Jonathan Chait writes in New York magazine that President Obama is taking the risk of alienating his fervent supporters in higher education by his advocacy of online learning to cut costs.
The traditional Democratic response to expanding access to higher education is to increase tuition subsidies for needy students.
The President came out against that idea, and said that costs must be contained by shortening the time needed to get a degree and by using online learning.
The great virtue of online learning (MOOCs, or massive online open courses) is that it cuts costs by reducing the need for labor (i.e., professors).
In a MOOC, one person can tape lectures that will be viewed by 10,000 students at a time, or 100,000 or 150,000.
Chait says this is sure to make professors angry, because their jobs are threatened.
He suggests that the professors are just looking out for their own self-interest.
He did not mention that 70% of faculty in higher education today are “contingent faculty,” meaning adjuncts with no tenure or prospect of tenure.
What is the difference, he asks, between sitting in a large lecture hall for 500 students or watching a professor lecture on a computer?
Is skepticism about MOOCs really just about protecting the jobs and pension of professors?
Or is there something about face-to-face interactions with living persons–both faculty and other students– that is valuable?
I’ve found that when I ask questions of my computer or television, they tend not to respond. Perhaps the President’s experiences differ.
ROFLMAO! Exactly!
Bingo! One of the first things I thought of.
I have said over and over that education is a social activity. As evidence look at the withdrawal rates from “distance learning” courses. Because there is no social pressure to show up for class or to the library to meet with a study group, where does the motivation come from to turn on the computer and log onto the course and attend to business? All of the social supports of education are stripped away and the less motivated drop out. Also, words themselves carry only a small fraction of the meaning in a statement. But talking to people face-to-face all of the affect and tonal variations are available to tailor the message.
The cost savings are had by stripping out the social context, but if it weren’t necessary, why haven’t people just gone to the library and learned what they needed to know from the Encyclopedia Britannic (the EB people told me there was a BA degrees worth of knowledge in my field–chemistry–in the EB)? Only a rare individual studied on their own and then passed the bar exam or took a degree somehow. The rest of us need the social context to create learning expectations and structural support for the effort.
I suspect the children of the wealthy and powerful will have a different experience.
Will the Obama girls attend a virtual university?
So now we are moving on to what’s best for other people’s children past k-12. At least we can save “some of them”.
Who knew we would value humans less under our first bi-racial president?
I got six email requests to sign his birthday card. I said no six different times, six different ways with visuals and cartoons to emphasize my point. I guess I won’t get anymore since today is the day. I do not wish you a happy birthday. I wish I could, but I’m not feeling the love anymore Barack. 😦
Chait reveals himself to be another education hack.
At first glance, MOOC seems like a good idea–after all, using the networked computer as a technological means to democratize access to information (remember the Gutenberg printing press?) must be good for the masses, yes?
All I can say is that I just finished taking a rigorous year-long graduate level course entirely on-line. Previously, I had gotten my bachelors and masters in a traditional brick and mortar setting.
What I found, even with my experience as a successful student, that the isolation of on-line learning was oppressive to me. At first, there seems to be no difference but after a few months, one begins to feel a certain malaise.
It was only after I joined an on-line student association group and a smaller study group that I begin to function better. Face to face interactions with your instructor and your peers may be much more essential than we realize.
What am I saying? I guess I am giving my take on my (limited) experience with being an on-line student. If one is not highly motivated, already well trained in the fundamentals of the subject matter, computer savvy and just determined to find a way to succeed, then MOOC courses may be counter-productive to effective learning.
Profitable business model maybe, but I don’t think I would recommend them to the vast majority of students. And, especially not to K-12 students.
I taught an on line class this summer. One aspect of the class that worked out fairly well was assigning the students a group project. They had to collaborate in constructing a presentation using the free Prezi platform (Prezi.com). Many students commented that the interaction they had with other group members made it feel more like a traditional class.
The fact is that the increasing use of technology to communicate has made face to face interaction more important in knowledge transfer and the diffusion of ideas, not less so.
I have two gifted children at home, both of whom are enrolled in online courses during the summer. They hate them. They much prefer real contact with real teachers.
For many students, especially in rural areas, it is not a choice between an online class and a traditional class, it is a choice between an online class and no class. This is especially true for gifted students in high school.
False.
One of my current students graduated in a class of 21 from his rural high school. He was transferred there as a senior when the smaller high school he had been attending was closed. How many advanced classes get taught in a high school with 80 students? The answer, of course, is none. Given the area of the state he comes from, I doubt there was an AP class taught within a hundred miles of his school, probably no IB program within a couple of hundred miles. There is a lot of empty country out here in the middle.
My experiences is that students do NOT enjoy online courses…too much isolation and not enough face-to-face discussions.
When my son did his online class, we never even saw a picture of his instructor, or heard a voice. And the modules were completely on his own–no discussion or collaboration with anyone else.
It’s going to be nearly impossible to have a professors interact with students if they have thousands of “students” as Chait suggests.
That was a bad class. I had a video of myself in the syllabus for my online class and made at least a couple of screencasts for each week of work. I also had my students do group projects together.
So, TE, what do you think of Chait’s suggestion for THOUSANDS of students per one professor? Will videos of this one professor make up for the inability to have actual contact?
We would have to see how well it works. There are hundreds of thousands of students who learned economics by reading Paul Samuelson’s textbook. They might have also learned it by having him explain it to them.
I was the first person, in my family, to attend college for several CENTURIES. That time, for me, is sacred, and it’s more, much, much, much more than some list of stuff I learned. It’s sitting by a library window with stacks of books and papers, looking out upon snow falling among trees on the quad. It’s arguing philosophy with friends and lovers into the early morning hours. It’s being in the presence of mentors and models of what real learning looks like, of people whom, to this day, I look back upon with reverence and gratitude. I guess that sort of experience is not supposed to be for the proles anymore.
So essentially, while Obama prattles on about helping the working middle class in his speeches, he does the opposite through his actions.
Why can’t this intelligent man see his own hypocrisy? What is wrong with him?
He needs to sit down and listen to real people, not his DC handlers.
Our key strokes are being monitored as we type.
Snap out of it, Mr. President, N O W !
I feel better…whew!
He is a tool of the oligarchy, like the rest of his ugly lot.
My guess is that you did not go to a commuter school.
I doubt anyone thinks that MOOCs can substitute for a Williams education. But perhaps they might make sense as a substitute for an 800 person introductory computing class, or as a substitute for not having a class at all.
Take the classes to the areas that need them. What is the university’s mission?
I am not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate?
Ugh, his pockets are lined so deep. There is no research supporting any of this online *&%$. There is in fact research against it.
Stephen Porges Phd. is coming out with yet another book that details the importance of a teacher and classroom in learning. He gets it and troubled by the trajectory of education.
Click to access somatic%20psychotherapy%20today%20interview.pdf
i jusr don’t get why people are so excited about MOOCS. Without instructional support, a MOOC is a form of publidhing, not a medium of instruction.
I watched Kenneth Clark’s “Civilization” avidly and repeatedly, talked about it with friends, read some related books. How is this different from a MOOC?
My daughter tried brick & mortar colleges and found semesters were just too long for her plus she’s a night owl with insomnia. She eventually found Phoenix U and graduated from there. She worked her butt off; online classes are not “easy” as many people think they are. Classes were five or so weeks long and demanding. I am not anti-online classes, as long as they are done correctly. At Phoenix, she had access to her professors and she worked in small groups on many projects.
If MOOCs are to help “needy students” attend college, doesn’t that presuppose they have access to computers and high-speed Internet connections? Plus a good many other things needed for college level classes?
How will “needy students” pay for required texts? Texts are frightfully expensive – even if just online and even more so if downloaded & printed. Or bought to begin with in hard copy. I remember a good bit of my daughter’s expenses were the books she got every semester from Phoenix.
Who is going to develop and maintain these classes? They will need to be updated every semester. At least, I would hope the courses would be updated, just as live professors update their classes every semester – and sometimes within the semester, depending on how things go.
Who will develop and monitor tests / exams? Who will grade papers, projects, or other assignments? How will rigor be maintained?
Who is going to accredit programs of study? (Would I want to go to a doctor who had never had a live, face-to-face class? Would I want a teacher who had never worked with students? Would I want to eat at a restaurant where the chef, sous chef, and others have never worked with food? No to all questions.)
Who will maintain the infrastructure necessary to develop, maintain, and transmit MOOCs?
As others have noted, what happens when students have questions, ideas, or need help with something?
If MOOCs replace only part of the required courses in a program, what department is going to decide who is not rehired in the department? What classes should become only online instead of face-to-face? Will MOOCs work for every program? If not, which programs are they good for and why?
There are many more questions to ask.
I do not believe MOOCs are the way to go for the majority of students, needy or otherwise. Maybe for highly motivated or students who do not need/want face-to-face contact, but not the bulk of students I’ve seen.
Where will our grandchildren be if the flash-and-blood infrastructure of education is destroyed across the whole nation? There they’ll be, in the ghettoized ruins of our cities, with no personal route or connection whatsoever to the world of ideas, art, or science.
Picture a nation where the lucky are semiliterate consumers of entertainment and educational products vended from the cloud. And the unlucky…
I have taught those 100 student classes (usually held in an auditorium re-vamped in the 1960s from earlier constructions) and i will be very honest ; I was not good at it. It did serve a purpose because they were freshmen in psychology class with different majors at U. Mass so it did some weeding out. One purpose it served was to (a) discourage students from taking psychology courses in the future (b) weed out those who were just browsing (c) indicated to me that the music majors were pretty good students in psychology (d) graded or ranked the students into 4 quartiles that showed /predicted through GPA that they might do well in future psychology courses etc etc. Did it perform useful functions for the University? What were the purposes? Did the purpose of education actually fulfill anyone’s expectations (students’, professors’ )? I was one of those adjunct faculty ; my friends have to teach adjunct at 3 colleges and drive between them to make one salary and I didn’t want to do that on the road…. Does technology eliminate the driving costs for the adjunct to move back and forth among 3 sites? I know the adjunct in chemistry and the adjunct in special education were transporting equipment/materials/tests from one to another whereas I could just transport paper or overheads (today they carry their own expensive computer set ups). Ralph Nader is the only one I know who has written about this. I f you know of any others please reply. My colleague in his 60s taught for U. Phoenix on line in engineering. I think he might agree with me that it (a) took in large numbers and tuitions (b) screened out those who were not prepared for college level work ….. I will ask him if there were any other benefits. If we say in teacher preparation we have to admit students with higher GPAs and SATS, then should we also say that we can admit large numbers and put them through the “mill” of a MOOC? Is it a screening tool? I keep sending emails to Obama that I wihdraw my support from the democrats because of these strategies and what Arne Duncan is doing. I agree college tuitions are too high but this is not the best way to go about it.
Look, there are some positives regarding online learning. At most of the high schools in my district, there are “distance learning labs” where a student can take a course where the demand (or finances) doesn’t warrant a full-time instructor like, say, Chinese. We also use these courses for students to make up credit when they fail a course, since many of the courses are available online so the student tries to make up the credit over the summer. I spend two weeks facilitating one of these labs a few years ago, so I have some insight on NC Virtual Schools. The content and materials are pretty good, and challenging. The motivated students were able to make it through (although deadlines are always being pushed back), but the problem is, most of the students were not motivated. I remember one girl called me over to ask me a science question (my background is Business Ed) and I told her I had no idea, to just read the material and do your best. She looked at me in disgust and said, “Then why are you here?” I looked at her and said, “To provide you with resources and an environment where you can earn back your credit. If you want to ask questions, you should have asked them when you were in the class with the teacher.” Out of around 50 kids that summer, maybe 15-20 completed the course successfully. I will make an educated guess that 25% of students in high school that are enrolled in these courses complete them successfully.
So 75% didn’t pass? That’s success?
And here: “I remember one girl called me over to ask me a science question (my background is Business Ed) and I told her I had no idea, to just read the material and do your best. She looked at me in disgust and said, “Then why are you here?” I looked at her and said, “To provide you with resources and an environment where you can earn back your credit. If you want to ask questions, you should have asked them when you were in the class with the teacher.”
Really, wow! Maybe she asked because she didn’t understand and she couldn’t figure it out. So she had a place to sit (environment) and a book or device (resource), but she didn’t understand. And what exactly were you paid to do…man the room?
Maybe that’s why she needed a real teacher.
You just made the case for not pushing on line learning.
I was glad to see somebody beat me to it. We were typing at the same time, Linda, with the hearts and minds of actual teachers.
Colleagues, don’t let that spirit pass from our civilization. Knowledge is carried in our lives, and passed to new generations by our interactions with our young, by the millions and billions. It’s what makes us human. Stand up and fight for it, against the arrogance and shallowness of “market driven” technocrats.
Check out his post on the NC armed guards thread. Can it be the same Zak?
” In so many words, I explained to him that a teachers biggest weapon is “trust” and that it was the first step in building relationships with students, which may be the most important ingredient in a classroom”
By the way chemtchr….I love all of your posts. You give me hope.
Linda, are you looking for me to embarrass you?
The situation you enclosed speaks for itself.
No, I can’t abide this. Who are you, Zak, to answer a student so presumptuously and arrogantly?
“To provide you with resources and an environment where you can earn back your credit. If you want to ask questions, you should have asked them when you were in the class with the teacher.”
No, consider her question seriously. Why ARE you here, anyway? This girl isn’t there to “earn back her credit”, and she’s done the right thing in asking you a question. Do you really earn your paycheck by kicking her down and robbing her of her right to see herself as a learner?
You could have pulled your chair up in front of her keyboard, and answered, “There ought to be a way to figure that out.”
I don’t know what (if anything) you consider yourself qualified to teach, but the respect you could have shown her would have been a good start.
Zak, no need to threaten Linda, you’ve already embarrassed yourself but are too cocksure to realize it.
Virtual classes also allow students to more easily schedule around traditional classes.
And they don’t have to deal with pesky humans, especially the annoying, pompous type.
That is of course not really the point. The flexibility of a virtual class can allow students the ability to take traditional classes that they might otherwise be unable to schedule.
The quality is not there in MOOCs. I work as assistant professor and I grade each and every paper my students submit. I just mailed their final papers back with my hand written comments on them for the summer semester. This would never be done with a class of 100, let alone 10,000. It cheapens the system to assume a student could get the same attention and level of learning by just watching videos.
Yes, see Zak’s example above and his caring conversation with his student. We must save that exchange for how NOT to interact with our students.
Yes, Linda, paint me with a broad brush. I can personally guarantee you I’ve made a greater impact on students in my professional career than most in the profession. I have kids that would walk through the gates of hell and take a bullet for me. Could you say the same?
My point with the online learning, which apparently got lost on some of you because of my snarky comment to a kid with a chip on her shoulder, is that online learning takes a special student to be successful, and that most of them will fail without the interaction of a qualified teacher in the classroom. Fact.
Since it’s obvious to me that you or “chemtchr” are not familiar with Virtual Public School credit recovery, I’ll explain it to you. Kids who passed the final exam in a course, but didn’t pass the class (maybe too many absences, student just didn’t complete assignments, etc…) could retake the course in the summer. They had to complete all sections, and at the end of each section, was a test to see if they learned the material. They could retake assessments as many times as they wanted, as long as they all averaged to an 80, which meant mastery (and passing). My role for those two weeks was to keep them quiet (so as not to distract others) and unlock their assessments at the end of each section. There were around 50 high school kids making up credit in various courses (don’t remember actual number of courses, but around 6-8 different online classes). No, I wasn’t the “teacher,” just the lab facilitator for those two weeks. It was an exercise in baby-sitting, as most of them chose to spend their time playing games on their laptops. They had to spend 50% of the course time at school, and could complete the rest at home. So what they would do is log in to the course (it would time-stamp when they logged in and off), then play games or try to get on Facebook or other social sites. I spent two weeks learning an effort in futility, as it didn’t matter how many times I would encourage them to stay on task, and they chose not to. The girl I spoke to in that manner had been there three days, made it clear to everyone she didn’t care, and wanted to socialize with everyone and be a distraction. When she learned she couldn’t behave that way with me in the room, she decided to go another route with me, and said what she said. Now, if I was her science teacher the previous semester, the odds would have been in her favor that she would not have been in that situation to begin with, as I would have been able to reach her and she would have passed my class. Because I’m good at what I do, and have the reputation to back it up. Could you say the same, Linda?
Yes, I could 100 times over and I still find your conversation offensive. Work on your word choice with students next time. There is room to improve for all of us.
Zak, I’m very familiar with “credit recovery”. A whole roomful of (publicly financed) computers in my building has been reserved for the (privately profitable) vendors of online credit recovery classes for about five years. They mostly sit empty, while teachers wait in vain to reserve computer time for our classes.
This situation is now well known and amply documented, so that particular growth industry has pretty well topped out. Newer adventures in online vending are on the schedule.
Somehow, your personal assurance that your students would “take a bullet” for you fails to reassure me that you’re a real person. In the unlikely event that some fool opened fire, my hope is that it would be the other way around for most teachers.
Yes and in light of 12/14/12 and twenty dead children and six dead educators, the bullet reference appears insensitive and rather self-aggrandizing.
Yeah, maybe the “bullets” reference was a bit insensitive, but by your logic, the “gates of hell” would be a school building. Surely that’s not where you were going with this, right? See how fun it is to twist words?
My point was that I’ve had actual experience with the online courses and their success rates (or lack thereof). Not too long ago, school districts offered summer school, where 20-25 students spent a few weeks in a class with an instructor. But that’s too expensive! So now they offer online courses, with a lab facilitator (which was me for two weeks – the principal asked me if I’d do it since I have good classroom management). Have you ever sat in a room of 50 kids, none of which want to be there, and try to keep them quiet? I suspect you have not. The way I handled the rude and disrespectful student is not a reflection on me, but more-so a reflection on the program itself. She needed to be in a summer school class with a certified teacher and the other students who failed, say, Civics. Instead, she was in an online course, one of 50 kids with various online courses (around 6 – 8), with a lab facilitator responsible for keeping order and giving access to (unlocking) course assessments. Why? Because online courses are cost-effective.
So when I read about a college in California suspending its online offerings due to poor performance, I am not surprised. In fact, I could have predicted the outcome. Corporate reformers dangle the cost-saving carrot onto the LEAs, at the expense of its customers (students). You cannot replace the value of the human element and knowledge in a classroom with bits and bytes. Very few students have the motivation and discipline to retake a course online in which they have little interest in to begin with, on their own.
And for some insight on me, Linda and Chemtchr. A few years ago, high school students were required to pass a computer proficiency assessment in order to graduate. I’m the guy my principal would entrust to ensure those that failed it the first time would pass it to graduate. I had a 100% pass rate. That’s what I do. I’m a teacher, not a lab facilitator.
When I got my MLS beginning eleven years ago, I had been out of school (college) for thirty years. I drove two hours each way on Saturdays to campus. I loved it. Classes were much smaller than undergraduate classes and everyone there was working towards the same goal. We had lively discussions with our professors and each other. We formed relationships. I find that my relationships with my students are as important or more important to them and to me as all of the other things that go on each day..Those relationships facilitate learning.
Educating the next generation is the foundation of civilization. Shouldn’t we try to apply our greatest efforts toward that end? Instead, we get untested wishful thinking about how we might be able to do it on the cheap.
Well said, Brian!
‘A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age’
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Document-A-Bill-of/136781/
Let Obama model this technological efficiency in his own House. Let him release all but a handful of staff and advisors and automate the rest. Then let’s see what his thoughts are on the wonder of technologically-created isolation.
Great ideas, and while he is at it, he can sign his daughters up for online classes and withdraw them from Sidwell.
Maybe for some students on-line learning is the way to go, but it should not be forced on everyone. I know that would not do well with an on-line course. Also, if I had been the girl in the summer on-line credit recovery course who was told she should have askd the teacher while she was in the real classroom, I would have given up trying to succed and get credit to graduate entirely.
Exactly! Several states are requiring, or looking at requiring, an online course to graduate. This will not serve most kids. My son took online geography so that he could take more electives at school. He hated it, and said he will never do it again.
If we are talking about personal experiences, my son took a required class online so he could schedule other classes that were more important to him. Not the best class in the world, but it was better than taking the traditional class and not getting to take the classes he wanted to take.
Yep, heard about your son, TE, as you have heard about mine. But you didn’t answer the point: what do you think of MANDATED online learning?
I thought I did reply, must have been lost in the haze. Mandating that students learn to use the traditional technology of education seems like enough of a mandate to me. They don’t need to mandate that students learn the new technology yet.
Sorry…typo…I know that I would not do well with an on-line course.
Where is the richness of life when community actions, education, transactions, etc. are all made via a computer? How fulfilling is that? And is the expectation that all people MUST be part of constant computer technology?
I suppose if “efficiency” – meaning more profits for fewer people and fewer annoying paychecks to be distributed to pesky workers is the goal, this is the way to go. I don’t believe that it will make the world better or more enjoyable. I think more people will continue to be left behind.
But even if there are some advantages for occasional courses for gifted, or rural, or students in need of remediation, as long as the goal is to have fewer people employed, except as part of the tech industry, and salaries are lowered each month or so, what is the incentive to even get educated? All that is left is part time, fast food, low skilled jobs for people with degrees. Why bother?
I know of a case where someone paid another person to take 12 college credits for them. How can anyone be sure the registered person is actually taking a class? I think this opens the door for so many more problems. In addition, I have taken on line classes and they don’t compare to face to face interaction. To think that all college classes are lecture halls with 500 students is false. Even at large universities where my children went, there were some large lectures but those classes always had additional small seminars where people could actually talk, discuss, and learn from each other. Very disappointed in the President I supported.
There are even businesses that advertise that they will take your online class for you. So far the solution has been to require students to show up at a testing center with ID, take exams on a locked down browser on cam, or try to design a class that does not give credit based on exams but term papers or something like that. None of these solutions are completely satisfactory, however.
How many of the people pushing MOOC’s would want their own kids educated this way?
If they do, maybe we should extend the MOOC model all the way down to preschool, and replace the nannies of the rich with them too since watching Mary Poppins is as good as having someone there to wipe your nose and tell you not to run with scissors.
Mary Poppins? That’s funny! However, I’d much rather have Mary Poppins educating today’s children than Obama, Gates, Coleman, Duncan, Rhee, JEB!, Bennet, etc.
Even Mary Poppins on video?
Actually, you’re right. None of those guys you listed would have the patience to spend ten minutes with kids.
They also don’t know a thing about education despite their claims and false beliefs about themselves, yet they are the ones dictating what goes on the classroom….Common Core, high stakes testing and related, teacher evaluations, A-F grading of schools based on high stakes testing, Charter Schools an privatization of schools, etc.
Would you want to get brain surgery from someone who got their medical degree from a MOOC?
Or how about elect a president of the United States who got all his degrees at a MOOC?
Why don’t we just get a MOOC secretary of education? Replace Arne Duncan with a greatest hits reel of past education secretaries and call it a day. We will save a lot on his salary.
Gates runs the USDOE. Arne is just for show.
I know. But we can’t MOOC Bill–he’d still get to keep his money.
Bear in mind that Doctors are quite used to having their professional judgment questioned, and vetoed, by insurers, and by plaintiffs.
The problem with the Paul Vallas brand of school reform…excerpts here and link
After serving in Chicago for six years, Philadelphia five years, and New Orleans four years, Paul Vallas put the saga of urban superintendents in stark, if not humorous, terms:
What happens with turnaround superintendents is that the first two years you’re a demolitions expert. By the third year, if you get improvements, do school construction, and test scores go up, people start to think this isn’t so hard. By year four, people start to think you’re getting way too much credit. By year five, you’re chopped liver.
Vallas’s operating principle, according to one journalist who covered his superintendency in Philadelphia, is: “Do things big, do them fast, and do them all at once.” For over a decade, the media christened Vallas as savior for each of the above three cities before exiting, but just last week, he stumbled in his fourth district–Bridgeport (CT) and ended up as “chopped liver” in less than two years.
Vallas is (or was) the premier “turnaround specialist.” Whether, indeed, Vallas turned around Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans is contested. Supporters point to more charter schools, fresh faces in the classroom, new buildings, and slowly rising test scores; critics point to abysmal graduation rates for black and Latino students, enormous budget deficits, and implementation failures. After Bridgeport, however, his brand-name as a “turnaround specialist,” like “killer apps” of yore such as Lotus 1-2-3 and WordStar, may well fade.
In many instances, sprinter superintendents follow a recipe: reorganize district administrators, take on teacher unions, and create new schools in their rush for better student achievement. They take dramatic and swift actions that will attract high media attention. But they also believe—here is where ideological myopia enters the picture—that low test scores and achievement gaps between whites and minorities are due in large part to reluctant (or inept) district bureaucrats, recalcitrant principals, and knuckle-dragging union leaders defending contracts that protect lousy teachers from pay-for-performance incentives.
Such beliefs, however, seriously misread why urban district students fail to reach proficiency levels and graduate high school. As important as it is to reorganize district offices, alter salary schedules, get rid of incompetent teachers and intractable principals, such actions in of themselves will not turn around a broken district. While there is both research and experiential evidence to support each of these beliefs as factors in hindering students’ academic performance, what undercuts sprinter-driven reforms in these arenas is the simple fact that fast-moving CEOs fast-track their solutions to these problems, get spent from there exertions or create too much turmoil, and soon exit leaving the debris of their reforms next to the skid marks in the parking lot. Swift actions certainly garner attention but sprinters quickly lose steam after completing 100 meters.
Consider long-distance runners. They carefully scrutinize and adapt reforms as they get implemented. Behind-the-scenes, they build teacher and administrator expertise to put changes into practice, mobilize staff and community to support long-term changes in teaching and learning, and, most important, create a pool of leaders ready to assume responsibility for sustaining the ever-shifting reform agenda.
They ask hard questions that few sprinter superintendents ask:
1. Did policies aimed at improving student achievement (e.g., small high schools, pay-for performance plans, new reading and math curricula, parental choice) get fully implemented?
2. When implemented fully, did they change the content and practice of teaching?
3. Did changed classroom practices account for what students learned?
4. Did what students learn achieve the goals set by policy makers?
Sprinter superintendents neither have the breathing capacity nor motivation to ask and answer these questions. They are too busy eyeing the finish line. Marathoners spend time and energy on these questions although 2 and 3 get skimpy attention from even the best of the long-distance runners. Still, urban children are better served by superintendents willing to go the distance rather than those swift runners who flash by without a backward glance
Paul Vallas is (or was)* a sprinter at a time when marathoners are needed for turning around failing districts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/04/the-problem-with-the-paul-vallas-brand-of-school-reform/
In a MOOC, one person can tape lectures that will be viewed by 10,000 students at a time, or 100,000 or 150,000.
Ridiculous! The whole notion of learning is that it is a social activity. What is missing is the interaction of the students with one another and the students with the instructor. With online classes students miss out on the questions, comments, disagreements, clarifications … As an example: when teaching children, whatever age, you ask a question and the child gives the right answer. However, what needs to follow is to ask that child is to explain the answer. How he/she arrived at the answer?
This is not only beneficial for that child, but for all the other children in the class to hear. This learning experience does not happen with online classes. Online learning also is missing the cooperative learning aspect and all that it entails. Of course all of us can learn something being alone – you can learn by just sitting in a room reading but this
is such a limited learning experience.
Early universities in Europe had people sit in on lectures and then take exams, but the social dimension of learning was missing.
If full time faculty at universities are required to do research and publish while the rest of university faculty, 70%
adjuncts, are not required to do research and publish, something is wrong.
There is more to this than meets the eye.
I think that you are being overly pessimistic here. Start your first paragraph with “In a book, one person can write lectures…..”. Does it read correctly with that change? Did books result in the distraction of education because it allowed one teacher to reach many more students than the oral tradition allowed?
Several years ago I was required to get an admin certification and one of the courses I had to take was an on-line course. It was dreadful. We were all supposed to be graduate students but the on-line discussions were silly and superficial. I think the instructor could have deepened the discussion but he didn’t. It was one of the biggest wastes of time I’ve ever had to endure. In my district we began an on-line component for our high school students and all students had to take at least one course on-line before graduation. Again, it was horrible. Ours is a poor district so many of our students don’t reliably have electricity much less internet access at home. Schools were put in the position of having to set aside time during the school day to provide access for students. I wasn’t able to examine the on-line instruction but I know that there were constant problems with access. Even students who did have internet access at home had problems logging on and gaining access to the content. Any on-line course requires a certainly level of hardware and software so no older computers can be used. In addition to requirements for accessing the on-line software the computer that the student is using to access will need certain supporting programs for the on-line access to work properly. For students who are not computer savy and don’t have parents who are computer savy, the whole operation can turn into a nightmare. I interviewed a teacher who taught one of the on-line courses and she was very impressed with some of the videos involved. However, when I asked her about the long term retention of the material, there was a very awkward silence and she sheepishly admitted that she doubted that kids retained much.
Looks like college instructors and administrators need to join BAT.
Actually,with CCSS MOOCs won’t even be necessary. From what I’ve seen regarding the proposed Social Studies CC for 11th and 12th grade, I’m teaching kids everything that gets taught in college. If I could successfully teach those aspirational goalsin research and thinking like a historian, college would be nothing more than a four year certification program that adds no academic value but allows for drunken parties.
Maybe it’s just me, but this seems to be pure greed at it’s best (or worst). For grins, I attempted a comparison of traditional vs on-line costs and profit. Only the cost of tuition and the professors salary is used in the calculations. Please bear with me, I’m approximating for the purpose of simplicity. There are certainly some gaps in my reasoning, I am not a stat person nor a mathematician. Please look at the “big picture” here.
Lets say a professor makes 100K a year, teaches 2 classes a semester and 1 summer class. Those classes contain 25 students a piece for a total of 125 students. That equates to the professor being paid about 800 dollars per student. The student pays 400 dollars per semester hour, or 1200 dollars per course. That leaves 400 dollars “profit” for the university (plus the fees) per student, times 125 students. This means the class generates 50K for the university (plus fees). The “profit” from all the courses helps to pay for the university operations.
Now lets look at the online “business” of college.
For grins, lets pay the professor the same 100K (not going to happen in the on-line world I suspect). The professor now “teaches” 10K students (from the blog above), who pay, lets say, 100 dollars per semester hour (that’s a 60% savings from my kids tuition :-). The total tuition income is now 1 million (HUH?). As I calculate, that would produce 900K (per course) for the on-line university to operate after the professor’s salary.
That is a difference of 18 to 1 (900K to 50K). I suspect the cost of an “On-Line ” University doesn’t require that much “profit” to operate. I think it is fair to say that a little bit of that money is going into the pockets of investors.
Reality, however, is this. I just finished putting 4 kids through college at an average of 17K a year. My wife took four on-line courses for $7,900 dollars.
Kids- 8 courses a year = $2,125 a course
Wife- 4 courses a year = $1975 a course
That is a savings on paper, BUT…
My wife had adjunct professors, rarely had face to face interactions, had to teach herself most of the material, very seldom got timely responses from the “university”, was advised on several occasions to take actions concerning dropping a course that clearly benefited the “university” and not her, and had to endure a unannounced change of professors in the middle of a course.
For $2,125 per course, my kids got the full college experience and a solid education.
My wife got taken.
And someone made a lot of money off those on-line courses at her expense.
Reformers argue college is too expensive.
Reformers argue that all kids need to go to college.
Their solution is on-line, less expensive.
And the REFORMERS are setting themselves up to make a shameful amount of money while students will get an inferior education at an inflated cost.
Efficiency is about profit, not real quality. With online education, the student is teaching himself most if the time. Real quality doesn’t seem to matter. Planned obsolescence.
There are so many problems with Chait’s position that it is hard to know where to start. In addition to the fact that so many of faculty are low paid/”part time” “temporary” workers (some of whom have been kept “part time” and “temporary” for 20+ years) he ignores the reality that while tuition has been going up faculty and staff salaries have been stagnant — no raises over the past 5-6 years at least. Public college tuition has gone up because across the nation, state legislatures and governors have withdrawn their commitment to affordable, accessible higher education. When state financial support vanished public universities turned to students and tuition increases.
Then there is the issue of self-interest. Well of course everyone wants to make a decent living (Mr. Chait, no doubt, included.) What he fails to point out, however, is that MOOC and for profit online providers, like Coursera, Udacity, etc want to make a KILLING. These private vendors and their venture capitalist investors aren’t out to make a decent middle class living–they want to make a huge profit. THAT is what is driving them. So pardon me if I don’t apologize for wanting a middle class job. At least we are accountable–the students know where they can find us if they have a problem or a question. Who will they call when their private vendors or MOOC lets them down.
It is hard to make a great deal of money if you give your product away.
Truly. I become completely enraged when I hear the profiteers yacking about people who want to be middle class, while they want to be the “elite” class … just through buying power. They do not really care about anything but maximizing profits after tearing down what was there. Just like Bain Capital et al.
I have argued for the old-fashioned virtues “close learning” in a piece recently published in “Inside Higher Ed”:
tinyurl.com/closelearning
Scott Newstok
Not sure about the arts but in engineering the answer is NO, NO, HELL NO…face to face interactions are completely useless because most professors are horrendous, badly prepared teachers.
But I would say face to face interaction at least the way its done now is not very good even in the best cases because most of the time is spent taking notes. You can’t rewind the professor and there isn’t enough time to answer everyone questions. Once you get lost or lose ground taking notes which always used to happen to me makes things impossible. It was way better when profs just printed their notes and presented them on overhead.