Posted on 06/21/2012 7:33:23 PM PDT by CutePuppy
This autumn more than a million students are going to take part in an experiment that could re-invent the landscape of higher education.
Some of the biggest powerhouses in US higher education are offering online courses - testing how their expertise and scholarship can be brought to a global audience.
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have formed a $60m (£38m) alliance to launch edX, a platform to deliver courses online - with the modest ambition of "revolutionising education around the world".
Sounding like a piece of secret military hardware, edX will provide online interactive courses which can be studied by anyone, anywhere, with no admission requirements and, at least at present, without charge.
With roots in Silicon Valley, Stanford academics have set up another online platform, Coursera, which will provide courses from Stanford and Princeton and other leading US institutions.
The first president of edX is Anant Agarwal, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and one of the pioneers of the MITx online prototype.
He puts forward a statistic that encapsulates the game-changing potential.
The first online course from MITx earlier this year had more students than the entire number of living students who have graduated from the university.
In fact, it isn't far from the total of all the students who have ever been there since the 19th Century.
'Tipping point'
The internet provides an unparalleled capacity to expand the reach - but it also raises far-reaching and thorny questions for the traditional model of a university.
.....
(Excerpt) Read more at m.bbc.co.uk ...
Should've been done long time ago, but some people and organizations are making too much money annually from printing books, with essentially a fixed material which would cost next to nothing to put on e-books (ePUB / PDF).
What the big cost in videoing a teacher?
That's exactly the problem - it wouldn't be, and in the eyes of educrats it would devalue it. Just like the music industry, the government-educracy axis of the "education industry" is starting to have problems "monetizing" the digital / Internet model and are resisting it because it benefits / frees the parents and students from long-and-carefully established tyranny of "free public education" model.
Obama is actually trying to convert higher education into the same model by having the government take over the student loan process. Harvard, MIT, Stanford and others see where it's going ("loan forgiveness") and are changing their models accordingly, not to be left high and dry with unperforming loans (just like the banks were with CRA mortgages).
This development is the private universities' direct response to the Obama's takeover of student loan industry / process and therefore, clear threat of "loan forgiveness" movement by the OWS (aka 0.99percenters).
They've had the capability of doing it before now (witness MITx) but didn't have the real incentive to go full bore... now they do.
ping
Klinsky is writing just about that:
..... For example, a student might study Economics 101 from a world-leading professor for free online, then report to the nearest community college for a proctored, nationally available exam tied to the course material. Passage of the national exam would lead to an accredited course credit in freshman economics, transferable to a traditional institution and thus lowering the cost of the traditional degree. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... lots of online courses are already available, and the market may well determine that it is more attractive to serve many students at a very low cost than to serve a few students at a very high cost. ..... < snip >
BTW, lab work can also be accomodated, just as it is now for those taking correspondence courses for full degrees. Usually it does take longer to complete one of those, but it's also because many people taking them are usually working, at least part time.
Here come the Indian professors (more of ‘em, anyway). Sorry, maybe I’m a Luddite, but I hate this. It looks like another steaming pile of Global Society about to be rammed down our throats.
I'd characterise it more as a tint of xenophobia rather than Luddism. You don't seem to be afraid of technology per se, as long as it stays "American" rather than Indian or otherwise "foreign."
Internet and "communications" in general are "global" so, in theory, yes, you could get online education from a college which is "foreign" i.e., not physically located in the U.S. How about Toronto, Ottawa or Oxford or Cambridge, for example, would they be excluded from the list of "foreign" colleges/professors to be feared/disliked?
How can having more choice be described as being "rammed down our throats"? Did the introduction in the late '50s of cheaper better-made Japanese "toy" cars from Toyota and Nissan/Datsun into the US market ultimately benefit the American consumers and eventually free them from having to buy the American/UAW-made "boxes on wheels" from the Big Three?
This is the technology that can potentially empower consumers (parents and students) to break free from the government-sanctioned and institutionalized power of the "Big Education Industry" and we should object to this development on the lone basis that the empowered education consumers might choose educators who are not "American," rather than trust the [Global Society] marketplace and competition?
Isn't the availability of more, better choices better for consumers? Don't we want the people to be free to "shop" around and choose their education and educators?
Competition always benefits consumer, regulation benefits the governments and the monopolies.
Leave it to these guys to mess up a trend .....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/goldman-sachs-for-profit-college_n_997409.html
Passage of the national exam would lead to an accredited course credit
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I hope those national exams would be through privately owned and managed companies. We **know** it can be done. We already have examples of this:
—SAT and ACT exams are widely accepted and recognized as valid.
— The board exams to certify our nation’s professionals are another.
— And...When my children studied Spanish in Costa Rica a private firm confirmed that their studies were valid and our state universities awarded .them 2 semesters of college credit.
transferable to a traditional institution
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Along with On-line courses and the private sector making certifiable testing available, hopefully we can wean employers away from their dependence on requiring university degrees.
Suggestion: Encourage employers to accept SAT and ACT scores as a measure of reading and math skills, and as a measure of the applicants ability to concentrate on the task at hand and finish the job. Requiring a degree from a university is really only necessary for the licensed professions.
Honestly, little of the work done in the United States actually requires a degree. What is needed is the knowledge to do the job, or the reading and math skills necessary to learn how to do the job. Most employers spend a significant amount of time and money **training** their employees. My son has a masters degree in accounting, graduated last December, and is being trained ( “mentored”) by his employers now, even with his masters degree.
I am now a full-time student at a private artist's atelier ( rigorous art training).
I am highly active in the art community in my state and region. I have spoken to many, many **many** artists who were thoroughly disgusted with the quality of their art training in their university and at the expense. Ateliers, not only in fine art, but other areas of study, seem to be becoming more popular. **Serious** artists are abandoning the universities.
Competition always benefits consumer, regulation benefits the governments and the monopolies.{like}
The big secret is the incompetence of some teachers and the brainwashing content of much coursework. If the general public actually had full-time video access to the classrooms of their offspring, they would be appalled at what happens there.
Excellent idea! And...you are completely correct in all you points! All government school classes should be videoed and streamed ON-LINE!
I was thinking differently, though. Why not video **one** teacher teaching the typical course work for 3rd grade arithemetic, or **one** teacher teaching fifth grade socialist studies, or **one** teacher teaching 11th grade American History?
Honestly,....It could be done **once** and would be good for 10 or more years. What's the BIG secret that this couldn't be placed on-line and be completely free to all the citizens of the state?
If this was coupled with certifiable and proctored exams, bright students could zoom ahead and graduate **YEARS** earlier. The slower students would have access to the on-line courses for review, and adult citizens could take enrichment courses or fill in gaps in their own educations and have a certification to present to an employer.
I bet this isn't done because it would mean the loss jobs for government teachers as bright students graduated years earlier. Personally, I believe we have government schools to provide **lots** of jobs for modestly talented white collar state employees. And....As you pointed out so well....The course content would be shocking.
Different problems. I was originally looking at a way to improve classroom discipline on the part of unruly students, and thought "hey....why not a vidcam in the classroom pointed at the students". If parents could monitor the behaviour of their precious offspring (and their misbehaviour) themselves, I thought that discipline problems would quickly diminish. I then realized that a second camera, pointed at the "teacher's station" would also address the "teacher incompetence/brainwashing" issue.
I think the ultimate endpoint will be some combination of both our suggested approaches. One thing you don't mention that I see as happening is that there will be more than one approach to teaching specific subjects. Some students just learn differently than others. The vid-course approach allows the development of multiple teaching/learning styles beneficial to the different student "learning types".
You are exactly right. I read somewhere most of the students in the MITx classes are working professionals. The attrition rate is extremely high as well: 120,000 enrolled and 10,000 left @ mid-term exam.
Not to say MIT couldn;t produce an introductory course “for the masses” if it wanted to. But it false to represent what they have there now as such.
Looked over their lecture notes for some other CS classes too. Their lecture notes skip over a lot of intermediate steps that 98% of students would need to see. In short, its not written for your anyone who doesn’t already know the subject matter (or is a genius to begin with).
Perhaps they regard real introductory material as beneath their brand. But, .....if I wanted to be conspiratorial, I’d say this was a honeypot to draw prospective students in, totally humiliate them, and then thereby reinforce why they need in-class instruction.
I am not sure that MITx misrepresents these courses as being "for the masses" or for the novices and they obviously can create the online introductory material ("CS-101") but that was not their intent, but it is a good demonstration of what is possible to do - technologically - with online education.
edX is supposed to be different in nature and purpose, but it doesn't have all the pieces of actual "formal education" either.
These are mostly the demos for now, but they show what the "future" may look like and what the marketplace can adopt; e.g., there are probably not too many non-online "traffic schools" left in the U.S., when only 10 years ago it was probably rare to find a "court-accredited" online school where the course and the test can be taken for the traffic tickets.
And if the likes of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Wharton/UPenn et al won't make those available to fill the actual full curriculum, this will only open the door to "smaller" colleges to fill the void and become more relevant than just becoming places where the "lab and hands-on" work will be done and the tests will be taken but not much more.
The entire idea is that once online education becomes accepted as a way of getting accredited education and degrees, it will open the entire field to competition where some universities can leverage their well known names and reputations for usually expensive and elitist "quality education" to grab substantial market share in much less expensive and more egalitarian online education, rather than cede the market to the "periphery" - "... the market may well determine that it is more attractive to serve many students at a very low cost than to serve a few students at a very high cost."
With every new disrupting technological advance - such as Internet - there is always a question for the entrenched - to oppose the technology and try to stand in the way of it (usually using the government and "laws" the way music industry and DRMA tried to deal with digital music and P2P/torrent tech) or to be in the forefront of the technology and jump in front of the parade to become leaders and grab market share (the way Apple reinvented itself with iPod an iTunes).
Here are some interesting views from four "visionaries" on the availability and fiscal realities of college education as it exists today (not online, but relevant to the subject discussed).
From Do Too Many Young People Go to College? - WSJ, by Lauren Weber, 2012 June 21
Second, the reality is that at least 40% of full-time students entering four-year programs fail to have their degree in six years, and the dropout rate is even greater among lower-income students. There are vast numbers of universities where the four-year college graduation rate is less than 30%. Third, the biggest problem is that we are turning out vastly more college graduates than there are jobs in the relatively high-paying managerial, technical and professional occupations to which most college graduates traditionally have gravitated. Do you really need a chemistry degree to make a good martini? Roughly one of three college graduates is in jobs the Labor Department says require less than a bachelor's degree. ..... < snip > ..... MR. O'NEILL: The most powerful driver of economic growth is tech innovation. And one drag on innovation is college debt, of which there is nearly $1 trillion outstanding. ..... If college were really a more valuable way to spend time than jobs, then diplomas would be an afterthought. Going to college for two years would earn exactly half the return of four years, and smart investors would double or triple their return by going to college for eight or 12 years rather than wasting their time working. ..... < snip > ..... MR. O'NEILL: Sandy and Vivek observe that some talented people aren't good fits for the industrial classroom-lecture experience of K-12 schooling. We shouldn't assume that they will enjoy the classroom-lecture experience of college. Like many smart and successful people, they might learn better by reading and exploring on their own and with the guidance of mentors — to say nothing of actually doing things. To ask 'How do we decide who goes to college?' collectivizes a decision no one should make for anyone else. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... DR. VEDDER: First, the proportion of society's resources going to fund higher education has tripled over the past half-century, and tuition costs are rising significantly faster than inflation.
The BIG secret is that it makes BIG money for the re-publishers of this [mostly trivial] material.
Add: with the study material online and/or on e-books, the turtoring for slower pace students could be done using social media, interactively, in real time, by peers, without having to be physically present at the same place - to great relief of many parents.
I think my use of the phrase “for the masses” was probably a poor choice. What I meant to say was that the MIT online courses were not structured in a way that would enable worthy students (who are less than MIT caliber) to get through the course. Keeping the material ‘elite’ limits the effective scope of these initiatives.
I teach university level computer science and also don’t believe everyone should go to college. As I’ve said before, my own observation is that 1/3 of the students currently in college definitely belong there, the bottom 1/3 don’t belong there, and the middle 1/3 might belong there if they decided to apply themselves. Unfortunately, many faculty DO want everyone to go to college to ensure their job security. They want the asses in seats, even if those kids have a high probability of washing out.
As far as online eduction, its really hard to overstate how undisciplined & lazymany college students are. The truth is that online courses actually require MORE discipline on the part of the student. This is because it is that much easier for most of them to ignore—out of sight, out of mind. For this reason, I think online courses might be a poor match for them.
The other factor is making sure that they are the ones doing the work. That is hard enough to ensure even in a Brick and Mortar classroom setting. There are some innovations that try to minimize cheating/plagarism (like biometric scanning and indiviudally encoding downloaded templates for each student to complete). These may make it harder to cheat, but not impossible.
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