NAS Blog

The Regents of the University of California just voted to embrace a pilot program testing the efficacy of an online undergraduate degree.  Until now, like most research universities, UC has been leery of the online environment because of the thorny problems it poses:  questionable security, dubious academic integrity, loss of “voices around the table,” substantial and perpetual costs.

Conversely, online education does seem inevitable given our technological dependence, a Beltway “college-for-all” mindset, corporate customer service business models, and ruthless competition.  ”It’s the future,” gushed Regent Bonnie Reiss.

Despite teaching online for years and running an online program, I remain ambivalent about the marriage of technology and education.  Showing INXS’s “Devil Inside” to spice up “Young Goodman Brown” used to be stimulating; now it’s just disruptive.  Why jerk students back to the terrain they already inhabit, filled with insistent, continuous, cognitive shifts whose interruptions prevent learning?  Handling electronic information, Nicholas Carr says,

We become mere signal processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out of short-term memory.

As one online student just posted, “During the time it took me to read for this assignment, I received 1 phone call, 6 emails, 4 text messages and 1 Skype message.”

At the Young Rhetoricians’ Conference in June, the most instructive point about online education was made by Porsche, a young African-American college student, who said, “I don’t want to study organic chemistry on my computer.  My computer is where I go to have fun.”

The UC Regents would do well to heed her words because Porsche really is the future.

In the movie Up in the Air, George Clooney’s character works for a company that sends him around the country to fire people. To save the company money on airfare, hotels, and rental cars, Clooney’s female colleague, a young Cornell grad, suggests that they switch to firing people through videoconferencing on laptops.

The method seems to work, but the viewer feels instinctively that this is even more demeaning than getting fired by a third party company. There’s something so impersonal and distant about talking to a screen. Later in the movie, the girl (Cornell grad) gets dumped by her boyfriend via text message, and once again, we see the medium itself as adding to her humiliation.

We’ve always had the sense that with any communication short of face-to-face conversation, there’s something vital missing. That’s been the abiding concern during the rise of online education. But an article in today’s Inside Higher Ed declares that online education will lose none of the elements that make traditional education what it is:

As we look to the future of liberal education, we seem unlikely to change the fundamentals of what has made that model successful. We will enhance the curriculum with interactive smart classrooms, course and lecture capture, ubiquitous wireless connecting smaller and more capable digital devices, and other technologies not yet invented, but close faculty-student and student-student interaction will remain the core. What seems more likely to change – and to offer transformative possibilities – is the medium.

But isn’t the medium the message? The author maintains, however, that “there is every reason to believe that whatever ‘liberal education’ is, ‘it’ can travel over a network.”

He offers some compelling reasons.

Cross-posted from NAS.org

NAS President Peter Wood appeared on New Jersey’s My9 News on Wednesday along with Todd Zipper, co-founder of Test Drive College Online, in a segment on the pros and cons of online education. Dr. Wood said, “I’m regretful that we can’t have everybody go to college in a form of traditional education, but that isn’t going to happen; we have to learn how to make this new medium really work.” Click here to watch the 3-minute video.

I run a Great Books Program that offers courses online so that students anywhere can earn a certificate.  Recently I heard Gareth Williams, Chair of Columbia’s famous Lit-Hum core and emailed him for his thoughts on teaching great books online.  He was, not surprisingly, dubious:

As for Core courses online, I myself would be sceptical about the feasibility of such a step, at least from a Columbia perspective: so much here depends on the seminar format of voices heard around the table, and I feel that that format would be very hard indeed to reproduce in anything like its ‘real-life’ vitality if we tried it online.

I confess to similar doubts, admit that synchronous live dialogue is not reproducible, and acknowledge that the online courses are a marketing tool.  Still, in 2010, perhaps discussion takes a back seat to getting students exposed to challenging texts at all.  I started my program basically to keep frequently-cancelled literature courses alive in my institution (administrative pluses:  lower cost and a draw for disenfranchised literature students across the country).  Yet Professor Williams’s reply started me thinking about other virtues of online courses (I have taken at least a dozen and taught even more).  My defense of the online mode was bolstered by an experience of “voices around the table” while reporting to an informal group of students about the Association for Core Texts and Courses Conference where I heard Dr. Williams.  I could hardly get a word in edgewise with all the interruptions and crosstalk.  Everyone wanted to speak at once; everyone had an opinion; no one had a question; no one cared to listen.  I finally gave up.

Neil Postman preached that

for every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The disadvantage may exceed in importance the advantage, or the advantage may well be worth the cost.

For now, the cost of electronically embracing what Victor Davis Hanson calls the “vanquished civilization of readers” may be the loss of “voices around the table.”  The advantage of online discussions, however, is the opportunity to complete one’s thought.   Students can also take time to frame their words, reflect rather than react, revise, expand, cross reference,  corroborate, and fact-check.

My online classes often turn into one-on-one tutorials, epistolary, more time-consuming than the classroom but with a balance of distance and intimacy.  The shy can “speak” as loudly as the bold.  Discipline is limited to enforcing the flaming policy.  No one is watching the clock or tweeting, and students are no longer packed in a box (by the end of the day, my 1940s era classroom is redolent of a high school locker room).  Martin Pawley used to argue that all technology acts as insulation against human contact.  Sometimes that’s not a bad thing.

As everyone knows, state funding of higher education is notoriously unreliable. After a nationwide surge in direct spending to universities (the boom years), the bust has arrived. Big surprise.

While direct appropriations to state universities have foundered, the state and federal money spent on students increased. This follows public choice theory: politicians spend money to gain the greatest number of votes. There are far more students (and their parents) who vote than there are institutions who want government money.

This is good for those students who use the money wisely and it is good for “school choice”: unlike K-12, students can choose their state college or university. Universities with declining enrollments moan and groan when students head to their competitors. To wit: my own university consists of two campuses: one with skyrocketing enrollment, the other in perpetual decline.

No doubt the news for those wedded to the status quo is bad. Nevertheless, recent trends in nontraditional education have taken off during this crisis. Even before the fiscal bust, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and many others noted that colleges had gotten flabby–not with money but with their way of delivering education in the 21st century.

Campuses facing fiscal difficulty need to get aggressive with educational innovation. Online learning is up (again). Philanthropist Bill Gates is expressing interest in putting his money into improving online education. For the first time, I am using a free online textbook funded by the federal government and distinguished foundations.

Institutions with enrollment and/or funding shortfalls are turning to for-profit alliances. One of the biggest surprises: the National Labor College has formed a for-profit joint venture that retains faculty unionization (NLC is dedicated to promoting unionism). “Bread-and-butter” union faculty ought to take notice: Change or die.

Here’s to a new year hoping that my own institution (Southern Illinois University) starts lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness.

California has too many students and not enough cash. Last semester, De Anza college opened with 8,000 students still looking for classes. Sorry, kids! Most schools cap their enrollment to the number of students the state will fund; above that number, colleges cut sections, classes, and programs trying to stop the bleeding. Problem is—there are no consistent and transparent criteria about who decides what gets cut or on what basis. Some community colleges, having made their cap, have decided to close for the summer. See you . . . in September! Call it what you will: rationing, triage, enrollment management; I like “educational death panels.”

How did this mess happen? First, our 110 open-door community colleges have an impossible triple mandate to deliver quality transfer curriculum but also to provide career and technical education (CTE) but in addition to remediate basic skills for nearly 3,000,000 students. Meanwhile, the CSU system is swamped with students, many of whom (up to 80% at some campuses) are unprepared for college level work. Many are unprepared for high school work meaning six years to a BA.

Other students survey the unemployment figures and decide to hunker down. Euphemistically called “super seniors,” they conclude that between college dorms, college health services, cafeteria, library, gym and pool, hey, life is good! Why graduate? The big losers are first-time college students who find their seats filled by superslackers. The CSU solution is to “redirect” them back to community colleges that are already choked with students who can’t transfer. Add to this toxic brew the fact that money is just going to get tighter because Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer are fed up with paying college professor salaries to teachers of yoga and spelling.

According to Patrick Perry, CCCO Vice Chancellor of Technology, Research and Information Systems, California far and away has the greatest access to higher education, but it has a mediocre success rate (defined as granting degrees and certificates). Perry says states with both high access and high success have:

• Strong Statewide Articulation/Transfer Agreements

• Common Core Curriculum

• Common Course Numbering

• AA transfer guarantee or Statewide General Ed guarantee

• CTE pathways

• Strong online student academic planners and support

• Common assessment tools

• Statewide Transfer scholarships

California comes up short in virtually all these areas, and community college students, sick of plodding through the maze, are transferring instead to for-profit and online schools such as The University of Phoenix. So far, it’s just a small leak in a big boat but the number has grown five-fold since 1995, and change is in the wind.

By Adrienne Carlson

It may come as a surprise to you, especially if you’ve always believed that online education is inferior to the traditional kind – there are certain careers where an online degree is your best chance of success. You may have heard that employers look down on online degrees, but not if you’re interested in a career in the following fields:

• Education: It’s one field where jobs will always be available and teachers who are skilled and have a natural flair for the task are going to be in demand. Education is high on the priority list of most people, so there are openings in schools and colleges for good teachers and lecturers. Earning your degree in education through an accredited online school is a good way to ensure that your future is secure. If you are already in the field of education, you could give your career a boost by earning your master’s degree or a doctorate in the subject of your specialization. Teaching children or young adults is a fulfilling and well-paying profession that does not cause too much stress and comes with a host of perks, not the least of which is vacation time twice a year.
• Information & Technology: With the entire world hooked on computers now, it’s only natural for everyone to want to jump on the IT bandwagon. The key to success in this field is to look for areas where there is a high demand and low supply, and choose your specialization accordingly. While most online schools grant you a degree in computer science or information technology, you may have to look for other certification courses to advance your skills in your specialty. And the best part about learning computer science is that you can work while you learn because this is a field that requires more practical knowledge than that which comes from books.
• Military & Defense: More and more members of the military are now earning their degrees online. They’re allowed various concessions and benefits and can cement the security of their future after they leave the military using an online degree. They know that they are more likely to secure a well-paying job if they have a degree to back them up, so enrollment is now on the rise in online colleges from this quarter. Education is an alternative way for military personnel to take their minds off conflict and use their time to their future advantage.

This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of accelerated online degrees. Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson1@gmail.com.

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).

Second Life, a virtual “world” resembling a video game, enables people to interact with one another via avatars - digitized, animated versions of themselves. The creepy, sexual, Second Life universe is inhabited by businesses, churches, embassies, pornographic movie theaters, and colleges.

This week the Chronicle of Higher Education announced that Pennsylvania State University will now require its academic advisers to set up Second Life accounts and be available to meet with students in the virtual world. Here is PSU’s webpage on the university’s Second Life presence. According to a Penn State official, “We’re using Second Life as a way for online students who never visit campus to feel more connected to the university and their experience, and have a way of interacting with their fellow students and other staff members as well.”

These online students can talk via a tight-clothed avatar to someone like Shawna Culp – known on Second Life as Shawna Charisma – on the two-dimensional Penn State “island” that cost the university several hundred dollars to purchase.

I look at this and say, whatever happened to phone conversations? I suppose it’s naturally in the trajectory mapped out by the online education rocket. But don’t we begin to sound silly when human interaction is reduced to this?

As an instructor of online history courses, I have many students overseas (Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraq, Saudi Arabia). The Internet connects them to me (and to the rest of us). The stories I could relate are fascinating and make teaching online courses all the more rewarding. Moreover, as an instructor I know that I’m helping those who are “American, Interrupted”

Even more important, soldiers of all ranks have blogged their way into history, thus writing what we used to say of newspapers: “the first pages” of history.

Read the following from the above “American, Interrupted” blog:

“I look up at the now familiar Arabian night sky and gaze at the stars, my close friends over this past year. Those same stars will ever hang in the sky and endure – like our love. Under those same points of light we’ll lay not too long from now, and those stars will smile just for us, because they know how long we’ve wished upon them to be together again. I love you, I’m so thankful for you, and I can’t wait to spend forever with you.

Sometimes I wondered if we were not unintentionally promoting anarchy because of this war on terror. I mean, we were encouraging and supporting rebellious elements of the population in their struggle against Saddam Hussein – thinking their struggle was one to free themselves of his rule. Sometimes I wondered if the struggle was to free themselves of all rules so they could establish a Shia theocracy. That would explain why Americans were in the crosshairs of Shia rebels. Many of them comprised the poorest and worst educated parts of Iraq, but it was these very people who we were making the masters of Iraq in the period of a year. This belief in empowering the weak and oppressed is noble, but it has to be done carefully. Sometimes it seemed the transfer of power bordered on a form of Bolshevism.”

[To read the whole story (crossposted) click here ]

PS: Imagine if college campuses allowed this kind of free speech. We wouldn’t need NAS, FIRE, or the few intrepid ACLU chapters interested in academic freedom. More free speech in the military than in higher ed? Read the rest of the story to decide (and check out the Milblogging directory).