July 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Winter 2002 Vol. 11 No. 4
Standing in the Middle of a Cyclone: Online Education Comes of Age
By Gene I. Maeroff
I
wasn’t planning to write a new book just yet, certainly not one about online
learning, but curiosity got the better of me. I kept reading and hearing about
the topic and my interest was piqued. I wanted to know more about it. I wondered
how the process worked and what impact it was having. After all, how often
does a new way of delivering knowledge come along? The more I found out about
online learning, the more appealing the idea of writing such a book grew.
I knew from the outset that I didn’t want to trash online courses. Others have already done this, repeatedly. It is too obvious a slant to take. Almost everyone harbors suspicions at the very mention of e-learning. Online learning is the proverbial fish in the barrel. How can any criticism of online learning miss the mark? To give critics their due, many honestly believe that online learning undermines education. Teachers and students don’t see each other — a situation ripe for exploit. The work can be insubstantial, the credentials at the end amounting to little more than a sham. At first blush, it all seems so secret and suspicious — no one to check up on anyone else. Online courses pose new challenges for both teacher and student. And, while online chat rooms and threaded discussions may advance knowledge, they also may degenerate into computerized versions of talk radio, trite and banal, hardly what one calls educational.
Profits & Problems
There was another way to approach the subject, I decided. Describe it. Discuss the possible impact on classroom-based courses. Raise policy implications. I thought the book would be more effective by staking out a point of view. I settled on presenting a somewhat sympathetic description of this phenomenon, recognizing that to do so would risk controversy and censure. Online courses threaten established interests. Some providers view such courses as vehicles to (Dare I utter the word?)profits. My book admittedly gives online learning the benefit of the doubt. Does this mean that I see no flaws in online courses? Of course not. I point out shortcomings as I go along, trying to avoid the obvious. Only a fool could fail to recognize the difficulties that arise in delivering learning from afar.
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The Nature of Interaction By Gene I. Maeroff
To Sheila Seifert, who taught at the University of Colorado at Denver, the interaction with students online was the best part of e-learning. She thought that not seeing each other removed possible prejudice and made discussion easier for some students. As a teacher of writing courses, she considered online learning ideal in this respect. “It forces students to reveal themselves through their words alone,” she said. Seifert sometimes arranged for students to work together from a distance, requiring them to collaborate on projects with classmates whom they never saw.... The enhancement of online learning through interaction comes in both synchronous and asynchronous exchanges. Either way, an institution strives to give students a chance to test their knowledge, demonstrate what they have learned, and gain new insights. This electronic interaction via bulletin boards, chat rooms, and e-mail can enrich a student’s education, much as good classroom discussions do. Interaction of this sort can also increase students’ participation in the learning process. “Few university faculty have the interest or persistence to require every single student in their classes to participate in classroom discussions, much less answer every question posed or issue addressed,” said Ronald Legon, provost of the University of Baltimore, speaking especially of undergraduate education but to some degree of the graduate level as well. “The typical situation in the vast majority of classes that even provide the opportunity for meaningful student discussion is that a relative handful of students avail themselves of this opportunity.”... Some students who would be among the silent majority in an actual classroom shine in the virtual classroom, according to Legon. Students who are reticent in the physical presence of more assertive classmates who dominate discussions may welcome asynchronous interaction. Legon said that asynchronous online discussions to which students contribute at moments of their own choosing help them overcome shyness and give students time to mull over responses. Equally important, he added, this approach — allowing the benefit of some extra time — permits those who have lagged in completing an assignment a chance to catch up on the readings. They can weigh in with considered responses when they are ready instead of trying to bluff their way through, as they might try to do in a classroom in response to questions for which they are unprepared.... Students in online courses may yearn for ...connections despite the convenience that spurred them toward e- learning. “I longed for verbal interaction,” said Genevieve Kirch, a sixth-grade teacher who earned the first degree awarded by Western Governors University, an institution that uses various forms of distance education and has no classrooms of its own. She was most frustrated in a research methods course that she took online. “I wanted to be able to sit down with an instructor and have it explained to me,” Kirch said.....
Grusin thought that the students got more out of interacting in real time in a chat room than if they visited an asynchronous site at times of their choosing. With a tiny class roster displayed at one corner of her screen, Grusin acted as the traffic cop, orchestrating the discussion by calling on the students in random order. They knew they had to be prepared when their names appeared on the screen. “Everything is removed from the interaction except the student’s intelligence or lack thereof, ” Grusin said of her approach to synchronous online instruction. “There’s no b-s-ing, no wasting time. No one knows how anyone else is dressed or their mannerisms or the color of their skin or their physical handicaps. It’s all removed from the field of view.” Enrollment in the online version of the class was capped at eight students and enrollment in the classroom- based version ran to 15 or 16. The online students paid a higher tuition for the smaller class size. Many students, though, enroll in online courses specifically because they find it difficult to be at a certain place at a precise time. Online courses that have too many synchronous features requiring students to be at their computers at the same time so that they can have a “live ” chat, may not fit their schedules....• This excerpt from Gene I.Maeroff ’s forthcoming book, A Classroom of One: How Online Learning is Changing Our Schools and Colleges, is adapted from Chapter 3, entitled “The Nature of Interaction.” The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan, and will be available in February 2003. Cover art courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan. |
At
their best, online courses can exceed classroom-based courses in cultivating
discourse, albeit from afar. An online course, properly crafted, builds
in many opportunities for students to advance their learning through
responses and discussions. Ideally, this interaction is neither haphazard
nor left to serendipity, though spontaneity may figure in it. A new
domain demands new approaches to engaging and supporting students....
Elinor
Grusin of the University of Memphis used an exclusively synchronous
approach in the graduate level course on communications law that she
taught as a faculty member in the journalism department, not even bothering
with asynchronous threaded discussions. The university’s complete master
of arts degree in journalism program was online, with all of the courses
taught in synchronous style. Grusin said that the content and rigor
were the same as the identical course that she taught in a classroom
as part of the campus-based master’s program at the University of Memphis.
Students in the online version of the course sat at their computers
in widely scattered locales for three hours one evening a week to take
the course in real time.... On the other hand, as I mention throughout the book, one should not presume that teaching and learning in classrooms has achieved nirvana. I chose an irreverent path in my exploration of e-learning. I cite the downside of traditional classroom learning — not because I think that online courses are necessarily better, but to emphasize that education must be open to new ways of doing what, on close examination, has sometimes been less than a rousing success. The problems of the classroom are legion and it is not as if online learning intrudes on an otherwise idyllic setting. There is room for another approach, another way of learning, possibly an improvement under some circumstances if done well. More importantly, students and the educational process itself can benefit from efforts to overcome the strictures of time and place.
I have chronicled events in teaching and learning since 1965, writing articles for newspapers and magazines as well as books. The classroom has been the focus of action in education all that time, as it was previously. My investigation for the book assured me that the classroom will retain its centrality, but online learning almost certainly will find a place for itself. Such courses logically succeed those offered by correspondence, which also permitted students to sweep aside the obstacles of time and place. Online learning differs, though, in its enormous potential. Its biggest impact will be in classroom-based courses, the vast majority of which will almost certainly take on elements of the technology that makes online courses possible. Hybrid courses, combining features of the classroom and of online courses, will become the rule in higher education. Instructors who in coming years ignore the potential of Web-based embellishments will be as remiss as their peers of past years who did not expect students to enrich their learning by consulting sources beyond textbooks.
Secondary education and, to a lesser extent, elementary schools are also headed in this direction, but more slowly and with less commitment. Some of the growth in online education below the college level has been fueled by efforts to build a conduit to public funding for home schooling, and that goal adds a layer of controversy to the programs.
Potential & Perspective
Nonetheless, online learning is dynamic, changing even as you read these words. My challenge was to take a snapshot of a cyclone while standing in the middle of it. I tried to adhere to the big picture, using examples and anecdotes to illustrate facets of online programs. These courses will flourish only to the extent that they serve the needs of students. One hopes that this will mean more than simply fulfilling the wish of some students to accumulate quick and easy academic credits. There are already more than enough opportunities to do that in classrooms. Online courses can contribute to the totality of education by overcoming the limitations of time and place without surrendering academic rigor. Will they fulfill this potential? Who knows!
Online courses fail to take advantage of the potential for interactivity when they amount to little more than a professor’s or teacher’s notes dumped on a Web page. Threaded discussions and chat rooms should help advance the quality of discourse and some of the software should let students teach themselves by solving problems. Institutions that adopt these courses mainly to reduce costs may shortchange students and end up with higher expenses than they expected. Giving instructors responsibility for designing and teaching online courses without the commensurate professional development could be an invitation to disaster.
Ultimately, I suspect, online courses will work best and prove most attractive when directed at adult learners, particularly at the certificate and post-baccalaureate levels. Courses of this sort will orient themselves toward career and occupational needs. Online courses in the liberal arts are not apt to fare as well.
This is not because it is impossible to fashion online courses of quality in the liberal arts. Rather, it reflects the attraction of e-learning as an option for working people in pursuit of career advancement. The University of Phoenix and National Technological University have demonstrated this kind of appeal as well as any institutions.
To provide some perspective on the subject, I did a review of the news coverage at the end of the 1980s, which revealed the swiftness with which online learning gained significance in higher education during the last decade of the 20th century. I found that e-learning was scarcely mentioned in an article at that time about distance learning in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the paper of record for the academic world. The piece,which appeared on September 27, 1989, described mostly courses offered by correspondence and public television, with some mention of independent study, tutorial software, and audio tapes. It barely referred to “computer links.” It spoke of faculty members not wanting to teach such courses as they could not see if students were absorbing the material. The article nonetheless contained praise for the motivation and persistence of distance education students. There was no hint of the avalanche that was about to rumble.
Today, the genie is out of the computer, and the Internet ranks among the most formidable foes ever to confront the intransigence of traditional education. While the private sector first generated some of the most important activity in behalf of online learning, it is clear that the pressure will lead traditional, non-profit education to reinvent itself to serve students who, increasingly, want to determine the time and place of their learning.
Developments in online learning in just a little more than 10 years force one to conclude that this is a sea change, not a fad. By the end of the 21st century’s first decade, e-learning will be an embedded feature of education, widely available and no longer an object of controversy. Whether it will be a source of financial gain, as for-profit providers hope, remains to be seen. There is no reason why the non-profit sector, which provides most of the formal education in this country, cannot expand its offerings in distance education. Such a shift will require the vision of educators in public school systems and at non-profit colleges and universities who recognize that education can be education regardless of its form of delivery.
Predictions & Policies
I predict that e-learning will proliferate at traditional not-for-profit institutions and that students will have far more opportunity to choose between studying in a classroom with other students or in hybrid courses that are partially online or in wholly virtual classrooms in which they work alone except for online collaboration. Much that is happening in the delivery of online learning threatens the hegemony of the traditional approach that is wholly based in the classroom. Educational institutions — other than the most prestigious ones — that do not take greater consideration of the need of many students for courses that overcome the obstacles of time and place will have an increasingly difficult time justifying their ways. Residential colleges and universities of uncertain financial stability may be forced to examine just what makes it worth the money for students to pay for the privilege of being on campus. It will be to everyone’s advantage if this kind of reflection leads to the creation of a stronger, more meaningful residential experience.
Why should traditional schools and colleges not embrace e-learning and draw it into the mainstream, making it their own and adapting their policies and practices to do so? Online courses need not be abandoned to those who seek profit from them, though they have a right to do so. Nor must such courses be ceded to those who would do a less than excellent job with them.
Students who want a high quality education should be able to obtain elements of it as readily online as in a classroom. That, mainly, should be the concern of the traditional providers — adapting their expertise to a more convenient method of education for those who want it and doing so in a manner that does not dilute the quality in which they take pride. Some educationists regard online learning as a device apart, an alternate pursuit to be pushed to the fringes of the institution. I think they are mistaken.
Pennsylvania State University’s creation of the World Campus represents one of the better examples of an institution deciding that e-learning belonged in the academic mainstream, not as a separate, for-profit entity. Officials at Penn State determined early on — planning began in 1996 and the World Campus offered its first courses in 1998 — that they wanted an entity to give regular faculty members experiences with technology that they could then apply in their classroom courses. Penn State reasoned that if online learning were a for-profit enterprise, it would have to be walled off from regular programs and that the regular programs could then not as readily reap the pedagogical benefits of instructional technology. Thus, online efforts were not separated from the university’s main concerns.
Policies regarding the implementation of online learning will have to take greater cognizance of the impact on teaching. This is obvious, but has not received the attention that it warrants. The prospect of online learning unsettles some teachers and stirs fear among them for the future. They worry about the security of their profession. Those who are most alarmed characterize e-learning as inhuman and inhumane, a mechanistic, robot-like approach to education that cannot possibly be the equal of a teacher in a classroom with a group of students. They consider it as a scheme to demean and diminish teachers.
Like colleagues in some other places, faculty members in the State of Washington closed ranks to fight a proposal in that state to use online learning as a way to reduce the need to build new classrooms for higher education. In Ohio, a teachers’ organization was party to a suit to kill cyber learning. “It’s sad because traditional education is not working for some kids and educators should be forward looking,” said Tom Baker, the superintendent responsible for a cyber school in Ohio. Faculty members also worry that profit-making ventures will undermine the academic culture. And so it was, for example, that the idea of e- learning caused a stir over intellectual property rights among professors at Cornell University in the spring of 2000, when details about a university-owned, for-profit venture started leaking out.
The closer one looks at education, especially in regard to universities, the more glaring are the failures to control costs. Online learning, by its very nature, poses a challenge to the idea that any degree of standardization is anathema in the content and instruction of the many sections of the same course that an institution offers. Standardization need not mean an endorsement of a cookie-cutter approach, but it could lead to consideration of whether an institution has to have a well-paid, full-credentialed teacher leading every offering of the same course.
Schools, colleges, and universities should recognize as they move toward an online presence that success revolves around encouraging and helping faculty to alter habits and attitudes that have sustained them for their entire careers. Faculty, as much as students, must change their ways markedly in order for online courses to work. Teaching online calls for a thoughtful interweaving of the old and the new, making a course more than simply a collection of lecture notes delivered by computer.
Some courses are entirely self-paced with no facilitation; a student reads the work, completes the online assignment, and turns it in electronically. At the other end of the spectrum, the person facilitating the course may constantly interact electronically with individual students and groups of students. The teacher poses questions and leads online discussions, monitors the responses in threaded discussions and chat rooms, and maintains a steady flow of e-messages with students, who, in addition, may be asked to collaborate electronically among themselves.
The virtual classroom is no less a legitimate place for learning than the actual classroom. The changes have implications for course content and course design, as well as for methods of instruction. The design of the course to make it accessible from a distance is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of online learning. Nothing inherent in the technology precludes an online course from containing the same content as a course taught in a classroom. According to Ronald Legon, provost of the University of Baltimore, whose institution established online courses to bolster flagging enrollments, some students who would be among the silent majority in actual classrooms shine in the virtual classroom. Issues of class participation, time for preparation, and thoughtful analysis of subjects can be addressed in online courses in ways that they cannot be addressed in the traditional classroom, where a few students can dominate the discussion and time for reading and thinking is contracted. There are benefits to both the professor and the student in this scenario. (See sidebar “The Nature of Interaction,”)
Thus, I have found online learning filled with promise and fraught with controversy. Convenient as an all-night pharmacy, it offers students the chance to pursue their education at times that work best for them. Yet, it demands motivation and expects honesty on the part of students, leading those who are suspicious to doubt the entire enterprise. Furthermore, online education has the potential to alter the role of the faculty, a not-incidental impact that earns the condemnation of some who refuse even to consider the facts about whether learning itself suffers. I have enjoyed visiting the laboratory to witness the early stages of this experiment,whatever may happen after all the ingredients are combined and put on the burner.
Gene
I. Maeroff is director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the
Media at Teachers College, Columbia University, a position he has held since
1996. He was, for the previous 10 years, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching in Princeton, where he researched, wrote,
and contributed to many policy reports on all phases of education. Earlier
in his career, he spent 16 years on the staff of The New York Times, where
he was national education correspondent. Maeroff is the author of seven books,
the co-author of two books, and the editor of three other books. His forthcoming
book is A Classroom of One: How Online Courses Are Changing Schools and Colleges
(Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press, February 2003).