A cyber-UC campus? Please, NO :-(

It is time for an 11th University of California campus: a cyber-campus devoted to awarding online degrees to UC-eligible students.

That wasn't me calling for a cyber-campus. It is the opening line from a LA Times op-ed by Christopher Edley, Jr., who is the dean of the law school at UC-Berkeley. He writes:

The UC XI cyber-campus could be a way to put high-quality higher education within reach of tens of thousands more students, including part-timers, and eventually provide a revenue boost for higher education.

A new California master plan should define and deliver state-of-the-art online education. There are scores of tough questions to be answered, and business plans to be drafted and redrafted. But every cliche about a crisis tells us that the best offense is often innovation.

I don't know what to make of this response he has in the Q/A with the Chronicle:

Q. Have you ever taught in an online setting? Would you teach in the online campus?

A. I have not but would love to. Look, if you have pride in your teaching and you get satisfaction out of reading papers and final exams that demonstrate how much progress your students have made, then … technology that allows you to multiply your impact beyond the four walls of your classroom can be an exciting prospect, especially if you don't have to grade all of the exams yourself.

"especially if you don't have to grade all of the exams yourself"? This research-university system of the professor only to "lecture" and then graduate assistants grading papers is all screwed up. It will be a shame to carry that screwed-up format into online teaching and learning also.

Edley adds:

I would expect that the best faculty would teach regular courses, and that some cybercourses would be included in their course mix. There would have to be an instructor of record and graduate students available for one-on-one contact and for grading purposes.

I do want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt here. But, I think he is looking at it strictly from a dollars perspective. I wonder if the logic here is something along the lines of videotaping those brilliant UC faculty lectures, which is why students attend UCs (yeah, right!), and streaming them online. Student progress would be assessed by TAs. In other words, it is the dull, boring, awful focus on "look at me, I am a brainy faculty"...

BTW, assessing student progress is not merely about "grading" ..... oh well!!!

"Teach Naked"

No, it is not what you think it is about :-)

A couple of years ago, I asked our IT grand poobah whether we have done any kind of cost/benefit analysis on the investments we have made in smart classrooms. The reason for asking that? I had noticed quite a few smart classrooms that were being used merely to project dull and boring sentences-filled PowerPoint slides. I explained to the grand poobah (isn't that your job title, BK? ha ha) that there seemed to be very little usage of the internet connection, or the DVD player, or even the document projector. Are we then ok with charging students tech fees that are used for smart classrooms, which turn out to be nothing but glorified overhead projectors?

The response was immediate, something along the lines of "great idea. Would you like to be the lead?" We both laughed. I suppose I laughed harder because I knew what kind of a "shoot me here sign" I will be walking around with, on top of my bullet holes :-)

It is not that I am a tech-nerd in the classroom either. I tell my students that when they have access to the readings, my slides, and all kinds of information on the web, well, why should they even come to class? At least one student always jumps in with the answer I look for: for discussions. To me, it is great having smart classrooms because I can then pull up appropriate info, data, graphics, videos, and news items on the fly as we discuss. But, it all depends on the eagerness of students to discuss, and my ability to catalyze and lead the discussions. (I hope I am ok in that!)

This article in the Chronicle (available without subscription) is about the smart classroom's value, or lack thereof:

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled "smart" classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to "teach naked" — by which he means, sans machines.

More than anything else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather than using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they're going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides.

He's not the only one raising questions about PowerPoint, which on many campuses is the state of the art in classroom teaching. A study published in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal found that 59 percent of students in a new survey reported that at least half of their lectures were boring, and that PowerPoint was one of the dullest methods they saw.

You think all this is irrelevant to the discussions on online teaching and learning? Nope.

Now that so many colleges offer low-cost online alternatives to the traditional campus experience, and some universities give away videos of their best professors' lectures, colleges must make sure their in-person teaching really is superior to those alternatives.

"Schools need to be thinking this way," says Mr. Platt. "It's where they're going to prove they add value to being there in the room, and not being online."

Moving to PowerPoint from transparencies was the easy part of upgrading teaching for the digital age. Now that an entire infrastructure for instant online delivery is widely in place, all that's left is the hard part of changing what happens in the classroom, which might need to stay a low-tech zone to survive.

Yes, I too think that we ought to figure out how to demonstrate the "value added" in a live classroom is somehow superior to the value from online learning. But, removing smart technology from the classroom is a bizarre way to do that. I mean, why not go to the extreme of not having a fancy building, no comfy chairs for students, no climate control, .... after all, wasn't that the case in Socrates' time, whose "socratic method" is what most discussions are modeled after?

Technology is like the kitchen knife--we can use it to cook wonderful dinners, or use it like how OJ did.
ps: If OJ did not have access to a kitchen knife, well, he would have used something else.
pps: Yeah, right, OJ did not kill anybody!

Curriculum spread too thin and, hence, inefficient?

This is not truly about online issues. But, the following excerpt, from a well thought out essay, (which is usually a rarity at insidehighered.com), makes a powerful argument--an argument when I make I am usually in a tiny minority :-) I recommend reading that entire essay.

Many institutions operate on the assumption that a wide selection of undergraduate courses is a core dimension of quality, and furthermore needed to recruit students to the institution. The reality may be much different. The majority of students satisfy their general education requirements by enrolling in relatively few courses. In most institutions, more than half of the lower-division credit hours are generated in 25 or fewer courses. The result is a few high-enrollment courses and a lot of low-enrollment courses.

Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that a more prescribed path through a narrower range of curricular options leads to better retention, since advising is more straightforward, scheduling easier to predict, and students are less likely to get lost in the process. A narrower curriculum is more coherent, can be better focused on learning outcomes, and is actually preferred by many students. So an educationally effective undergraduate curriculum is also the most cost-effective curriculum. Recognizing this opens up opportunities to address costs while improving attention to positive learning outcomes. Higher education doesn’t have to go to Henry Ford’s extreme (“any color you want as long as it’s black”) to take a lesson of sorts from the portions of the automotive industry who have managed to avoid bankruptcy, by bundling options and eliminating product lines to cut production costs without compromising customer satisfaction. In our own industry, well regarded for-profit institutions have satisfied customers who have had few choices in a streamlined, cost-effective curriculum. If quality is measured in terms of outcomes achieved, not appearances and status, attention to the undergraduate curriculum is a place to start looking for improvements.

The authors are looking at big research universities when they make these observations. But then even small universities like ours want to behave like the big guys.

A diversified curriculum is fantastic, yes. But, I wonder if that is more from a faculty perspective than a student's. Again, that is where I have found the online environment to be useful again--my class on South Asia did not attract students in the regular format. And I had to cancel the class once because of llllooooowww enrolment. But, as I noted in an earlier post, the same class quickly filled up in the online mode--a win/win for everbody.

Online MAT programs .... us, USC, and ????

Some time ago, perhaps even as much as two years ago, when USC launched the online MAT program and advertised it as the first in the country, I emailed that announcement to a few people in the COE. Naturally, they were surprised with USC's claim--hey, even we have had an online MAT for a while.

Anyway, that experience reminded me of what a professor of mine said in our first ever graduate class at USC--yes, that is where I earned my grad degrees. Martin Krieger wanted us to understand that in this world, it is not a question of what we say, but one of who says it. Thus, it is no surprise to me that nobody cares for my op-eds, even though I might (and I do) provide leading-edge analysis, even before, say, the master manipulator of metaphors does :-(

Similarly, it becomes a big deal when a leading research university does something online, while the online work done at smaller universities, including ours, barely registers a blip anywhere. The harsh reality of life, I guess.

No, I am not simply ranting and raving here. USC's PR announcement from July 9th states:

The MAT@USC cohort, which officially starts this summer, is a strikingly diverse group that reflects the school’s long-running commitment to promoting diversity in education.

One hundred and forty-four students from across the United States have enrolled in MAT@USC, the first online program of its kind to emerge from a major research university. The program creates an interactive online environment based on streaming video, animation and other Web 2.0 technologies.

Despite wide-ranging backgrounds, the incoming MAT@USC cohort shares a commitment to urban education and an enthusiasm for creating positive change.

Notice how they have carefully worked in the fact that it is the first of its kind from a major research university? It is the truth, the whole truth, .... :-)

Online purely for the locals?

When I was at California State University-Bakersfield, in addition to my faculty responsibilities I was also the director of the Environmental Resource Management program. Students could complete this program in the online mode, too, and the logistics of this was handled by the Extended University there. Most (all?) of the students in the online program were outside the local area--within the state, and outside. In fact, that was the prevailing rationale at that time: online was a way to bring in additional dollars.

Now, as has been the case at our own campus here, online teaching and learning is increasingly seen as primarily for the locals. Which is what this report in the Chronicle (free--no subscription required) is about:

"The regional publics, which are finding themselves more and more tuition-dependent, due to shrinking state resources, have found themselves in a very competitive environment where we need to adapt," says Robert J. Hansen, Southern Maine's associate provost for university outreach. "The average student is getting older and older, and they've got busy and very complicated lives."

Blended or hybrid courses that combine online and face time have been around for years. Now universities are surveying regional needs and blending whole programs, sometimes eliminating fully face-to-face options for courses.

Mr. Mayadas lays down a rule for localness money. At least 50 percent of classroom time must be pushed online (at the level of programs, not necessarily individual courses). How they get there varies. Some throw in fully online courses, blended courses that meet weekly, or hybrids that meet even less often.

Less Face Time

Robert J. Kaleta, director of Milwaukee's Learning Technology Center, has little doubt where are all this is going: "Three years ago, all of our degrees would have required this face-to-face contact in all courses. Ten years down the road, you probably won't have a class that requires just face-to-face contact."

I tell you, as I indicated in an earlier post, am all the more convinced that I should jump into offering hybrid classes starting in winter 2010. Try stopping me :-)

Students learn effectively in online settings

[The] U.S. Department of Education released a report that, at least at first glance, carries a strong message about the medium: Students learn more effectively in online settings. Most powerful of all appear to be “blended” courses that offer both face-to-face and online elements. Previous research has generally found that online and offline courses are equally effective.

I had been thinking about testing a blended approach, and this report in the Chronicle, from which I excerpted the above paragraph, gives me that much more of an incentive to do that for the winter term. However, I wonder if the university will be ok with me teaching one class completely online, and another in a blended mode, and only one as a "regular" class. If the university is ok with that, then I am looking at an exciting winter term from this pedagogical attempt ....

The report also notes that:

“This report should not be interpreted as saying that one medium is better than another,” says Barbara Means, a director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a California research firm that conducted the project under contract with the Education Department. “This should not be interpreted as saying that computers are better than professors.”

Instead, Ms. Means says, the study offers evidence that particular kinds of online instructional techniques are effective—and some of those techniques, she suggests, could theoretically be imported into old-fashioned chalkboard classrooms. For example, the study found that in online courses, students often spend more time directly engaging with the course content than do their counterparts in traditional classrooms. But in theory, there is no reason why traditional courses could not be redesigned to increase students’ “time on task.”

In other words, it’s the instructional technique that matters, not the technology, just as Mr. Clark proposed decades ago.

Or, to put it another way: If online courses are more effective than their face-to-face counterparts, it may be because the new setting forces instructors to break out of stale teaching habits, and not necessarily because computers are an intrinsically superior medium.

Ahem, I don't think I had any "stale" teaching habits that I got rid of. Wait a minute, I don't think I have any stale teaching style even now :-)

Have a fantastic Fourth of July cookout and, if you are like me, well, I bet you too are thankful that you live in the paradise that the Willamette Valley is--except for the four weeks of grass seed pollen!!!

"Cover it live" .... it is so cool!

I was reading a commentary by a medical professional/writer, Abraham Verghese, whose essays I have read and even used in my classes. An example, you ask? How about this one?
Wait, this is about teaching/learning/discussing online.... Just hang in for a few more sentences :-)

So, I was reading Verghese's comments on the health care reform issues, and in that he referred the reader to kevinmd.com for "an excellent discussion". The nerdy reader that I am, I faithfully followed that link.

And, this is where the technological aspect kicks in. At kevinmd.com I noticed an option to replay a live Q&A on health care reform. And at the bottom of that window were the letters "Cover it live". That was enough to trigger my curiosity, and hence this blog post.

The demo of how Cover it live works is simply too good to believe. And check out their complete demo library. It seems to be so easy to integrate real-time blogging with chat with Twitter with web-search with youtube .... The more I started exploring it, the more I can see how in a few years I could even have "real time" classes while sitting at home.
I did a quick search for whether it has been adopted in academic contexts. This blog (Classroom 2.0) has some recent (April/May 2009) discussions on it.

The speed at which all these technologies are coming up .... simply mind-boggling!!!

PS: BTW, if you read until here, you will be all the more interested to note that Abraham Verghese is, also, from India. His book on treating HIV patients in a remote corner of Tennessee was way too honest .... A wonderful read. Now, of course, it might seem dated, even though it is about the late eighties!