Online classes .... enrolment success

Last fall, I blogged about the healthy enrolment in online classes in geography. Well, I moseyed over to the schedule of classes to see if spring term classes have attracted good numbers.
Bottom line: it is working well :-)

- My online class in spring is GEOG315D, which is about the Indian subcontinent. The last time I offered it, which was last Spring, it was a "regular" class, and only three or so students had enrolled by the first week in March. So, the very responsible faculty that I am (or pretend to be?) I canceled it.

Based on that fall term experience, I had a thought: why not slowly move the potentially low-demand courses to the online format? If there is really a demand for online classes, then maybe students will sign up because of the convenience factor. It is a win for them.

It is a win for me, because I then get to engage students on topics and issues that I believe every student ought to be familiar with. (Would you be happy with graduating students not knowing anything about India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka/Nepal, which collectively are home to more than a quarter of the world's population, and with quite a few geopolitical and economic issues with global implications?)

It is a win for the university in terms of enrolment management.

As of today, there are 15 in the class, and I won't be surprised if it reached 20 by the first day of Spring--quite a contrast to the four the last time around, eh!

- There is one other upper-division geography course that is offered online (by my colleague), and that is already closed; all filled up and no space left.

- The university gains even more: no need for classroom space for two sections!

The world is changing, even at WOU: one small geography class at a time :-)

What's about to disrupt schools

According to Clayton Christensen, author of Disrupting Class, online instruction will change schooling as we know it--if we're lucky. Christensen predicts that within 10 years, 50% of all classes will be taught online, and schools had better get into the online-learning market or risk losing their students to other providers.

Read the entire article at eSchool News.

Academic Earth, and the future of education?

An excerpt from Farhad Manjoo's column at Slate (read the entire one; it is neat):

I live in San Francisco, but I attended all of these classes without ever leaving my house, often while I was supposed to have been doing something else. Over the last few years, snooty universities across the country have been filming their lectures and putting their course material online. A few months ago, Academic Earth, a startup founded by a young Yale graduate named Richard Ludlow, began collecting these videos and packaging them into full-length courses. The result is a geeky procrastinator's dream.

It's been years since I was in school, and I've got few fond memories of going to class. But Academic Earth is unexpectedly irresistible. It's like Hulu, but for nerds. Many of the professors are great teachers, and, unlike in college, I can go to class on my own time—which ensures that I'm not too sleepy to understand what's going on. Academic Earth achieves something like what Google was trying to pull off with Knol, the messy encyclopedialike project that the search engine launched last year. Both sites let you learn from recognized experts rather than from the anonymous crowds who populate Wikipedia. But Academic Earth bests Knol, because the experts here aren't just throwing up their opinions whenever the mood strikes them. Instead, they're doing their jobs—teaching in actual classrooms, at recognized universities, to real, live, students.

A different kind of a university?

So, there I was mindlessly flicking the telly channels, and .... the way one ad started caught my attention.  If the market that the ad was aiming for were watching it, I can imagine them absolutely in agreement with the ad.

What was the ad for?  Kaplan University.  You can watch the same ad here in their website--click on the play button for the ad to start.

It is not that I am being an agent for that university, and nor am I advocating that we throw out the "standard" approach to education.  But, with every passing day, I am more and more convinced that with the phenomenal explosion of technology of a gazillion sorts, colleges and universities need to figure out how to adapt to the changing contexts.  (Yesterday was the big time celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday; so, we better keep in mind that those who don't adapt, well, ....)

What blows my mind is how we refuse to engage in such discussions.  Yes, even to talk about them, leave alone doing something.

And speaking of talent, here is one of my favorite talks from Ted.com.  The speaker is Sir Ken Robinson, and he, too, calls for a massive overhaul of the way we teach (though his focus is mainly on K-12, it has lots of lessons for us.)  BTW, if the embedded video does not show up in the email, then click on the link in the bottom of the email to go the blog post itself and watch the video.

Emerging media essential for grads

Not specific to online learning, but I found this article to be very interesting, and relevant.

Knowing how to navigate the Internet, blog and operate a BlackBerry is paying off for recent graduates. A study released by Ball State University found 67 percent of companies were willing to pay employees with emerging media skills a starting salary one to 4 percent higher than those without.

Read the entire article here

Is it April yet?

Hmm...I guess...I'd be anxious to see the full report to be fair.  But that would be my point too - was this a fair survey?  I dare say that if you surveyed a similar set of faculty members 30 years ago about SLO's and faculty's time and effort and pay with a 'pencil and paper versus electronic submissions of writings', you might get a similar "poo-poo-ing" of the quality, compensation and place in education.

Is it really fair to survey faculty and admin who don't teach online and/or are not interested in doing so?  What are they looking at when they assess the SLO's of online classes they are not privy to, against campus courses that they haven't sat-in on?

I've witnessed campus courses that were poorly delivered, as well as online courses that were pretty much 'self-delivered', as well as online courses that were rich of SLO's beyond many campus courses for the same subject.  However, I made an effort to go out and assess and compare courses.  How many faculty really know what they're dogging?

That's not to say that there is a huge need to improve, offer more and quality training, compensate for learning a new tool.  

Oh yeah, that reminds me - isn't a standard claim of anyone in education that we're not getting compensated enough for our time - especially extra time creating better learning opportunities and experience for students?

Professors Regard Online Instruction as Less Effective Than Classroom Learning

Not so good news about online teaching and learning, according to this report in the Chronicle.  Here is an excerpt from the Chronicle report (The full results from the survey will be available only in April):

Instructors' extra time and effort aren't being rewarded financially or professionally, and what's more, online education doesn't translate into better learning outcomes, said respondents in the faculty survey. More than 10,000 faculty members at 67 public campuses responded to the survey.

While 30 percent of faculty members surveyed felt that online courses provided superior or equivalent learning outcomes when compared with face-to-face classes, 70 percent felt that learning outcomes were inferior. Among faculty members who have taught online courses, that figure drops to 48 percent, but that still represents a "substantial minority" holding a negative view, Mr. Seaman said.

The survey also found that a majority of faculty members felt that institutions provided inadequate compensation for those taking on the additional responsibility of teaching online courses. And many respondents said that students needed more discipline before they could benefit from online instruction. Low retention rates among students and the lack of consideration of online teaching experience in tenure-and-promotion decisions were also cited as barriers to faculty interest in online teaching.