Technology and passion in the service of learning

In earlier posts, I referred to MIT's opencourseware project, and to the president of Blackboard remarking that online learning is not simply about putting a course online. So, it was neat to read in today's Chronicle a commentary that brings these two ideas together. I tell you, it feels great to know that I am not an idiot after all when I wrote those things :-)

Anyway, enough about me, eh! The author writes:

That culture of sharing and participation usually starts with the students themselves, as we see vividly in the complex, multiplayer game worlds and in the power of study groups, whether conducted face-to-face or virtually. Such a culture must also involve content. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was a pioneer when it developed its OpenCourseWare project. Other universities quickly followed MIT's lead, and both the content and the means of accessing class materials and remixing and repurposing them for different audiences grew.
But it's time that we in higher education move beyond considering only content. We must begin to determine how that content can encompass multiple kinds of instructional or learning activities. It is, after all, the combination of things we do with content that creates learning platforms.

As I was reading it, my thought was that today's professors are like the DJs of today's music. DJs are totally unlike the old time disk-jockeys. The current ones mix music, sample them, every once in a while create their own music, and the best of them pretty much set the trends.
The fantastic aspect of Web2.0 is that I am able to sample content and ideas that I could never before, and am able to remix them to create my own music in the classroom. (Well, maybe my students think it is all cacophony!)

Anyway, the author (who is at USC, my PhD school!) then says:

We must think about how technology, content, and knowledge of learning and teaching can be creatively combined to enhance education and ignite students' passion, imagination, and desire to constantly learn about — and make sense of — the world around them. And we need to collect and share good models in which various professors' and students' experiences are commented on and tried out in new contexts. ....
.... Today the Web offers students incredible opportunities to find and join niche communities that ignite their passions. That sets the stage, through productive inquiry and peer-based learning, for such students to acquire both the practice of and knowledge about a field.
In the end, the millions of niche amateur communities — from the Latin word amator, meaning lover of — could provide a powerful learningscape for lifelong learning that is grounded in the learning practices that students acquire on campuses. That would be a major step toward creating a culture of learning for the 21st century.

Hey, maybe online teaching and learning will even revive the learning of Greek and Sanskrit? We currently can't offer them at most universities because if is simply not cost-effective to offer this for a couple of students. This is what happened at USC, when it shut down German. Online? Endless possibilities :-)

Should small colleges offer online instruction?

We typically offer arguments in favor of small colleges, small class sizes, personal interactions, etc. While I personally favor all these, I am not sure whether we truly achieve significantly better outcomes just because, for instance, a class is small size. My colleagues teach intro classes that have between 70 and 100 students each. I always cap my intro classes at 40. Not that we have done any systematic studies that measure how much students learn in these competing formats, but I am tempted to conclude that there is not much difference in the outcomes. If every one of us learns differently, then does it also not mean that some students might prefer the anonymity of a larger classroom for their learning, while some might like smaller classrooms so that they don't feel lost? I mean, that is only one example, right?

We can take it one more step; most students prefer not to come to class at all. Not anything new. I suppose as long as we have had classes, we have also had students who were not thrilled to be in the classroom. So, there could be a demographic group that actually will prefer online education? So, ought we not serve them? Well, that is the question handled in this Q/A with the president of

Brenau University, a small college in Georgia, has a strong focus on distance education. The institution offers 11 online degree programs, most of them career driven, an uncommon focus for a liberal-arts college. Brenau's president, Mr. Schrader, says that about 40 percent of faculty members teach the online courses.
Q. Why did a liberal-arts college like yours decide to start an online program?
A. We did it to meet the communication needs of the current generation of students. If the majority of the world is going to learn online, the liberal-arts schools will have to make a decision. They can't give up on their responsibility saying they don't like online courses; either they participate in them and do it well, or they throw in the towel.
The complete interview is here in the Chronicle of Higher Education