I ran across an article last weekend that stopped me in my tracks.
Entitled “2013- the year of ups and downs for the MOOCs,” at the website Changing Higher Education, the
unnamed author made a number of observations that were breathtaking in their
candidness and their humility, qualities that are rarely observable in
Edu-Cyberland.
To wit:
Many
of the problems now being faced by the MOOCs are simply a natural consequence
of the tremendous hype and enthusiasm that accompanied and drove their growth -
reality eventually must come in. However, a large part of the problem, in my
opinion, is that the MOOCs have in general been created with little or no
attention to extensive research on pedagogy in general, and online pedagogy in
particular.
This has certainly been my observation. Online technologies
generally have been
heralded as the messianic answer to all the problems besetting
education from kindergarten to doctoral studies. Seized upon almost instantly
by the primary beneficiaries of this technology – the computer industries, the
corporations who stand to gain from their use, the technocratic management of
colleges and universities and the politicians looking for an easy out in their
duties to public education (not to mention their ability to provide yet another
sweet deal for their corporate pimps) – there has been a rush to put everything
from law school to speech classes to physical education online.
As the critique rightly observes, much of the rush to cyberspace
has been driven more by hype than concern for pedagogical soundness, much less
for actual learning. For the techies, it’s an opportunity to have their
cherished technology utilized - if not worshiped - by the wider public. For the
business boys, there’s gold in them thar hills. For the ever growing
technocracies on college campuses, it’s a means of managing their over-enrolled
campuses which can no longer physically seat their all cash cows in classrooms.
It’s also a way to continue steady cuts in education budgets by politicians now
beholden to those same corporations.
It’s a win-win from the perspective of power and money. But from
the perspective of the student who has no choice but to take courses online to
graduate (and pay extra “technology fees” for them) and the contingent faculty
who increasingly must teach online as the alternative to not working, it’s a
Hobson choice.
While the website’s critique rightly points out the superficiality
of the hype surrounding online education of all stripes and resulting stampede
to embrace the same, it only raises one important question: how we do this v.
what we’re doing. Far more important questions go unraised here: Why we do this
in the first place, what we are assuming about these endeavors and what impacts
they might have (and have proven to have) on all the parties to public
education.
I was particularly taken by this comment:
This
confusion of show business and education will not move the learning process
forward any more than does the confusion of technology and education. It is all
about using the appropriate, research supported instructional techniques.
This was a response to comments by the CEO of EdX, Anat Agarwal at
the Sloan Conference, who suggested that MOOCs might become more effective
(translated: popular) if they employed actors to give the lectures. "From
what I hear, really good actors can actually teach really well…” – not to mention they can probably insure
higher profits, right? After all, what’s really the difference between being
entertained at the movies or taking a college course on a MOOC, right?
Bear in mind, this is the same speaker who candidly admitted in
his address to the Sloan Conference that MOOCs are not working and that hybrid
use of online technologies (part face-to-face, part online) is the best and
highest use of the technologies.
However, this is a good example of the superficiality of much of
the online educational world. The focus here is on how things are done, the
bells and whistles, the presentation, not what is being done, why it’s being
done this way and how it impacts both teachers and learners. Ins short, it’s
the difference between a college course taught online, as I always label my own
courses, and an online class.
The focus of the first is the content, the pedagogical method and
the endeavor to insure learning despite the physical absence of the student and
instructor. It is a substantive approach focused more on content than
appearance. It requires engagement if it is to work.
The focus of the second is the technology employed to which all
other considerations are subject and secondary. It is marked by a focus on
process rather than substance, appearance and experience rather than content.
It is driven by consumerist considerations of comfort and convenience which
often result in minimalism in course requirements and effort demanded as well
as reductionism in thinking.
Ding
Dong, Delivery Man
But it was this comment that brought me up short:
Research
over the years has shown, however, that technology delivers instruction, but
the quality of the learning depends on the quality of the instruction rather
than the delivery vehicle.
One of the things that is often striking in any conversation about
online teaching and learning is its highly dogmatic nature. Much like the great
church councils of the late Roman Empire, there are certain truths that are
regularly asserted in this discourse which must simply be accepted as
unquestionably true. One of them is stated above – that instruction is somehow
“delivered. “
The term deliver is problematic on a good
day. Here, the usage is connected to a limited endeavor – instruction – but the
more general usage of that term among the purveyors of online education is frequently
connected to classes. I heard this the first day of my training to teach online
(which, ironically, occurred in a face-to-face class rather than online) – you’re
going to deliver your class….
Seriously. How can a class - or even instruction - be delivered?
Deliveries are the realm of UPS and FedEx agents in smart uniforms who bring
packages to your door awaiting your signing for them, opening them and
consuming their contents. No real engagement is required in these transactions
(so long as the payment has cleared).
The problems with using such a description for what is ostensibly
an educational experience should be obvious. One doesn’t learn simply by
paying for a delivery. If learning is to occur, it always requires engagement.
What is “delivered” in online courses is a compact, somewhat minimalized
opportunity for a student to engage the course material and the other members
of the learning community. What happens beyond that initial opportunity lies in
the hands of the participants.
One of the key problems with online classes of any kind but
particularly of the first wave of MOOCs is that students simply are not engaging
them. The correlation between onsite presence and performance is well
documented. And the drop out rates, which are several times those of their
face-to-face counterparts, are much higher.
Ironically, it is the educational approach which requires the most
investment from the student that appear to be most destined for completion of
courses if not success in them, a dynamic completely counter-intuitive to the
consumerist mantras of convenience and comfort as the only guiding
values. Indeed, might not the very terms we use here – the
delivery of instruction – signal to the consumer that their
obligations to the process are limited at most?
Might we be setting students up for failure?
This article reminded me that I had not written my final
installment regarding my visit to Edu-Cyberland’s Sloan Conference last month.
That follows.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott
Coverston, J.D., M.Div. Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive
status)
Priest, Episcopal Church
(Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Lecturer: Religion and
Cultural Studies
Osceola Regional Campus,
University of Central Florida, Kissimmee
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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