleges. I have them regardless of knowing that they at least have one good teacher and could have many more.
I think the online class stigma is diminishing rapidly, at least in the English department here at EMU. 10 years ago, when a very small number of people were doing online/correspondence courses, I think the vast majority of my faculty colleagues were dismissive, to put it kindly. I started teaching online 5 years ago, and by then, I think there was kind a split among faculty, some who thought “well, this might be okay,” and some who were still against it, though now largely silent about it. Nowadays, I still have colleagues who are dubious of the whole online teaching thing, but I have more colleagues who are either supportive or interested in trying it themselves.
I think the same thing is true with the rep of these kinds of classes among students, too. I didn’t include the article this time, but it seems to me I saw something recently that claimed that somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all college students in the US have taken at least one online class. That’s, um, a lot, a stat that suggests to me that online classes are getting past the bad impression thing, at least as a blanket assertion.
And to me, Phoenix University is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand, I agree completely with what you’re saying here, Brian, about being less than impressed with their reputation. On the other hand, I personally don’t see places like EMU really “competing” with them. I don’t know the numbers/stats on this, but I’ll bet a majority of students enrolled at Phoenix are taking part-time, “just in time” kinds of classes, the sort of thing where some manager says “hey, I want you to get trained in Excel– go take a class.” I don’t think they have a lot of undergrads in the sense of 18-25 year-olds who are going to college full-time (or close to it). And I think the only way it makes sense to take a graduate degree from them is if it doesn’t really matter where the degree comes from, if that makes sense.
I’ve had a horrible Online class (not here) in which I learned absolutely nothing. I wanted to get the class over with quickly (it was self-paced), and maybe that didn’t help things. But the interactive nature of the class was minimal and the teacher feedback was less than minimal. It was a joke, and I’m sure I got an “A” out of it…even though I didn’t learn a thing.
I think that the reason you (or others) might think an Online degree isn’t as good as a regular one comes down to a philosophy of learning. If you think that students learn through inquiry, hands-on, interactive experiences, the traditional classroom has more obvious ways to enable this type of learning. While Online courses have the potential to facilitate this type of learning too, I think it’s assumed that it provides more of an environment for regurgitating facts directly to an instructor and getting a grade at the end, which was my experience in that course I mentioned.
Yes, it’s probably classes like the one I took that give Online courses a bad stigma. But, maybe if enough people take good Online courses, that stigma will disappear.
I think the reasons why people think that an online degree isn’t as good as a regular one are actually fairly complex. A lot of it has to do with what we’re talking about here, of course, but a lot of it also has to do with more subtle (well, and sometimes not so subtle) issues of perceived prestige and social class. Ivy league schools, small and fancy liberal arts colleges, places like U of M, etc., these kinds of schools don’t care about online classes at all. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that if they were to “extend access” too far, they might risk damaging their rep,which comes in part to being exclusive and/or expensive.
And I guess that’s one of the fears I have about what online classes might mean to this disparity. I mean, as it is, EMU is considered “a notch down” in many ways from U of M. Does that mean that if we have robust online programs at EMU that we will potentially go down in the prestige/exclusivity game thing another notch?
Wow, that’s really interesting! I never thought about whether or not the “Fancy” places had online courses. I guess I just assumed everyone was going that way. I didn’t realize they didn’t do it too, but what you said about them losing prestige makes sense. I could see how they wouldn’t want to open up access to just anyone, because to them, in order to keep up their good name, they must remain exclusive.
Organization is the key to online classes, .like Gilman points out. It takes a lot more to be invloved in an online class and make it purposeful for the students as well. I said this in the other post, but I have had both and got more from the one where it was obvious the teacher was involved. Like many English/Writing teachers get, those who teach online get flack from it. Its not a “real” class to many. But like Ashley says if you have never done it you can judge. Each person learns differently and some do much better in an online situation. I am not really a great online learner, but I have done it and see how it can be good for some. Students have to talk to each other on an online class in different ways and they have to be involved in the class to make it meaningful. As for the assumption that online classes are just diplomia mills, there may be some out there, but that is not the case with so many of these classes or even programs. The University of Phonix has a big online program, it is up to the student to check out the school first.
I thought all three of these articles brought up some really interesting and useful points that teachers, both online and brick-and-mortar, should consider. It does seem that the arguement of online vs. traditional, one better than the other, is truly missing the point. And, the comments in the first article were very interesting… especially the back and forth b/w the one “privatization” guy and those who were calling him out. LIke you, Steve, said I’m sure that from an institutional perspective one of the big bennefits is increased number of students and resulitng revenue from distance learning offerings, but it seems that this is not really the point of the article and for that one guy to insist that Gilman was missing the point by not discussing it seems a little ridiculous.
In the Glenn article, there were a couple of things that stood out for me:
I reall liked the idea that when you plan for an online class, you have to think about how to present it, perhaps differently than you would think about it for a F2F class… and that using that idea to plan for F2F classes could help you be more organized and think about how you structure the class in a better way.
“Mr. Bernard and his colleagues found that online elements that encourage student-teacher interaction have better effects on learning than do elements that encourage student-student interaction.” I wasn’t really sure what to think of this. It seems sort of at odds with the collaborative nature of online classes like this one. It seems that you, Steve, seem to encourage more student-student interactions than teacher-student. Do you agree with Bernard’s findings?
Prof Krause, it seems like you took a lot of Gilman’s advice when designing this course!
Regarding the Glenn piece: I found the statement about not finding effective ways to facilitate student-student interaction online to be very strange. We’ve talked about so many already ways to facilitate online interaction this term (twitter, for example), and the discussions themselves are examples of deeply meaningful student-student interactions. Perhaps he’s talking more about the broader venue — like this big course blog — which I’ve found both awesome and a little overwhelming (it would be profoundly overwhelming in a first-year course, I think), so I wonder if any courses like ours was included in their study?
I also just want to say that his call for us to “incrementally build models of the most effective ways to deploy technology…” and conduct “studies that deploy technology to improve student learning in first-year courses” both sound like super-cool and meaningful dissertation topics to me (or they could be MA projects on a very small scale). Just something to think about.
I like to think GIlman took my advice…
As for the money thing: I think that people have started to wise up that online programs don’t make a lot of money per se, at least not in the sense that a place like EMU putting a program online means it will attract students from around the world and thus (potentially) draw in that many more students and that much more tuition. There are a few programs like that here, but not many. The vast majority of students are local, so it isn’t about money in that sense.
On the other hand, the thing about online classes is that they fill almost instantly. The demand from students at both the undergraduate and graduate level for online classes is still extremely high, and I have had students in the past for this class tell me that they would much prefer taking it online. And while faculty aren’t under a lot of pressure to “make money” for the institution, we do need to have our classes fill up with students.
So I think it is basically a balancing act. We want to offer classes online to extend access and, to an extent, “make money” in the broadest sense. But we also want to make sure that we don’t get greedy and offer bad online classes in the name of money and crappy quality. It’s sometimes harder to make that happen than you might think.
In this age of budget cuts and bleeding revenues, it would seem only logical that some of the colleges (most, all?) would want to enhance their revenues by offering some distance or online classes. Over the last couple of months, I have been pondering an idea about online classes in high school-perhaps to take the place of summer school for those who have failed? It is an interesting concept and one I have not yet truly wrapped my head around. But, I do appreciate these articles. I feel that they, for the most part, are acting like a cheering section for trying online teaching.
I know that some of our high school students are taking online classes right in our school from Baker College, and I believe they have shown some measured success, but I do not know how rigorous they are. I also know that our Media Center Director is there to help them with the technology and apparently they need a lot of help when they first start out.
I am very fascinated by the idea that online learning has proven to be so successful. I would suppose that soon some colleges are going to have to teach How to use online technologies in the classroom. We teach everything else and it would seem that a class covering this pedagogy would be useful.
This is my first online class as a student and I have heard plenty of negativity about online couses from students. They were not all from EMU but various colleges and universities around southeast Michigan. Most of the negativity was instructor not being transparent with instructions and not responding to class discussions.
I wonder about the fraud that goes on with online classes such as boyfriend/girlfriend doing homework for enrolled online student. During Rhetorical Theory and Writing we learned male and female language can be discerned, but does the composition teacher pay attention to the language of a paper and say, “Oh, I bet this is really a female writing this paper.” Because the trend of our society, more online classes will be required from colleges and universities.
After seeing what goes on, I think online teaching has to be more involved. Those who dismiss it as a not-so-real class apparently have not done the research.
I never really thought about the online fraud thing before. I doubt for a grad class anyone would be willing to take on such a large role for a boyfriend/girlfriend, lol, but the same type of fraud can happen in a large lecture hall as well. Some people will cheat no matter what the setting, but I think it’s harder to fake it whether F2F or online if the teacher is on top of things and has precautions in place.
The Gilman article was interesting, I liked his point that some people have a lot of negative things to say about online classes, but meeting in person isn’t always a good thing either! Students can be unresponsive, unprepared, rude, etc. more so than they can be online. When it comes to distance education, students have to respond a certain number of times and in such an intelligent fashion that isn’t required in the classroom setting. Each way of teaching has its own challenges, but they also have great benefits as well. I’ve found this online class to be much more challenging than my others combined. It takes a ton of self-discipline that F2F classes just don’t require.
Same with Glenn, I like that he points out that the new methods aren’t that different from the old ones. Email or video conferencing is pretty much the same as when a students comes to your office and you tell him or her to shape up or risk failing. As for Perry, his idea of the global campus is pretty cool. I mean, I guess that’s what a lot of online classes are anyways, but to think on a global level seems like it’s way more than what EMU and other institutions have been doing. Like I said, I think it’s important for students who are working adults with families like Joel Kohlberg to be able to go to school and work fulltime, but I think schools need to make sure they are doing what they’re doing to benefit students and not just their own pocket books. If an institution is just going online to make money then the program will fizzle like they mentioned, it won’t have to same quality instructors or instruction that many universities demand. Distance education should be to benefit students who want to better themselves, not be taken advantage of.