Online Classes
You would guess since I have had computers as a hobby, a major, and a job, that I would be big into online classes - but you would be wrong.
Every so often, someone asks me about, or tries to sell me on online classes, and I have to think about (or at least explain) my viewpoint again.
The first thing to explain is that although technology is sometimes an end unto itself for enthusiasts, for most people it is a means to and end most of the time. Technology is a tool to help us get other things done, and as such, it is not the thing you should focus on unless you are the developer. For most people, our goal is to leverage technology to get some other task done in order to make progress towards a larger goal. Yet, people often forget this simple fact, and thing that technology somehow makes things fundamentally different.
The last time this happened in a big way was during the internet bubble. It's true that the internet and the world wide web are enablers, but so was electricity and the phone. I'll even admit that they are such large enablers that they can change the way business is done, and make once on-the-fence business models profitable. On the other hand, something that was a bad idea before will remain a bad idea, even with the help of technology - for example, toothpaste.com was a bad idea because a bricks-and-morter toothpaste shop would have been a bad idea. I mail order toothpaste shop also probably wouldn't have been very profitable. It's just not a business area where specialization is meaningful at the retail level - and no amount of fancy technology is going to change that.
Likewise, technology should be an enabler for education, not a replacement. Correspondence courses (i.e. education by mail) have been around for at least 50 years, but have never become very popular because they have many weaknesses. Conference calling has also been available for many years, but I don't see a lot of classes based on that technology either. So let's look at the things we expect from a college education in particular and see how the technology I have seen used in online classes fares there:
1. Reputation - It may be sad in a way, but one big thing we expect from education is reputation. This is tied closely to how good the school actually is, and also to its reputation at a more abstract level. Many things factor into this: The average grades and standardized test scores (SAT, GMAT, etc.) of the matriculated students, the quality and fame of it's teachers, the number of journal publications they make, the quality of the physical facilities, the size of their budget and grants, etc. Perhaps most important is their accreditation. You choose a school based on how it's perceived, both by you, and by your peers and potential employers.
If you don't actually show up there, then the quality of the chemistry lab or the library won't matter, because you will never see it. The quality of the teachers and students will matter less in some ways, and in general the reputation matters less. Some may say that all those physical things are an extraneous expense, but do you have your own college level library and chemistry lab? Not all things can be done, or done as well online. Good luck buying your own Bloomberg or Lexus Nexus subscription. Almost all of the Online schools have minimal accreditation and will accept most applicants. They aren't very choosy, and everyone knows it. To some extent, having their name on your resume could become a black mark later on. It might not be completely fair, but that's the way it is. Taking online classes at a "normal" school masks the fact that you took the classes online a bit, and allows you to take a mix of normal and online courses as appropriate.
2. Collaboration and Interaction - This category included interaction with other students, professors, TAs, etc. One of my big issues with online education is that this just doesn't happen properly with online courses. You never see the people in real life, and so you don't really know them well. If you're lucky, you talk to them on the phone a lot. With distance education, often people don't even live nearby, so you can't even meet up to work in groups.
The current state of technology means that working in groups involves various tools, each of which has good points and pitfalls. Some are official, some aren't. Some only work on certain platforms, etc. When I took online classes, we used the class web site, Skype, a screen sharing tool (sometimes), Google Documents, real conference calls, school email, and various other tools.
At any rate, although many of the online classroom tools allow asking and answering of questions, responding to other's questions, etc. Most of the time it isn't "real-time" since there are no actual classes. This is billed as a benefit "Work when it's convenient for you!", but it's also a drawback, as you can't really have a "conversation" when hours elapse between each reply. Since it's not natural to log in just to check what everyone wrote and respond, many teachers force compliance by making requirements like "You must post at least five messages per day." This may ensure that replies are posted, but it doesn't ensure quality.
The fact is that while the best tools applied in the best fashion can dramatically improve productivity, using those tools instead of meeting and holding classes is like using the best toothbrush as a substitute for going to the dentist. You need both.
When the professor is talking in class and you ask a question, they can answer right away, and you can incorporate the answer into your knowledge base for understanding the rest of the seminar. With online classes, if there is a seminar at all, then you are probably going to watch it all at once, and then send all your questions. You might have to read everything everyone else wrote in order to make sure you aren't duplicating questions as well. There are just a lot of drawbacks at a practical level to doing everything online.
3. Personal Growth & Networking - College is typically about learning responsibility, learning to live on your own (or with a roommate) away from your parents, making friends, etc. It's about building a support network in addition to just gaining book knowledge. For many working graduate students, it's about building a professional network. Some of the people who take online classes don't need this - but I hate to think about all those who do and miss out on it by doing everything online. Employers like to hire college graduates for the same reason they like to hire people who have been through the army - it builds responsibility and maturity. It's unclear to what extent online classes build these characters. For example: When you have to be at class by 8am every day, you get used to having to do it for work. Having gone survived four or more years of a normal college is no guarantee that someone will be responsible or punctual, but it's certainly a good way for employers to improve their odds.
Even though you can have a VOIP call to your classmate or send emails back and forth, it's hardly the same as sitting with your group studying at the library for four hours and then going out to drink afterwards. Small questions come up that might be worth asking the person across from you, but aren't worth calling someone over. Over the course of four years, this can add up to a lot.
Also, sadly many students who sign up for online classes do it because they can't commit to real classes. This may seem like it's helping the downtrodden, and I am sure there some amount of truth to that - but it also helps the lazy. A large number of people who sign up for online classes do so because they don't want to make the commitment to go to school. These aren't necessarily the ones you want for your classmates if you are a student, or the ones you want to hire if you are a company.
4. Actual Knowledge - Of course there is a large part of college that is devoted to so-called "Book Learning". This is supposedly the reason we go to school, and it is no doubt important. Many proponents of online courses say "The point of school is to learn, and you can learn without going to class." Fair enough. Most college have a small number of "independent study" classes, which are similar in a way. You only meet your professor occasionally; they give you assignments, and you hand in the previous ones. Still, why aren't these more common? For that matter, I can learn from reading a book, with no college involved. Why doesn't the school just give me a test after I read the book? Because then they wouldn't be "teaching".
It's true that there were some classes where I learned more from the book than I did from the teacher, and the main point of those classes from my point of view was to take the test and get a grade. Those were the classes I didn't like much though - that means you have a bad teacher.
As a practical matter, it's also harder to ensure students don't cheat when you are dealing with online classes. They are ways (checking what groups of students got the same answers wrong, using systems like turn-it-in), but they are half-solutions to a problem that is encouraged by the environment.
So do I think technology has no place in education?
No, of course not. I think technology should be leveraged wherever it can help. In fact, with my traditional "offline" classes, we use email, google documents, mailing lists, phone, Skype and other chat programs, Blackboard, Dropbox, etc. In fact, I wish things would be more automatic, convenient, sanctioned, and seamless, so that we could use them more. I also love things like MIT's Open Courseware, and I wish all colleges would be as open as this.
I don't even thing online classes are always a bad idea. I had some classes that were "half online" which worked out well. We spend 4 hours in class each week, and then spend another 3-4 hours worth of time online. Certain topics tend to be mostly solitary study anyway, and those classes are probably the best candidates for online courses. A whole degree, though? I really don't think it's a good idea.
Further, for the classes that are all online, I think there are ways to improve the experience, and make it more similar to "real" classes. In some cases, we are simply waiting for technology to catch up. For example, not everyone has a web cam, fast internet, and a headset, which makes video-conferencing hit-or-miss as a practical matter. If the school requires these, and has the proper infrastructure, they could hold classes at scheduled times where everyone would participate in real-time. If they could do that, then the interaction and conversational dynamics would be much more like a normal class. The way things stand now, though, it's hard to get a 4-way Skype voice only call going without someone having their computer misconfigured and ruining it for everyone.
Even without the video or voice, having a scheduled class time with an IRC-like chat room (and perhaps a one-way teacher to student video feed) could improve things in a few ways:
1. Near-real-time communication would be possible. Questions could be answered and feedback given immediately.
2. Students would have to make some level of commitment to the classes and attend regularly.
The point here is that just saying "online" doesn't really mean much - it depends more on how technology is used than what specific technology you are using. Blackboard and similar are good tools, but the first place to provide a complete package that can replicate the qualities of a real classroom in a practical way online will be a huge hit.
Every so often, someone asks me about, or tries to sell me on online classes, and I have to think about (or at least explain) my viewpoint again.
The first thing to explain is that although technology is sometimes an end unto itself for enthusiasts, for most people it is a means to and end most of the time. Technology is a tool to help us get other things done, and as such, it is not the thing you should focus on unless you are the developer. For most people, our goal is to leverage technology to get some other task done in order to make progress towards a larger goal. Yet, people often forget this simple fact, and thing that technology somehow makes things fundamentally different.
The last time this happened in a big way was during the internet bubble. It's true that the internet and the world wide web are enablers, but so was electricity and the phone. I'll even admit that they are such large enablers that they can change the way business is done, and make once on-the-fence business models profitable. On the other hand, something that was a bad idea before will remain a bad idea, even with the help of technology - for example, toothpaste.com was a bad idea because a bricks-and-morter toothpaste shop would have been a bad idea. I mail order toothpaste shop also probably wouldn't have been very profitable. It's just not a business area where specialization is meaningful at the retail level - and no amount of fancy technology is going to change that.
Likewise, technology should be an enabler for education, not a replacement. Correspondence courses (i.e. education by mail) have been around for at least 50 years, but have never become very popular because they have many weaknesses. Conference calling has also been available for many years, but I don't see a lot of classes based on that technology either. So let's look at the things we expect from a college education in particular and see how the technology I have seen used in online classes fares there:
1. Reputation - It may be sad in a way, but one big thing we expect from education is reputation. This is tied closely to how good the school actually is, and also to its reputation at a more abstract level. Many things factor into this: The average grades and standardized test scores (SAT, GMAT, etc.) of the matriculated students, the quality and fame of it's teachers, the number of journal publications they make, the quality of the physical facilities, the size of their budget and grants, etc. Perhaps most important is their accreditation. You choose a school based on how it's perceived, both by you, and by your peers and potential employers.
If you don't actually show up there, then the quality of the chemistry lab or the library won't matter, because you will never see it. The quality of the teachers and students will matter less in some ways, and in general the reputation matters less. Some may say that all those physical things are an extraneous expense, but do you have your own college level library and chemistry lab? Not all things can be done, or done as well online. Good luck buying your own Bloomberg or Lexus Nexus subscription. Almost all of the Online schools have minimal accreditation and will accept most applicants. They aren't very choosy, and everyone knows it. To some extent, having their name on your resume could become a black mark later on. It might not be completely fair, but that's the way it is. Taking online classes at a "normal" school masks the fact that you took the classes online a bit, and allows you to take a mix of normal and online courses as appropriate.
2. Collaboration and Interaction - This category included interaction with other students, professors, TAs, etc. One of my big issues with online education is that this just doesn't happen properly with online courses. You never see the people in real life, and so you don't really know them well. If you're lucky, you talk to them on the phone a lot. With distance education, often people don't even live nearby, so you can't even meet up to work in groups.
The current state of technology means that working in groups involves various tools, each of which has good points and pitfalls. Some are official, some aren't. Some only work on certain platforms, etc. When I took online classes, we used the class web site, Skype, a screen sharing tool (sometimes), Google Documents, real conference calls, school email, and various other tools.
At any rate, although many of the online classroom tools allow asking and answering of questions, responding to other's questions, etc. Most of the time it isn't "real-time" since there are no actual classes. This is billed as a benefit "Work when it's convenient for you!", but it's also a drawback, as you can't really have a "conversation" when hours elapse between each reply. Since it's not natural to log in just to check what everyone wrote and respond, many teachers force compliance by making requirements like "You must post at least five messages per day." This may ensure that replies are posted, but it doesn't ensure quality.
The fact is that while the best tools applied in the best fashion can dramatically improve productivity, using those tools instead of meeting and holding classes is like using the best toothbrush as a substitute for going to the dentist. You need both.
When the professor is talking in class and you ask a question, they can answer right away, and you can incorporate the answer into your knowledge base for understanding the rest of the seminar. With online classes, if there is a seminar at all, then you are probably going to watch it all at once, and then send all your questions. You might have to read everything everyone else wrote in order to make sure you aren't duplicating questions as well. There are just a lot of drawbacks at a practical level to doing everything online.
3. Personal Growth & Networking - College is typically about learning responsibility, learning to live on your own (or with a roommate) away from your parents, making friends, etc. It's about building a support network in addition to just gaining book knowledge. For many working graduate students, it's about building a professional network. Some of the people who take online classes don't need this - but I hate to think about all those who do and miss out on it by doing everything online. Employers like to hire college graduates for the same reason they like to hire people who have been through the army - it builds responsibility and maturity. It's unclear to what extent online classes build these characters. For example: When you have to be at class by 8am every day, you get used to having to do it for work. Having gone survived four or more years of a normal college is no guarantee that someone will be responsible or punctual, but it's certainly a good way for employers to improve their odds.
Even though you can have a VOIP call to your classmate or send emails back and forth, it's hardly the same as sitting with your group studying at the library for four hours and then going out to drink afterwards. Small questions come up that might be worth asking the person across from you, but aren't worth calling someone over. Over the course of four years, this can add up to a lot.
Also, sadly many students who sign up for online classes do it because they can't commit to real classes. This may seem like it's helping the downtrodden, and I am sure there some amount of truth to that - but it also helps the lazy. A large number of people who sign up for online classes do so because they don't want to make the commitment to go to school. These aren't necessarily the ones you want for your classmates if you are a student, or the ones you want to hire if you are a company.
4. Actual Knowledge - Of course there is a large part of college that is devoted to so-called "Book Learning". This is supposedly the reason we go to school, and it is no doubt important. Many proponents of online courses say "The point of school is to learn, and you can learn without going to class." Fair enough. Most college have a small number of "independent study" classes, which are similar in a way. You only meet your professor occasionally; they give you assignments, and you hand in the previous ones. Still, why aren't these more common? For that matter, I can learn from reading a book, with no college involved. Why doesn't the school just give me a test after I read the book? Because then they wouldn't be "teaching".
It's true that there were some classes where I learned more from the book than I did from the teacher, and the main point of those classes from my point of view was to take the test and get a grade. Those were the classes I didn't like much though - that means you have a bad teacher.
As a practical matter, it's also harder to ensure students don't cheat when you are dealing with online classes. They are ways (checking what groups of students got the same answers wrong, using systems like turn-it-in), but they are half-solutions to a problem that is encouraged by the environment.
So do I think technology has no place in education?
No, of course not. I think technology should be leveraged wherever it can help. In fact, with my traditional "offline" classes, we use email, google documents, mailing lists, phone, Skype and other chat programs, Blackboard, Dropbox, etc. In fact, I wish things would be more automatic, convenient, sanctioned, and seamless, so that we could use them more. I also love things like MIT's Open Courseware, and I wish all colleges would be as open as this.
I don't even thing online classes are always a bad idea. I had some classes that were "half online" which worked out well. We spend 4 hours in class each week, and then spend another 3-4 hours worth of time online. Certain topics tend to be mostly solitary study anyway, and those classes are probably the best candidates for online courses. A whole degree, though? I really don't think it's a good idea.
Further, for the classes that are all online, I think there are ways to improve the experience, and make it more similar to "real" classes. In some cases, we are simply waiting for technology to catch up. For example, not everyone has a web cam, fast internet, and a headset, which makes video-conferencing hit-or-miss as a practical matter. If the school requires these, and has the proper infrastructure, they could hold classes at scheduled times where everyone would participate in real-time. If they could do that, then the interaction and conversational dynamics would be much more like a normal class. The way things stand now, though, it's hard to get a 4-way Skype voice only call going without someone having their computer misconfigured and ruining it for everyone.
Even without the video or voice, having a scheduled class time with an IRC-like chat room (and perhaps a one-way teacher to student video feed) could improve things in a few ways:
1. Near-real-time communication would be possible. Questions could be answered and feedback given immediately.
2. Students would have to make some level of commitment to the classes and attend regularly.
The point here is that just saying "online" doesn't really mean much - it depends more on how technology is used than what specific technology you are using. Blackboard and similar are good tools, but the first place to provide a complete package that can replicate the qualities of a real classroom in a practical way online will be a huge hit.
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