In defense of online learning - a balanced approach

Nice article.  Sorry I missed this before.

Online Learning: Reaching Out to the Skeptics - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Teaching is so complex that categorical distinctions—traditional courses are superior; online, inferior; or vice versa—are far too simplistic to take seriously as a basis for institutional decision making.

Professionals with many years of experience and a track record of proven success should be allowed, within appropriate boundaries, to exercise their own judgment about the best ways to reach their students. On the other hand, the rhetoric of traditionalism can sometimes be more than a legitimate assertion of time-tested personal experience; it can be a mask for understandable but counterproductive attitudes and emotions.

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Thomas Benton's excellent article in the September 18th Chronicle of Higher Education is a well-reasoned discussion of how we should approach the topic of instructional delivery methods.  Of particular interest are the seven goals.

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Obviously, some faculty members have convictions that no amount of evidence to the contrary can change. But I think there are increasing numbers of teachers who, while mildly skeptical, are at least open to the idea of experimentation. Persuading them to recognize the possibilities of new technologies has at least seven interlocking components:

1. Move away from a dichotomous view of teaching as online or face to face, and toward the idea that all courses can potentially involve both methods.

2. Create opportunities for consultation and collaboration among faculty members, librarians, and technologists.

3. Eliminate most of the uncertainties and technical problems faced by faculty members who would like to try new methods but don't know how and lack the equipment.

4. Provide continuing support to faculty members who experiment with new teaching methods, not just during the development phase of a course but throughout its implementation, so that teachers can learn and adapt "on the ground."

5. Find new ways to streamline the process of developing online content and managing courses to protect the time of faculty members.

6. Reduce the isolation of teachers by promoting the development of collaborative new-media projects—with students as well as other faculty members—as a legitimate and recognized supplement to traditional, solitary research production.

7. Show the effectiveness and complementarity of different approaches to teaching, taking care that assessment instruments do not skew the results.

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And in conclusion, he really gets the obvious, but often ignored part of the job for those of us in the elearning support business.

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Ultimately, the quality of the teacher and the effort put forth by the individual student are more important than any specific method. A method that fails for one person can succeed for another, and so I want to keep the chalkboard, the overhead projector, and the cross-legged conversation under the trees just as much as I'd like to see more faculty members supplement their traditional teaching with a variety of new-media and online projects.

This is a test of the mobile blogging feature. Sent from my cell phone.

Developing the Educational Widget - undergraduate courses

In a very insightful interview, Kevin Carey provides a glimpse of several attempts in the direction of innovation in higher education by a private sector, for-profit company.  I'm not talking about publishers or software vendors, the interests of whom are not likely to demand innovation anytime soon. No, this is a genuine attempt to develop an education widget (I use the term with some affection) - the undergraduate course.  As difficult as it is for us to admit, the delivery of undergraduate courses is, more a required component of university campus practices than it is a demonstrably effective method of teaching and learning.  Is it possible, therefore, to build the widgets and sell them online to a group of students who willingly and knowingly buy them?

I recommend the whole article, but these two concluding statements caught my attention.

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly

Which means the day is coming—sooner than many people think—when a great deal of money is going to abruptly melt out of the higher education system, just as it has in scores of other industries that traffic in information that is now far cheaper and more easily accessible than it has ever been before. Much of that money will end up in the pockets of students in the form of lower prices, a boon and a necessity in a time when higher education is the key to prosperity. Colleges will specialize where they have comparative advantage, rather than trying to be all things to all people. A lot of silly, too-expensive things—vainglorious building projects, money-sucking sports programs, tenured professors who contribute little in the way of teaching or research—will fade from memory, and won’t be missed.

But other parts of those institutions will be threatened too—vital parts that support local communities and legitimate scholarship, that make the world a more enlightened, richer place to live. Just as the world needs the foreign bureaus that newspapers are rapidly shutting down, it needs quirky small university presses, Mughal textile historians, and people who are paid to think deep, economically unproductive thoughts. Rather than hiding within the conglomerate, each unbundled part of the university will have to find new ways to stand alone. There is an unstable, treacherous future ahead for institutions that have been comfortable for a long time. Like it or not, that’s the higher education world to come.

TWU Adjunct Orientation

Recently finished and posted the new TWU Adjunct Orientation wiki site. A team of folks worked on this for over a year, but with the development of the orientation as an online wiki, and using collaborative editing and user driven content, we can have a living and breathing orientation that actually gets used and updated by relevant readers and participants. Next step, to turn on the comment function. It's yet to be seen how soon we release the full wiki function and be brave about having user's actually edit the documents!

Commentary - The Need for Intregity, Collaboration, and Cooperation in the Management of Online Learning Systems

Members of the distance education community are no doubt shocked (and a little embarrassed) by the headlines from Brownsville, Texas in which student employees gained access to the University of Texas - Brownsville learning management system (in this case - Blackboard) to share confidential academic information with fellow students.  In other words - cheating! 

‘Gross academic fraud' at UTB-TSC rocked Office of Distance Education | online, utb, employees - Local - Brownsville Herald A two-month UTB-TSC police investigation found school employees in 2008 had committed "gross academic fraud" after student employees and regular staff used their positions to steal test answers, according to a UTB police report obtained by The Brownsville Herald.  The wrongdoing occurred within the Blackboard Learning System, an online service commonly used at universities. The system allows professors to post tests and course materials for students, teach entire courses online and keep online grade books. Blackboard generally serves to enrich the learning experience; however, former student employees of the school’s Office of Distance Education, the office that manages Blackboard, confessed to a police investigator that they had used the online system to access test answers to help themselves cheat, give the answers to other students, or even to sell.'

While one might be tempted to brush this off with a casual "that could happen to any school", or "if students want to cheat, they'll find a way", I suggest this story provides several object lessons for distance education professionals.

Example 1: It's always hard to find out things the hard way!  In other words, sometimes the only way to figure out you need a better policy or procedure is to have something go wrong.  So while we might be tempted to disparage the folks at UTB, it's pretty clear that they made a mistake and quickly corrected it.

'After weighing the available options, we felt that it was ultimately an academic issue and handling it that way served the university’s educational mission," said UTB attorney Michael Blanchard.  Juliet V. Garcia, the school’s president, when asked why the administration decided to treat the issue as a case of student misconduct rather than pressing criminal charges, responded in a written statement. "After the police investigation and after careful deliberation, we handled the issue under our established procedures for addressing academic misconduct," Garcia wrote.'

Example 2: If it smells like a skunk in the room, you should get out the skunk trap instead of holding you nose.  I suspect the folks at UTB wish they had taken the 'rumors of students misusing the Blackboard system' more seriously.  A general thou-shalt-not-cheat admonition is clearly not enough.

'Distance Education employees said they had heard rumors of students misusing the Blackboard system, and even discovered signs that cheating was occurring, but that they were unsure of how to safeguard against it.  While the school had rules in place — most obviously "no cheating" — university officials admitted there had been a lack of controls to limit access to administrative privileges.'

Example 3: Policies and best practices are essential (e.g. no password sharing, limited student access to systems).  A code of ethics for employees can go a long way toward setting higher expectations.  With the vast expansion of online systems in education, a number of employees will, and should have access to information about students, faculty and staff.  It's how they use it and the code of ethics surrounding that use which become critical. Nothing wrong with employees managing systems.  Lots wrong with employee abuse of systems they manage.  The old Ronald Reagan phrase comes to mind - 'trust, but verify'. 

"As far as we know, no professors’ pins or usernames were compromised," Blanchard said. But Blanchard said that just because information is confidential, it does not mean no employee should have access to it. " ... Appropriate employees on campus have access to confidential information. If we learn our trust has been breached, we take appropriate action."

I wonder aloud how many other schools are treading on thin ice by not looking at these issues in more detail.  Thankfully, we have a pretty tight security protocol at our institution but there are always areas for improvement.  This example of system abuse should remind us all how important a culture of ethics and responsibility can be.