A couple of weeks ago I had
the opportunity to attend an online education technologies convention. The
Sloan-C annual conference was held at Disney’s Swan Hotel over a four day
period. I originally agreed to attend the final day because I was interested in
meeting the man who operates one of the higher education teaching and learning
discussion lists on which I participate. He’d encouraged me to come to the
conference so we could talk over lunch. And I figured it would be an
interesting experience to hear how computer folks see the future of higher
education.
As it turned out, my lunch (or
even coffee) date never materialized. But I did learn a great deal from my day
trip to edu-cyberland , the first of which is that nothing about that
encounter is cheap. My registration for just a half day of the final conference
day was $200. Then there was the parking fee of $15 and the tolls enroute to
the conference at morning rush hour. Fortunately for me, the department’s
travel funds covered this. And, to its credit, the hotel was thoughtful enough
to provide Starbucks coffee.
A Bomb Dropped Among the True Believers
The opening session featured
the final keynote speaker at the end of a four day conference. Anant Agarwal,
creator of edX, one of the new MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) and a
professor at MIT where edX has been pioneered, was the featured speaker. What
he said had the true believers of a digital, self-directed educational system
with no human teachers scratching their heads in disbelief.
Angarwal began the speech by
dropping a bombshell: MOOCs simply don’t work as a replacement for college
courses. The reality is that the vast majority of students who enroll in them never
finish. While MOOCs do provide access to enlightened speakers to viewers all
over the world, in that sense they operate more like a highly democratized TED
Talk than a college course. The latter demands student engagement, not
mere passive viewing, hence the reason so many students (over 90% in places
like San Jose State) simply disappear.
Of course, this was heresy
in edu-cyberland. The worship of the work of our own hands when it comes to
anything remotely involving technology has long been recognized as a
not-too-disguised form of idolatry. As Elizabeth Scalia so accurately observes
in Strange Gods, Unmasking the Idols in
Everyday Life, “We humans create gods so reflective and shiny that they
keep us looking at ourselves,” or at least what we want to believe about
ourselves and our reality. According to Scalia almost all idols trace back to
this same source: “I” is the first idol.
Neal Postman accurately
predicted 30 years ago in his book Technopoly
that in a culture which had come to be mediated almost entirely by technology,
all innovations in technology will inevitably be seen as progress regardless of
their impact on that culture. If it can be invented, it must be used. One
wonders if the villagers in Pakistan periodically visited by missile laden drones
share that presumption. No doubt the 90%+ of the students who bailed on the
MOOCs are wondering the same thing.
But Angarwal was not
finished. The best and highest use of online technologies, he said, was – GASP!
- in a mixed mode application where face-to-face classroom meetings are
interspersed with work online. Why? Because students simply need the human
interaction. And without it, many of them simply will not become educated.
Clearly, access, proffered as
the ultimate value among techno true believers, is only the beginning of the
conversation when it comes to providing educational opportunity.
I told you so…..
I experienced no small
amount of vindication in these comments coming from such an unexpected source.
I have long said that the best and highest application of online technologies
is as a complement to face-to-face class sessions.
In my own use of this
technology, online sites allow for interactive Schedules (complete with linked
readings, discussion topics and assignments) which are available to students
24/7. They are great places to upload the day’s power point for presentation in
class, to link up the note outlines students can download to follow the lecture,
to house links to Youtube film clips and to provide content quizzes the student
must complete prior to class to insure reading and to test comprehension. They also
allow for student engagement on days when the instructor cannot attend class.
Indeed, on the Friday I attended the conference, my classes all had online
assignments which were calculated into their engagement grades.
Because I have only
experienced mixed mode classes (partly online, partly in person) as an
instructor, I am not completely certain that this is the best usage of online
technologies for students. But, if Angarwal is right, having the consistent,
periodic engagement of live human beings allows for students to remain on track
and to not experience the complete isolation and dehumanization that running
solo at the end of a cathode ray tube tether often causes.
As I have experienced it,
totally online classes best suit adult learners who are disciplined enough to
manage their time between class and the multitude of other demands on their
time (work, family, health) that they face. They are able to turn off the
Facebook, Twitter and Gameboys long enough to be responsible to their
coursework. This means that online works best in upper division courses if not
post-graduate work. Ad it also means that most undergrads simply are not
included in this group because they have not yet developed the self-discipline
and time management to handle this context.
Ranking the Modes of Presentation
Even so, totally online classes
pale in comparison with face-to-face sessions of these same students.
Spontaneity, body language, tenor of voice, passion are all lost in disembodied
asynchronous “discussions.” The ever present possibility of cheating on quizzes
is a given. A predictable third of the students each class will encounter
difficulties meeting the course requirements on schedule without the
reinforcements of classmates and instructors to remind them. A common complaint
among students who struggle in online settings is the experience of isolation.
On the other hand, accessibility, often touted
as the consummate value in selling online courses, may be a deciding factor for
some students. If one has to choose between a totally online class or not
completing one’s education because they simply cannot make the trek to the
campus for class meetings, the former is the lesser of the two evils.
I also willing to consider the
possibility that a small online class might be at least equal if not potentially
superior to a large, factory process lecture class offered in an auditorium
with hundreds of your most intimate friends. The former at least has the
potential for an instructor to identify students having problems and addressing
them directly in private. In the latter, students predictably begin their visit
to your office with “I’m Student X and
I’m in your Y class and I want….”
If I were to rank course
formats by potential quality of educational experience and degrees of
technological application, the list would look like this:
1.
Small (maximum 25) face-to-face classes.
2.
Small mixed mode classes
3.
Medium (25-75) face-to-face classes
TIE
4 –
Small online classes
Medium mixed mode classes
TIE
6 –
Large (76+) auditorium classes
Medium online classes
8.
Large online classes
The ranking ranges from the
highest degree of potential engagement of students to the highest degree of potential
disengagement and isolation if not alienation. Clearly not all students will take advantage of the potential for engagement. Indeed, that depends largely upon their motivation for taking a given class in a given
format.
A True Believer Defects
One of the more interesting
aspects of the keynote address was seeing how it was received by true believers
and corporate representatives. As I looked around the ballroom filled with
perhaps 1200 attendees, my guess is that about half of them were engaged in the
very behaviors that make success in online classes and MOOCs for most
undergraduates (and even some of their older classmates) difficult at best –
surfing the web, texting, playing games. What I found troubling is knowing that
a large majority of these folks are actually the teachers of online classes. Little
wonder they have trouble recognizing the problems with these behaviors and
their potential impediments to learning.
I also have to wonder how
many of them checked out on the speaker because they simply could not – or would
not - hear what he was telling them. The hype that has surrounded online course
technologies generally and MOOCs in particular has been nothing short of epic
in nature. Predictions that online, fully automated courses would replace human
teachers by mid-century have been regularly proclaimed by the prophets of
Technopoly as if self-evidently true. The panacea of technology to resolve
every woe of education in America has been routinely pronounced from pulpits at
conferences such as this one to the halls of academia. Such hegemonic predictions
dominate online discourse to such a degree that they confront the web surfer as
revealed Truth.
And yet, while the Emperor
may not be completely naked, his new set of clothes are decidedly scanty. And
one of the recovering True Believers is now playing the role of the little boy
who dared to reveal the truth.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, M.Div., J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar
(inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church
(Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Lecturer: Religion and
Cultural Studies, Humanities, Philosophy of Law
University of Central
Florida, Orlando
If the unexamined
life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious
or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production
in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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