<blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><div>Online learning makes sense for all kinds fo reasons: financial,
equity/access, scalability, etc. But...online (distance) learning is
still the unloved stepchild of education. Is the resistance cultural? Or
related to the perceived value of learning in physical spaces? </div></blockquote>
<div><br></div>I think part of the problem is that right now,
universities are mainly evaluated and ranked based on research… Or even
exclusivity, how many applicants can we reject. This means that University of Toronto is the most prestigious university in Canada, and Athabasca barely registers. There was an “overflow” online component for a class I took in my undergrad at UofT,
basically we paid exactly the same as the others, and instead of going
to class (with 300 others), we got to sit at home and watch tiny little
postage-stamp sized videos, two hour long, of the entire lecture (mostly
consisting of jokes, and stories about his field research fifty years
ago). Then there were two exams, both multiple choice! There was no
discussion forum, no way of interacting at all with others in the class…
<p>So yeah, if that's your only experience with distance ed, then I can understand you'd be negative (maybe even as negative as Ginandtaco is in his review of DIY U: "No one who has taken or taught one [distance course] can claim in earnest to have learned
more than they do in traditional courses. Few could honestly claim that
they learned anything at all. …"</p>This is also what leads many students in China and India who want to do distance education to not go to the open universities, which in both countries have long histories, and much experience in developing online courses, but rather choose the online components of established universities (Delhi University, Renmin University), which often treat it only as a cash-cow, and don't put much effort into making it an effective learning experience. But when you go to an employer with a diploma from those two schools, it looks much better.<br>
<br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">ICT has progressed enough over the last decade that I think we can largely do away with the physical space of universities. Open Universities have greatly impacted developing countries and the intellectually curious in remote parts of the world (as is commonly cited, Nelson Mandela studied via distance). If a government's goal, and the spirit of a society, is to promote equity and broad access to learning, the online learning should be an area of primary investment.<br>
</blockquote><div> </div>It was cited at a conference I attended that 60% of all the indigenous students in the US who receive masters, do so through online learning. (Because they cannot easily move away from their communities, where they have both responsibilities and support). There was actually a wonderful presentation by a current PhD student at U of New Mexico, who did her entire MA online, and is doing a full-time face-to-face PhD. She said she sometimes felt cheated, because she got so much better interaction out of the MA... there everybody contributed, and she got to know all of the students. In her PhD classes, usually it's just the teacher, and the few most eager students... Such a rare perspective, and I encouraged her to write something about her experience.<br>
<br>Part of the problem is also that it's very difficult to innovate when everyone are constantly paranoid that you are just trying to cut their job, or marginalize you. Like the Texas academics screaming about having to post their syllabi online! (<a href="http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=68804.0">http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=68804.0</a>), or the labor union at UofT, which succesfully stopped a professor from experimenting with peer-grading in a massive enrollment first year psych course (which had had no writing component before), because "only unionized staff are allowed to grade".<br>
<br>Stian<br><br>-- <br><a href="http://reganmian.net/blog">http://reganmian.net/blog</a> -- Random Stuff that Matters<br>