[Lion's Cub]

Why aren't all courses at state universities at least as available, and why can't you, at state universities, sit for exams for about the cost of proctoring and grading the exam plus a bit to cover the cost of the online course bandwidth?

While I agree that the state universities should have their courses on line, and that people should be able to sit and test out of any course for a fee, I think it's only fair that the fee include money for the professor who teaches the course. After all, he/she put the course together, did the lectures, etc.

The costs should still be vastly lower, since the professor only has to put up the course material once each semester to reach potentially thousands of students.

Also, since there would be no interaction between student and professor, no "homework", no feedback for correction, no term paper assignments, etc., I could understand if universities wanted to make some kind of distinction in degrees between those who attend on campus or take regular online courses as opposed to those who learn the material through self-study. Maybe the distinction could be as simple as Bachelors vs Self-Study Bachelors...

[eno_]

I'm working on an automated bot that simulates student interactions with a foreign grad student TA. The undergrads that are beta testing it still understand too much of what the bot is saying.

[eno_]

Acually, when I was an undergrad, there was an extremely heavy load of problem sets every week (sometimes 10 hours per course per week) and exams scores were weighted lightly compared with that liberal arts school down the road. This has two effects: one is that the problem sets come in smaller bites and are more amenable to online delivery (some exams were in large halls and proctored in the traditional way), but problem sets are easier to cheat on. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

[womanvet]

Also, since there would be no interaction between student and professor, no "homework", no feedback for correction, no term paper assignments, etc.,

??????? Really? My dd is taking two classes online this semester (part of Florida's state university system).

There is plenty of interaction with the professor (as this is dd's first semester, she had no idea that one does not challenge the teacher -- so far the prof has corrected several quizzes and reworded two labs).

In both classes, the teachers are available at their offices on campus, by telephone, or by internet. Plenty of feedback (including a warning from the teacher that she wants Office XP used, not Office 97, so she took 2 points off a test. That upset my 14-yo who is not used to getting less than 100).

The meteorology class has a term paper requirement, along with an oral defense of it. And both classes met the first day to have instructors and students get to know one another; both will have final exams on campus.

My dh also took classes from OSU (OK)-- tests were administered by a proctor the school agreed upon. Off-campus classes are nothing new -- what is new is the lack of cost: seems to go with lack of academic credit, unless the student can take a CLEP exam.