As always, if any member feels stirred by the snippets on controversial issues offered here, please feel free to use Your Say to make a comment, or kickstart a discussion on WAOE-Views. Web Editor
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As always, if any member feels stirred by the snippets on controversial issues offered here, please feel free to use Your Say to make a comment, or kickstart a discussion on WAOE-Views. Web Editor |
Online Learning Costs More ... Or Does It
This piece is from the Learning MarketSpace Newsletter for December 1999.
ONLINE LEARNING COSTS MORE . . . OR DOES IT?At every higher education gathering we've been to in the last few months, someone stands up and states with great authority, "Even though they think that distance education (or online learning) can save money, we all know that it can't. In fact, it may even cost more than traditional classroom instruction."
The "they" in question usually refers to administrators (if the speaker is a faculty member) or to legislators or other external policy makers (if the speaker is an administrator). When this statement emanates from relatively novice distance educators--those who are in the throws of the developmental stages of their first online offering or who argue from an N of 1--we can chalk it up to inexperience. Any first-time teaching experience is bound to take more time than one that has been repeated and refined over time. But when experienced distance educators who have been in the game for a long time are vehement that online education may be more costly, we need to examine this idea seriously.
What lies behind the notion that online education is more expensive than traditional methods? The primary reason is the amount of time that faculty spend developing and delivering online courses, which, in most folks' experience, is in excess of what they spend developing and delivering classroom-based courses.
The commonly held belief that student enrollment in online courses must be limited in order for the experience to be effective is a consequence of the labor-intensive pedagogies employed in most of today's online courses. Student/faculty ratios of 12, 15, 20 or 25 to 1 are cited as the norm-and even those relatively low ratios are frequently accompanied by persistent complaints from faculty about increased workload.
Of course, many well-established distance learning institutions like the British Open University, SUNY Empire State College and the University of Phoenix control their costs despite low student/faculty ratios by following a different production paradigm. Courses are designed, developed and packaged by highly skilled academic teams. Students taking the courses are then "tutored" by adjuncts, who are less costly to employ than full-time faculty, in a variety of institutional configurations.
Herein lies the clue to the cost conundrum of online learning. What these nontraditional institutions have done is to reconceptualize the way in which online courses are developed and delivered. They have recognized that the more one replicates the traditional campus model, the more one's operating costs will resemble or exceed traditional campus costs, especially if one relies on the same student/faculty "contact" as traditional models. Yet the tutoring model is only one of many techniques that can be employed.
Other online models seek to create a structure that avoids funneling all communication through the instructor. Because the Internet permits active participation by all students in every discussion, many faculty who become involved in online education feel obliged to respond to dozens of student postings each day. Alternate models are emerging that focus on student-to-student communication and do not obligate the instructor to respond to every individual contribution. Using learning teams as a primary part of the learning process, for example, is one way to engage students with one another. In this model, the instructor comments on or evaluates the results of the process, making needed adjustments as it goes along. Well-designed learning experiences that provide learners with links to external resources, whether net-based or not, also move the focus of course activity from relying on the instructor as the sole source of knowledge.
The use of computer-based assessment techniques can be part of the solution to the problem of teaching greater numbers of students online while, at the same time, improving the quality of their learning experiences. Students cannot know, without being told, what instructors believe to be the core facts and ideas needed to pass a course. Assessment instruments make those expectations explicit and allow students to assess their progress against them. Low stakes quizzes and other computer-based exercises can provide feedback to students on their progress, identifying students who are at risk at an early stage, while preparing them for formal examinations at the end of the term. The inclusion of computer-based quizzing capabilities in commercial course management systems as well as the emergence of special purpose software such as Mallard (developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) alleviates much of the labor-intensive process of grading student assignments.
Another approach to designing more cost-effective online courses takes advantage of existing instructional software-whether commercially-produced or university-created-to eliminate much of the time faculty spend in developing and presenting content. Software that has been vetted through a collaborative process will almost inevitably be of higher quality than any single instructor can produce. Such software actively engages students in the learning process without constant demands on the instructor. Faculty can be more judicious about how they spend their time, intervening when students have questions or problems requiring more personalized attention. The use of frequently-asked-questions (FAQs) is a less sophisticated yet similar technique used by experienced faculty to respond to routine or repetitive student questions, thus enabling them to manage their time more effectively.
As we grow more experienced with online learning, we will discover still more ways to improve the experience for both students and faculty. By moving away from what Bill Massy has called the handicraft approach to teaching and taking advantage of the exciting capabilities that information technology, we can create new learning paradigms that are both effective and affordable for all of our students.
New Web-based Education Regulations Unlikely
This item came to us from the EDUPRISE.COM** Need-to-know newsletter.
NEW WEB-BASED EDUCATION REGULATIONS UNLIKELY
The chairman of the new Congressional Commission on Web-Based Education said
the group would probably not recommend new laws to regulate distance learning
because such laws could impede growth of the industry. Rather, the commission
is more likely to look for other ways to encourage distance-education providers
to offer high-quality programs, with the government focused on persuading new
for-profit universities to adopt high standards for their Web-based courses.
The commission was created as part of the Higher Education Amendments of 1998
to study the growth and
accessibility of online education and eventually recommend what action, if any,
the government should take. It is made up of legislators, educators and representatives
from the private sector, who plan to complete their report to Congress by November.
(Chronicle of Higher Education 4 Feb 2000)
http://chronicle.com/free/2000/02/2000020401u.htm
**EDUPRISE/NEED-TO-KNOW is produced in collaboration with NewsScan.com,
and is brought to you by EDUPRISE.COM,
"the company that offers enterprise solutions for online learning."
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The issues and other matters raised in this section of WEB are intended to derive from membersā concerns and suggestions.
Input to WAOE-Views during the recent Annual General Meeting showed us that members are looking for opportunities to engage with important issues and ideas affecting the Web-based delivery of teaching and learning, but also that we need to do more to spell out to our members details of the organisational procedures through which they will get to know more frequently and reliably what goals the Association is pursuing, what action is being taken to realise these goals, and - most importantly - how members may make the most effective contributions to WAOE.
As a result, a new column, WAOE Policies and Procedures, has been split off from WEB Ideas and Issues. This will free the WEB Ideas and Issues column to be taken up more and more by topics of interest arising from the thinking of the members at large about their own professional practice in online education, and the role that WAOE as a whole and the sub-groups in which members are most actively engaged might play in lifting the standards and quality of Web-based teaching and learning.
If you have a concern to express, an idea to suggest, a question to raise, a point to make about online education in general and about WAOE's work in relation to online education in particular, write a short item for the WEB Ideas and Issues column and send it to the WEB Editor. On a smaller, less formal scale, you might prefer to air your views first of all in the Your Say section of WEB. Depending on the nature and volume of early responses to the Your Say item, matters raised may spark an article in the Web Ideas and Issues section of WEB, a free-ranging discussion on WAOE-Views, or a structured debate or online chat via the WAOE WebBoard.