Online Education: Why We Need More of It
Many who argue for a return to a more traditional, rigorous curriculum are also critical of online education. In this blog, I make the case that online education can help scholars reach nontraditional audiences, a cliche to be sure, but one that rings true with my personal experience after 15 years of delivering “distance learning” in addition to my “brick-and-mortar” courses.
First, it is no accident that online courses aren’t full of the trendy postmodern nonsense that dominates campus offerings. Nonsense flourishes where it is not transparent to the larger world. Online education operates by making itself transparent and open to that larger community.
Second, many institutions face stiff financial challenges. While I work at a state university, the online education division is entirely self-financed: not a single taxpayer dime, all revenue comes from tuition of students who sign up for courses. It is no accident that this division is the most entrepreneurial of all our divisions, and most no-nonsense with its offerings (Foucault 101 wouldn’t “sell” to our students in the military, single parents working during the day, high school teachers expanding their content knowledge, etc.).
Online education can be done badly. There is a possible “race to the bottom” in terms of quality but, as the work of the NAS amply demonstrates, this is also a problem on campus. If anything, the market reality provides a test of what people–not tenured radicals–want from a college education.
As an advocate for online education at my university, I submitted the following presentation to my college of liberal arts. For those unsure about online education, I also recommend an excellent 20-minute video presentation that I have posted online (with the permission of the professor).
I am familiar with Jon’s university. I’ll tell you a story. The Provost comes to the Faculty Senate’s education committee. He is very concerned that professors were giving way too many incompletes. I ask for data. Is the problem the same in all colleges? How many incompletes are grad T.A.s giving out? Well, it turned the legions of incompletes were being generated automatically be our distance learning program! Students sign up for these courses, pay their money, or someone’s money, and then do nothing. At the end of the term they get automatic incompletes. After a year these have to be converted to F’s. This was done by hand and that’s why the Provost heard about the problem – the staff who do this were complaining. Well, now we have a new computer system, so that problem will be solved!
As for Jon’s course (Jon is very well regarded for his teaching skills) he teaches “a Gen Ed Course on campus to 270 students.” These courses are so dumbed down already that the distance ed format isn’t much worse. What we need are smaller classes consisting of students who worked hard in high school. They don’t have to be little geniuses, but there is no point in packing our lecture halls with people who are in college to get away from their parents and have a good time. Currently one half of our entering Freshman do not meet our admission standards.