If you are a regular reader of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, or even the New York Times' "Education" section, you have been bombarded with articles about MOOCs.
I actually don't think you are a regular reader of any of those things -- good for you! -- but it might be worth thinking about MOOCs. Just in case you've managed to avoid the discussion, you might want to know "MOOC" stands for massively open online courses (or sometimes massively online open courses -- we aren't entirely sure ourselves). These are courses with tens of thousands of students in them at any given time. For realz, guys. A course in finance regularly gets more than 100,000 students! Quit whining about the size of your STATS 250 lectures.
Well, maybe not.
Let's backtrack. When I was asked to be a guest blogger here, I wanted to write about education, but I didn't want to write about MOOCs. See, I'm a nerd and I am bombarded by discussions about MOOCs. "Enough effing already!" I've been saying. I'm not opposed to MOOCs or the styles of teaching involved: I've been webcasting some of my courses live since 2009, and I don't think a student's physical presence is always necessary for meaningful learning.
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| Students in my POLSCI 101. |
A lot of my colleagues -- people who teach y'all -- are saying MOOCs are downright evil. They are, at best, cheesy attempts at pandering to get more applicants and fundraising dollars; at worst, they are a nefarious scheme to do away with existing faculty. I'm not endorsing this. I'm just reporting the view. But just for a reality check, a recent Facebook update from a colleague read "Stop this insanity!" It's not that my colleagues are lunatics: if it's true, as this widely reported controversy implies, that the administration asked a department to consider a MOOC course as satisfying a requirement, then some of the worried people are right.
OK, all of that was a long preamble to asking, whaddayouguysthink? Here's why your view matters: there are a lot of folks here at UM who think that although MOOCs are interesting and potentially very cool, residential education (what you are going through) is superior. Tons of faculty say, "That's just the way it is. Period." A significantly smaller number of us are saying, "Residential education is superior, but not automatically. We need to figure out what is the value-added our students are getting that you wouldn't get though a MOOC."
And, you know, guys, I actually don't know. We don't know. We have some ideas. But this post is really a very, very sincere plea for your views. Why does it make sense for you or your parents to pay the unimaginable bucketloads of money you pay for you to go here, as opposed to grabbing bunch of courses from Coursera or EdX (for free!) or even the University of Phoenix (for a lot less money)?
Yep. MOOCs are a terrible idea. Why? Because in reality there's actually zero interaction with a professor, GSI, or equivalent. Which means that for anything you don't completely understand, you're on your own.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, there's no student/student interaction. In my experience, that's not a good thing. It can be extraordinarily helpful to hear what other students think about a particular discussion topic. Surprise, surprise, students that manage to get through the vetting process at major universities tend to be pretty bright in their own right and contribute in unique and often unforeseen ways to the the course.
On a different note, I'm vehemently against "places" like University of Phoenix and others like it for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I think they're shams and don't really educate students. I'm almost certain most potential employers have come to the same conclusion, but admittedly I could be wrong.
One of my favorite professors posted this on Facebook the other day:
ReplyDelete"MOOCs in The New Yorker. Sigh. Once upon a time there was a solution for the "problem" MOOC-enablers claim to solve. We called it the public library. You could go there and teach yourself stuff, after which you could get a job (back when we hired people to do things) or go to school (back when we funded universities).
MOOCs aren't going to replace those institutions, and it is disingenuous to pretend they are meant to. Despite the facade of populist access, they will simply follow the trend of the present to its inevitable conclusion: the concentration of money and power, as facilitated by the illusion of personal improvement.
As for me, well, I'm going to start a company, employing only myself, that will charge customers for small-group pedagogical exchange. There will be no digital record. We will not sell what we learn. We will be as unto the ninja, the guerrilla, the cultist. We will be the rarest creatures on earth.
A ridiculous plan, yes. But my job will soon disappear, I think, and I gotta have something to look forward to."
I agree with Ray that it's not possible for MOOCs to replace colleges, but he's also worried about this new age undermining the need for teachers in the public's mind. My first instinct is to underestimate MOOCs and write them off as something that simply isn't structured enough to work. Yes, the age is becoming increasingly Internet-based, but before MOOCs are taken seriously, the credentials they give must be seen as credible by jobs and universities. Whether or not that is soon to happen, I couldn't say. Perhaps the absurd cost of college will drive students to seek easier and cheaper routes and perhaps MOOCs will provide that. I'm glad MOOCs exist so that people have more options. But obviously they are not yet a competitive option right now.
About a decade ago I decided that I had had more than my fill of school, and dropped out during my first year of college. I wanted to learn and live on my own, choose my own curriculum, and pursue the romantic ideals of the starving artist. In the years immediately following I read hundreds of novels, studied Feynman’s lectures on physics, and eventually found the online bastion of knowledge that was MIT’s open-courseware (OCW) initiative.
ReplyDeleteWith OCW I suddenly had at my fingertips (for free) video lectures, course notes, and homeworks for a huge variety of classes from the premier university in the country. For the self-guided learner it was practically paradise. Initially there was not much interaction to be had. As the system matured, however, online forums and chat rooms with GSIs sprang up, and the classes became more elaborate and structured (leading to the MOOCs we now see).
In addition to the obvious benefit of providing access to education in areas of the world where it is not easily attainable, online education systems travel extremely well. When I was going through my Thoreau period and moved to Wyoming to live the secluded life of an oil rigger, OCW was there. When I left for the Big Apple to live the bohemian dream, OCW was there. For students who like, or have, to move frequently, online material is ideal.
There are also aspects of the system that I consider advantageous to what I find in the residential environment. When learning independently the stakes are significantly lower. This emboldened me to dive into assignments and new material without fear. I could approach problems with only my own knowledge and work through them to the best of my ability. I of course got a lot of things wrong, but who cares? I could then go back and correct my mistakes, having in the meantime gained a more intimate and direct understanding of the mechanics of the material. In the residential situation, with grades on the line, I find myself doing much more looking up than figuring out.
I owe a good deal of who I am to independent/online learning, and without it I might not have been in a position to return to university after over a decade away. That being said, I find significant advantages to residential education.
(TBC)
First, and perhaps most important, is the form factor. There is a certain indescribable magic that comes from being in university. The synergistic brainwaves of so many people learning, and thinking and stretching have a huge positive effect on you. There is a reason the arts flourish in New York, and tech-entrepreneurship is exploding in Silicon Valley. Beyond the institutions, the fact that people there live and breath these things pushes them further and further. Being in a certain frame of mind can have huge, even medically measurable, effects on your body and psyche. Immersing yourself in the culture of the mind is a huge advantage over online material. In some ways online learning is like drinking a martini from a tumbler :(
ReplyDeleteOnline education also misses the mark on the pedagogy de jour of student-centered collaborative learning. Although you can chat online and email all you want it is in no way comparable to the dynamic of live study groups. In the College of Engineering (home sweet home these days) you live and die by the study group, it is something that cannot be replicated online. Also, I cannot think of anything less student-centered than a monologue being broadcast to hundreds of thousands.
Finally, my experience is that online education lacks rigor and the social sorting effect of colleges. Many jobs that require degrees are equally as interested in the fact that you accomplished something that is, ostensibly, very difficult, as they are with the actual skills learned. Sure you can learn all the same material on your own, but if it takes 2 to 3 times as long to do it, what are you proving as far as your ability to be successful in high-pressure situations? Even if you did complete an entire curriculum online in the same four years, that does not translate to reality. Most people have to live and work in society, not alone behind a computer (for now). While taking all those online courses you would have spent four years in seclusion while your melanin and social skills deteriorate beyond repair.
Online learning is a wonderful tool for people who are not afforded another option, or for those who learn for entirely personal reasons. It is not, however, nearly equivalent to residential learning. It is disturbing if universities are now suggesting that departments use other schools online material to teach. Having experienced both I find it a bit insulting that a school would equate my residential work to the online experience and give equal credits. If a university does not value a course enough to teach it in person, then it should drop the course.
The fact that some less prestigious schools are considering using larger school’s materials and classes does raise an interesting question. With the ever-rising number of students, are there enough truly qualified people to teach them? It is something that seems to be taken for granted in discussions regarding higher education’s role in society. This development, combined with the fact that most schools seek to hire professors from a few elite institutions would suggest that perhaps the schools don’t think so. So, maybe it is better to have a glorified GSI in residence and go through someone else's curriculum if you are at a small school with limited resources and talent. Here at Michigan, however, I believe that MOOCs should be considered nothing more than a public service and advertisement.
This MOOC phenomenon reminds me of an experience in a class I took last semester, Intro to Modern Chinese Culture. This class, taught by the brilliant scholar Xiaobing Tang, was arguably the most educational course I've had in my four semesters here at U of M. It has also been my favorite. And it was HARD. I ended up filling an entire 3-subject notebook with lecture notes in twelve short weeks. The great thing about Professor Tang was that he engaged current events in his historical analyses and wove social media and practical life applications into his lectures. But his quizzes were BRUTAL. He had us research topics on our own before class and then asked us very specific but important information about them that required a great deal of cultural literacy. I would guess that roughly half the class did not perform well on these.
ReplyDeleteOne Thursday, Prof. Tang was attending a conference out of town and could not be in class, so he posted a lecture powerpoint on CTools and embedded a quiz at the end based on the preceding slides. Almost every person got 100%. Why? Because we all had access to the internet while we took the quiz, and we were able to simply google the questions and answers in order to get the grade. I know that when you need to find information in the real world, you usually have access to the omniscient Internet. However, I realized that I retained almost nothing from this online lecture because I was able to mindlessly search for a specific answer instead of educating myself beforehand about important topics and coming prepared to answer questions.
This experience makes me very skeptical about MOOCs. At the very least, I fear that people who are not physically attending college courses are missing out on professors like Xiaobing Tang. What may prove worse: students who believe they're being educated by these open online classes may not actually be learning anything; they have the Internet at their fingertips as they are being evaluated on the knowledge they're supposed to have gained, so there's no need for them to retain the information. At the very least, college should teach students how to properly prepare themselves for a situation and demonstrate their skills/knowledge based on that preparation. Every job requires that skill to some degree, and I would argue that MOOCs aren't getting students there.
Interesting stuff, Mika. Also MOOC is now in the running to be favorite acronym ever.
ReplyDeleteThe summer after my freshmen year, I decided to take macroeconomics online at a local community college – I guess you could call it a type of mini-MOOC. I had taken your PoliSci 101 class the previous semester, and had really enjoyed the freedom granted by the live-streaming of the lectures. Sometimes I'd watch lectures at Starbucks. Sometimes I'd go to class. Sometimes I wouldn't even get out of bed. The autonomy was a good thing for me, and I assumed my online econ course would have had some similar attributes.
This, however, was certainly not the case. The professor made no initiative to develop personal relationships with his students. He just posted the weekly modules, quizzes, and exams...only occasionally answering an email from a persistent student who was struggling with the material. I ended up feeling both completely disconnected and at the same time so much anxiety around the course – I had no gauge for how much, if anything, I was actually learning and retaining.
I also totally agree with Kim about the access to the internet being a crutch/hinderance to authentic learning. I barely studied for exams because I knew all the resources that I would have access to were just a mouse click away. If there wasn't a term I was familiar with, I'd call my dad – who's an accountant – and he'd clarify it for me immediately – Who Wants to be a Millionaire style. For me, it was a class designed solely for the purpose of coasting; I retained so very little from what I 'learned' that semester.
I don't think MOOCs are or even can be a threat to the traditional collegiate/classroom model. Yes, there are ways to better integrate technology and flexibility into the classical educational experience – but I don't believe we'll see the complete rejection of one style for the adaptation of another.
I also sense, as mentioned by others, that MOOCs lack a significant amount of credibility in their current state – which will continue to lower their value and quality.
While I don't see Michigan MOOC-ing it up in the near future...I do wonder what models of online instruction might be really powerful and positive. For instance, what if English 125 was a 'sorta' MOOC, and everyone took the same course...but had to meet up with various GSIs and students from across the university for peer evaluations and edits? A dynamic model like that – where physical engagement also both encouraged and mandatory – could be a unique model for students at various writing levels.
Anyway, those are my quick thoughts, MIka. Let me know if there's anything you want clarification on! Thanks again for the post. Will be interesting to see if, come 30 years, my kids are taking a completely MOOC-ed up version of Manty's 101.
(Sorry...I just really wanted to say MOOC again.)
Josh Buoy