The article is good, but fails to mention some problems with online learning---that some classes that require labs and on hand teaching are not good candidates for online learning. Another issue is accommodations for the ADA. Many courses being taught online do not offer software systems that are compatible with programs that assist the blind or hearing impaired. Finally the biggest elephant in the room---student financial aid---the 14 Billion for higher ed does not address student loan debts. Many students will drop out and will have to deal with high loan balances that come due six months after leaving school. All interest should be suspend or loans forgiven. Students should be advised to NOT TAKE A FOREBEARANCE. This just adds interest to their existing loans. The landscape for higher ed is dismal without many changes taking place and was bad before Covid-19.
2
One thing not mentioned is the abysmally low completion rates for online only programs.
5
On-line teaching is exactly the same as class-room teaching . . . minus the teaching.
2
@Thomas Thorp You have no clue about online teaching. With video conferencing software and videos online teaching and learning has improved tremendously. I can do pretty much anything in an online class that I can do in a onsite class. Plus my video conference sessions are recorded so students can review the recording after class.
@Mike Stamos
I don't agree with you, Mike. True, technology has advanced, but I cannot do everything online that I did in the classroom. The rich, contextual cues found in the classroom are missing online. I cannot see my student slump back in her chair if she is confused and afraid to say anything. I can't walk down the hall with her after class and engage in a conversation to help ease her anxiety. It is hard to engage students online in the little ways that can be done in class; over time, you can see the results of those little engagements and experience the wonderful moments that happen in the classroom, like when students are comfortable enough to respond to something you say with delightful quips. You can be human together and that's what makes being a teacher so meaningful from a perspective of care. Teaching isn't only about the classroom. Advising online is not one bit like meeting students in your office to go over their class selections for next semester and what they plan to do with their lives (at least what their best dreams are this week). I've done online teaching both ways online, synchronously and asynchronously and neither comes close to being in the classroom. Sure, you can get information across in a mediated form. But saying one can do everything online that one can do in class just isn't true. I know it isn't for many of us who teach, and I suspect many of our students would say the same thing. Some of mine already have.
1
College professor here. I'm surprised although I shouldn't be by the amount of contempt and resentment toward college faculty. Although there has always been an anti-intellectual strain in American society, it's obvious to me that what is really driving this current flare up of contempt is about the financial insecurity so many people in the US feel now. It's not me, it's you. Gig employment, low wages and stagnant salaries, and job insecurity where you can't really count on keeping a job long enough to establish retirement savings or even maintain a mortgage – these are all legitimate reasons to feel angry. Corporations consider their workers a drain on profits and feel no accountability toward the communities where their workers live. Direct your anger toward the real cause of your suffering.
If you want to get rich, don't become a professor. It's a great job, but not a high-paying one. There is job security for the lucky ones who have tenure, but that's all. There is autonomy, and it's meaningful work, but every professor I know is basically a workaholic. Summer is not time off. Contrary to popular belief, tenured faculty can be fired - but it must be for cause. American workers have forgotten what this even means because the gains for workers achieved by the labor movement in the 19th and 20th centuries are so eroded at this point.
And yeah, remote teaching sucks when you teach art or music, but my students and I will make the best of it.
15
To those of us who know what online education is, this has been obvious for a long time.
I obtained a M.A. degree in Latin American literature in 2016. I was working and going to college part-time. In the beginning, my classes were all face-to-face. However, my college had correctly realized that the future for them was online; most graduate courses were put online.
My online courses were every bit as interesting and rigorous as any of the face-to-face course; clearly my instructors had spent a lot of time figuring out what to do. I would now prefer online to face-to-face for a humanities degree.
An online education requires a motivated student, and sometime the herd aspect of education is what drives students to attend, to hang out with friends (along with written, unannounced pop quizzes). Also, as undergrads we take a lot of courses that we don't want to take, so our motivation is lower for such courses.
And when students don't do well, the teacher usually only has one realistic choice: To lower standards because a teacher with a low pass rate is a "bad" teacher in the eyes of the administration. In fact, face-to-face contact is what motivates many at risk students to try harder and succeed.
Of course, making the internet into a multiple-lane system with slow lanes for the poor student and fast lanes for the rich students will only increase the gap between the rich and the poor. To be successful, we need every student to have access to the same online resources.
3
I have seen more change in one week than I have seen in my 35 years at an American college. We sent the kids home last Friday. Faculty got our behinds in gear. Everyone is prepping to go online.
To grossly generalize, some forty percent of faculty will drop the ball one way or another, claim helplessness, do a terrible job and produce lousy learning outcomes. Some administrators are urging faculty to plain water down remaining content to preempt complaints from students (parents). But about 20% will rapidly innovate and improvise; shoot up the learning curve. We will use new tech (e.g., Zoom, Ensemble) and use our learning management systems more aggressively - for sure. But we will also fundamentally rethink what we do, why, and how. If 20% do this, we will see a renaissance in a bloated, expensive rip off business only second to healthcare in this regard.
Here is what will get in the way. Not all schools will overcome the fundamental resistance among faculty toward rigorous performance assessment, transparency, and accountability; we have for 50 years run colleges focused entirely on increasing faculty comfort and happiness - all on America's middle class parents' and students' dime.
My guess is that unmotivated students, called to rapidly adapt to new tech, will drop out in droves. What I fear is that unmotivated faculty will remain a drag on the system for a long time. But, the butterfly will emerge from this caterpillar.
3
"I have seen more change in one week than I have seen in my 35 years at an American college."
Sadly, American colleges and universities have been very slow to change. You would think educated people would know that the world off-campus was changing and would change as well. However, college life has been very comfortable for many. So logically, you don't boldly go where no man has ever gone before...unless you are Capt. James Tiberius Kirk.
last week I gave 5 online lessons using virtual classroom, it worked! With some practice lecturers and students can just continue the courses.
1
Last week at UNC, my fellow students, staff, and professors left for spring break excited for some rest before the last half of the semester. Within that week, everything was taken from us. We are devastated. We no longer have classes, jobs, housing, on campus events, springtime on campus, and social functions. We have no study abroad, no clear future plans, no refunds for tuition or off campus housing (which my family is still paying upwards of $700 a month for). My, just like a lot of my friends', summer study abroad was canceled, leaving us to scramble for internships that could potentially get canceled. There is a lot of sadness, anger, and confusion around the community, and for the sake of the physical, mental, and academic wellness of students across the country, I hope this virus can be contained soon.
3
@Clare: I feel the same way you do. I am an older student, having decided to two years ago (as a retiree) to go back to school and study humanities - not for a job or career but because I still want to learn. When I was 'college age', I couldn't afford it. Boom - the virus forced me into online learning. I have two classes - one prof is great, does her lectures online, we students can join in, see & hear her and take notes. The other teacher just assigns us all youtube videos to watch endlessly and then take an online quiz about what we just viewed. It is boring not pleasant. I loved the classroom experience - the give and take in class with the other students and the professor. If online learning is the future, count me out. I'd rather read books. I hope the virus is contained soon, too.
This could be the end of $50,000 per year tuition which will be a good thing. Guaranteed government loans are the worse thing to happen to college education. Once colleges realized they get their money immediately from the government once a loan is approved, they could ramp up tuition costs.
As it is, kids - the Bernie Bros - are learning real fast that $80K of lifetime debt to serve coffee is the biggest scam going. As is the gig economy.
6
As a university educator who has chaired health science programs, I expect we will see some harsh reckoning regarding the quality of instruction, as well as the capacity of networks to deliver the expected throughput. Scaling for connecting remote classrooms to expanding to 50-100 students is crashing networks already.
For too many institutions, teaching online was more about revenue than providing innovative and productive learning. I've had instructors who "held class online" which was little more than a 15 minute lecture. Students are too often short-changed by institutions which fail to deliver the mentorship, interaction, and experiential learning which is crucial to providing quality education.
7
@William Pewen
This is absolutely true - what you say. Online spells rip off to me, and I have been a college professor for a long time. We direct our cheapest talent (adjuncts) to online. Our faculty who volunteer first to teach online are rarely interested in producing student learning, they are singularly and overwhelmingly motivated by the prospects of not showing up to campus at all, and doing less work. Learning outcomes are impossible to defend (and rarely assessed). Online: students agree to pay top dollar to not learn anything yet get a diploma, and faculty agree not to teach anything while pretending to innovate at the same salary.
I have yet to see evidence that online is producing good learning (not that there is rock solid evidence that physical presence produces learning either).
I suspect all that is about to change; maybe this will cause all involved - faculty, administrators, and students - to figure out whether they are still interested in the system that no longer exists as it did just a few weeks ago. A chunk of students will likely call the whole thing off; but schools will go under before all faculty adapt, improvise, and produce value justified by the tuition we charge.
To a person, my graduating seniors are ruing that they will miss the pomp and pageantry of commencement; not one solitary thought about learning came my way this week. A good indicator of what is coming.
3
@William Pewen , as a parent of two daughters, one is a senior at MSU and the other a sophomore at OSU, I think online teaching short changes our kids. Kids are self teaching themselves because online teaching lacks immediate interaction with professors. It just isn’t the same. Luckily my kids are very self motivated. There are many kids who lack motivation and are not able to learn online. Online teaching is just another revenue source of greed. Soon they will replace teachers and professors with AI. Human interaction and learning from a real person is a more memorable learning experience.
1
@Mae: Thank you. I completely agree with you.
As a college grad, I have to say the on-campus experience is just as important as the 'education.' It's not just about cramming your head with information. It's developing relationships and learning how to communicate at a high level, so you can make it in a demanding society.
I graduated from a Ca. university many moons ago, and some of my college friends are still close friends today. I've been exchanging e-mails with them over the present situation. There is no substitute for that.
7
@Mark McIntyre
Hmm. Thanks for buying the load of puckey we sell. You make it all possible for the second biggest rip off in the American economy (after heathcare).
Not all of you can pay off your loans, find and hold a job, innovate and produce value for employers, or start businesses in ways that justify the four years of your life and heavy tuition you paid. Maybe 50 - 50? Okay, maybe 70 - 30. But it is not 100-0.
I look at the smart kids running the country today; trust me, they would have succeeded anyway. We are able to dramatically leverage the motivation-talent of students only in a fraction of cases.
Yet, all of you speak so wistfully about your four years in college. Even the dude who spent $200K over four years pursing a degree in creative writing has bused tables for four years while working on his is screenplay (thinly disguised autobiography). Dude, given the tuition you paid, you would have derived the same benefit if your college was just a place to hang out for feel good, with no real classes - and run by Club Med.
2
@Kalidan you miss the whole point: college is not Club Med: it's a place where young people wrestle with challenging intellectual concepts at at a time of great change in their lives. And the key is that they're undergoing these changes together. In the same physical place.
4
@Mark
No, you missed the Kalidan's whole point, which is that it isn't financially smart paying $200k to "wrestle with intellectual challenges", and it isn't worth dooming yourself to a lifetime of debt.
Once upon a time college was a place where a young person could do this and not be placed in life-long debt, and at that time it was a good thing. Colleges are now run like corporations with the goal of maximizing profits and continue to market themselves as the only way a young person can get intellectual stimulation and learn. they have no concern about the debt they put people in.
I hope the whole system crashes.
2
How do you not mention Coursera's response in this article?https://www.coursera.org/coronavirus
@Jk Are you a sales rep?
@Rich Sohanchyk nope.
Professors can help students and others by pointing us to the most insightful, most truthful and most actionable articles and sites on the web; and pointing out the misinformation so that we don't follow it.
Meanwhile in the background I hear Steely Dan singing: "I'm never going back to my old school."
As a professor at a UC campus, it's sobering to see how little trust most of us have that our administrations aren't going to use this experience to ramp up online teaching to the detriment of more expensive but pedagogically far superior in-person courses. It's crucial for professors to stress to administrators and students that 1) this is an emergency situation and there is no way we are going to be able to deliver the same quality, breadth and depth as would have been achieved in normal in-person classes, and 2) what is happening now is "remote" not "online" teaching. Most important, we need to get immediate assessments of student needs and find, allocate and disburse funds to students (and even professors) who don't have adequate technology -- whether computers, smart phones and/or internet access/data. Finally, we need to press the mobile phone and internet companies to provide unlimited data for free to all registered students, or at least those receiving financial aid. This is a national emergency and the cost will be even greater if we can't sort these issues out now.
13
You are spot on about access issues for current students who need to transition to online. My husband is the provost at a private university (non-Ivy, non-religious) where they are in the process of getting computers and/or internet to students who do not have access at home. (Another example of the stressors unique to students from underserved groups.) Of course, this is in addition to the myriad of other issues related to “going online” and temporarily closing down an entire campus. The one positive for his faculty is that their university’s administration truly values and fully intends to preserve face to face teaching for undergraduate programs.
I wish you and your students the best. I can see from your comments how dedicated you are to teaching.
2
This may be the new normal. Coronavirus could circulate for years and there could be follow on viruses. The whole idea of bringing people to one place, a school or a college, may be over and homeschooling and online education the future.
A friend’s child attends Bucknell, which is in a remote area of Pennsylvania. It seems possible to lock down the campus and keep teaching, hoping that the remoteness might be a defense and sending kids back to the city a mistake. But having kids get sick on campus is an open ended liability so even the most remote colleges must close for legal liability.
Schools have always been a Petri dish with diseases spreading rapidly. The only cure might be to go online permanently.
2
You can get a college degree taking on-line classes, but you cannot obtain a college education. A critical component of a college education is gained through direct interaction with other individuals with different ideas, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds. You cannot experience this on-line. As someone who hires for a U.S. Government Agency, I can tell you that applicants with significant on-line coursework have inferior educations to those with traditional classroom courses.
21
Online education is the biggest scam there is in higher education. The seat time in a traditional class is the very soul of education. Being present in a discussion or in a lecture where questions can be asked and a dialog between teacher and student can be established means that the exchange if ideas and views can thrive. If an online class is merely lecture, just read the lecture at home by yourself. But that is not what a college education is. It is the teacher-student interactions, live and in person that lead to genuine learning and educational development.
10
@Jack And yet...and yet, online education doesn't have to be lectures. It can be real-time class time, where there is in fact discussion between professor and students. This is somewhat harder to arrange, but it can indeed be done, *if* the students have the appropriate internet connections and the equipped computers to do this at home. There's the rub: not all of them do, although students in the more elite colleges certainly do. However, faculty anywhere got little or no notice of these closings, were not consulted, and at most institutions had little or no preparation for such an event as having to suddenly switch class material to online. And, there are the final exams: how to design them so that the students who haven't learned the material get through them by consulting online sources instead of their own brains to answer objective questions and to write thoughtful essays. This time will be experimental; maybe next time, everybody involved will have had time to prepare! --a retired professor
4
Perhaps some attention to college educated individuals in Africa or Asia might be informative. Kenya has several times postponed the tests to enable government employment, as now have other African nations. Reason, no jobs, too many applicants! The teacher qualified hoping for EU jobs finds themselves teaching in the same deprived areas the one they hoped to escape.
Here in the US, our job market has vanished, and as far back as Obama we were told to 'fix up' houses, create businesses, and the 'new' tech businesses are failing as I type.
This detour into on-line is the answer to over subscribed college courses in the US. As the article admits, there is no identifiable success associated with on-line. I am grateful for my college teachers without which I would not have succeeded. IF college isn't face to face, its missing its most valuable aspect. Perhaps community colleges can be the replacement with genuine interaction and sociability. IF the Federal Gov does actually abate college costs, the community college cost should be free for all local residents.
1
@katesisco: Well stated and I couldn't agree more. Thank you.
At my college, we had to switch to all online in a matter of days. Many students were as unprepared for it as I have been. Fortunately, it is near the end of the quarter, so the disintegration of teaching and learning won't have too dire an effect. I'll try my best to get ready for next quarter, but I know our enrollment will be down, and sadly, it will be the already underpaid, unprotected adjunct faculty who will lose their jobs, but no one is talking about a Federal bailout for higher ed. Only massive corporations deserve that. Meanwhile, the essential social glue of education will erode further. If all learning can be done online, you will have a humanity that can only function well online. And then what?
While I'm at it, yes, cheating is a problem. Fortunately, I had a baseline for students' performance this quarter. One student went from lousy grades on every quiz to suddenly getting a perfect score. I don't know what the patch or workaround is for this type of thing. Some of my colleagues just shrug their shoulders and say there's nothing to be done about it. Maybe in the post-truth era, it is fitting.
6
the only online class ive done that was completely online (all lectures were projector style and we only met for test days), i had a tutor that helped me before i did homework. It was a math class. The teacher was pretty techsavy, and would give mini lectures and help hints after the test was done.
this year my VERY OLD SCHOOL prof. just learned how zoom works, and used to rush through a whole chapter in an hour. this is an 8 am class,compared to a noon class. The switch to online doesn't work if the teacher is so used to old school.
4
@liz
Why have online classes at all? Just read the textbooks and other materials, use your tutor to help with homework, and take the tests. I don't see any difference between what you are doing and what I suggest. Neither fall into the category of getting a good education. Old school is still the best school because social in-person interactions are the heart of college education. Dialog and discussion are more important than imbibing information.
4
@Jack Which "tutor" are you referring to? Say the student went home to parents in Iowa and is taking a senior course in international politics. Who there can tutor this student? And what about the sophomore finishing her second year of Chinese language? Where's the tutor going to be found then?
My university is doing online classes right now and I don't care for 'em. For one, students and faculty need to be educated on how to work the technology. The last lecture for one of my classes wasted 50% time with technical difficulties.
As far as testing goes? forget it. For online classes, cheating is practically mandatory. If everyone is using notes and friends, the curve will destroy anyone who decides not to cheat.
6
Enrollment in colleges has been on a downward trajectory since 2010. The high cost is one of the reasons. By some measures, tuition costs have increased at an even higher rate than medical costs.
While not all courses can be taught online--especially ones involving lab or fieldwork--the present situation will undoubtedly work to accelerate online migration of some coursework as colleges struggle to control costs.
No problem. This has been done before. The Great Leap Forward worked wonderfully! And if that is not enough, we're building our own Great Wall. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
Im a professor. I could teach in my area for hours without notes. What is difficult for me is the technology. This is embarrassing for me and probably shows my age. Im trying to learn the technology in a few days and replicate what I do in my class. I know it is impossible and I think my students know it also. So far they have been kind and understanding or happy because they can easily do less work and I won't know the difference.
8
The universities have long been itching to move to online classes. The virus is just an excuse to try it out. Why? cost savings and the faculty hate teaching/dealing with the undergrads. By charging the same price as if students attended a class the university makes a boatload of money. Once the lecture is put online, especially in the core classes such as freshman calculus, the same lecture can be seen by thousands of students. At my university there were 6000 students in freshman calculus. So at 100 students per class, this required 20 faculty (3 classes each) and 20 grad students as graders. Now using the grad students to answer online questions. No need for faculty. No need for about 10 classrooms. All the revenue goes to line administrators pockets, and pay the football coach.
Additional comments. I got my phd from a very large state university. The faculty hated dealing with the undergrads. It was a downard spiral. The professor hated the students so he did not prepare for class, the students then hated him for having to listen/pay junk, but still had to worry about their grades. As a rule one never took class form a "Distinguished" Professor because they were the worst.
6
@ JenD - Because they’re academics. They actually believe they are *not* a business in the 21st century, not part of the real world. Given all the hints in your comment, I am horrified but not shocked that the hubris of your august institution of higher learning is front and center. More horrifying is that, considering its location, there was no plan for this.
1
These are the hard facts about the virus situation we’re in that is prompting this shift in academia: full-time, tenured, traditional academics who secure prime posts as full professors and revel in and lord over their privilege - of choosing courses, stipulating class schedules, saying no to online or asynchronous teaching assignments, immersing themselves in esoteric research that often goes unpublished (or in obscure journals) and, in general, having had the run of the show for far too long. Meanwhile, adjuncts have become very aggressive and successful in enhancing our pedagogical techniques, in participating (for no extra pay) in workshops our employers provide re: online teaching and other advanced modalities, and by saying “yes” to administrators and department heads who assign an extra course or three, rather than the haughty “hell no” tenured professors reply. The so-called “instructional designers” actually do all the work - in fact, planning the syllabus, developing teaching modules, preparing the a/v, grading papers, running the WebEx classes with motivated students, etc. Whereas the actual “star” professor only needs to show up for class, luxuriate in her/his research, and pontificate/preen in front of his/her audience. It’s no wonder many of us with hard-earned credentials have opted for online teaching in other venues, Udemy, UPhoenix, Southern New Hampshire, and others that actually respect our time, experience, expertise and zeal for educating.
1
Online education is the future, not only for colleges and universities, but also for elementary and high schools. While some oldsters of my generation may disapprove of this "delivery method," the younger ones, such as my children, are used to doing so many things online, that they will easily adapt to it, as my youngest (Grade 6) is doing at the moment using Zoom. There are also the added non-educational benefits, such as environmental ones, when school buses and school buildings are not necessary.
4
Don't knock it till you've tried it. I'm currently enrolled in a [partially] online graduate program at an Ivy, even though I'm within walking distance of a major research university with a similar program. While I miss the library, I've got access to most of its resources online. As for seminars themselves, I see no qualitative difference between the online and live experience. It's really all about the teacher and the student, and that relationship isn't compromised by it being virtual.
3
@Tim I agree. It always depends on the teacher; the good ones will stand out regardless of how the subject is taught.
1
@Tim
There is this phrase about library access --"I've got access to most of its resources on line."
Truly a misapprehension of what it means to use the library where open shelving opens the mind. You find material - books, periodicals, bibliographies - that you never knew to look up. Being in the library is an exceptionally valuable educational tool.
2
@French: Yes, yes, yes (oui, oui, oui) ~ I love my library!
I am astonished at the negative comments on online education in this forum! We live in a world so intricately woven with technology and it is imperative that educators begin to understand web-based education from didactic teaching to simulations.
I direct distance education in Audiology for our university and I can categorically state that this can be an extremely effective and efficient way to teach small & large groups of students. In our program, we utilize faculty from many parts of the US and Canada, and these faculty members are highly respected clinicians and researchers. Our students come from all over the world and can attest to the knowledge and skills they have gained from our training. We have indeed supplemented our programs with Hands-On Workshops and face-to-face clinical training. Our students, however, are all adult learners, that is, they are for the most part, practicing professionals.
Training teachers on Online teaching is critical and once they learn this, they will be able to incorporate these strategies to accomplish far more than they used tom, when they return to normal classrooms! For a simple. yet comprehensive report on asynchronous learning please see: https://www.schoology.com/blog/asynchronous-learning-definition-benefits-and-example-activities
Get with it People! Interactive learning is here to stay. Let's make it better NOW! Use the lemons to make lemon curd. My son-in-law has a great recipe!
3
@Giri Sundar
I went to a state university with 50000 undergrads. At that size it seems to make sense to do online. But the problem is in many cases there needs to be person to person interaction between the student and the prof, also office hours where the student can ask questions. With online the professor might be out in Montana teaching a class To texas students. He really does not care at all nor spends any time because he is out fishing.
1
I'm currently an online grad student at a private university. One reason I chose this program was for the combination of asynchronous and synchronous material in each class. We watch lectures whenever we can leading up to a live session. My advice (though no one asked) is for professors to try to maintain a weekly schedule of live classes through Zoom or Skype and allow students to post to a blog or social media page with real-world updates as applicable to the class subject. Honestly, I thought I would hate being online, but this program has allowed me a lot of freedom to learn on my time while still having a concrete schedule.
2
I teach a graduate Finance class at NYUThis is what I have seen and heard:
• Some professors are worried about it. One university had to point out that "Holding classes remotely is not a secret first step on the road to eliminating our regular mode of instruction."
• I personally prefer to teach University classes in person too.
Last week, however, I taught my first class online. The feedback I received from participants was tremendously positive. One of them indicated that she was worried about whether we would be able to interact and that it worked out perfectly well. Altogether, if I must choose between students not being able to learn and professors not being able to teach, I chose remote instruction.
1
I have not read any assessment of how online learning will test the capacity of broadband, especially in rural areas where capacity is already stretched. Frontier is already unable to handle our internet demands. Is there a risk of regular crashing?
2
The cost of Tuition is a major problem as we all know. Online College can substantially reduce the fixed costs. This approach must be achieved. Maybe the Schools can just provide computer labs to do the online classes and do away with all the building costs. One professor could teach many more students.
@Fred
Cost is a major issue, but the university fails to manage faculty salaries or force faculty to perform. Once a prof gets tenure, he has no incentive to do anything except to collect a paycheck. Faculty at the state universities are the worst because they just sit around and wait for their state pension and there is nothing the university can do.
@Peter
Tenured professors are like the rest of society - there are many, many who are highly motivated to do a great job - and don't forget that professors are more than teachers - for example, they research, write, publish, and present at conferences. Freedom of thought, freedom of expression, pushing the boundaries - that is what tenure allows.
The idea that tenure equals laziness and irresponsibility says more about the person who says that than it does about reality.
3
Do the best you can. Adapt. It’s not ideal. It’s short-term. Stop whining. Above all, remember what the kids are going through. One of my students went home to an elderly grandmother and a mother with MS. Do the best you can!
3
@Cloud 9 Stop telling people what to do and shaming people with legitimate complaints. I, too, have students in distress--a couple of whom are first generation college students who have no home to return to, period. No amount of sympathy or compassion or can-do attitude will mitigate the fact that some course content cannot be taught online because it requires facilities or on-site participation/interaction with other students. That's not going to happen, so universities should have the guts to admit that and refund students' tuition dollars instead of cheerfully insisting that "learning outcomes will be the same." They won't be, with many courses. Administrators should admit that some courses are going to be a total wash and that students will be paying their hard-earned tuition dollars for an inferior product.
7
Our educational institutions are not just for "delivery of educational services" but are places of mentoring and peer friendship. The internet will not foster these vital personal connections which happen in class and in other campus venues.
And let's not think about libraries and laboratories -- what is a chemistry major supposed to do -- blow up Mom's kitchen?
9
The college administrators for whom and with whom I worked cared principally about maintaining and, where possible, increasing enrollment because institutional funding was tied directly to enrollment. Their second priority was keeping costs low by reducing to the greatest degree possible the number of full-time faculty positions, especially tenured positions.
Our system of post-secondary education is badly mismatched to the tasks we've increasingly given it to accomplish: the remediation of enormous lacunae in basic academic skills amongst large segments of 'college' students and the provision of essentially vocational skills training. That problem will persist, in fact intensify, irrespective of the degree to which instruction moves from the classroom to other media.
Tomorrow I'm supposed to attend a Zoom training session for the first time to adapt two of my courses to synchronous online learning. The first class a writing-intensive dramatic literature class and should be fairly easy to adapt. The second, an advanced scene study course, where students rehearse 8 to 10-minute scenes from contemporary plays outside of class and then present them for critique and re-working in class will be impossible. The class consists of acting exercises, presentation, and general critique from the instructor and students, and then more work on the scene, to improve. It's a skills-building class. Scene study requires interaction between two actors in the same world, in the same space, but that's not going to happen when my ten students are in 8 different cities. And no, it can't be changed to monologues; it's not an auditions class. That my university fails to acknowledge that--and still insists on my achieving the same "learning outcomes"--is risible.
3
@Little Doom
Ask you students for suggestions about how to achieve the interaction online. Ever heard of Skype? FaceTime? There are ways to do what you describe. A little imagination is all that is required. Isn’t that what a liberal arts education is supposed to inculcate?
@Observer
Adapting to technology requires more than "a little imagination." And if the school uses a technology that does not allow interaction, the professor can not require his students to use a different technology.
In an ideal world, everyone has great devices, fantastic internet access, and all software programs. In reality, no. And this is even more true when there is no opportunity for advance planning.
It's one thing to organize a chat with your children, but it's an entirely different thing to organize classes online.
1
Absolutely correct. My wife and I not only have taught both in-person and online courses for many years, but have held training or supervisory positions related to distance ed. Even though pretty much all colleges that offer online education provide support for faculty about curriculum development, I doubt any are equipped to handle a sudden shift on this scale. It's difficult enough convincing faculty with established online teaching experience to incorporate best practices (frequent quizzing, detailed rubrics, online discussions, regular feedback, etc.) Not to mention that not all students are well suited for online learning -- and there's no time to teach them how to change that.
2
The current move to online learning by traditionally on-site colleges is an expedient (a necessary one) to enable students to keep their educations on-track in the face of a health crisis. It's the best they can do under the circumstances, not a replacement of face-to-face classes and seminars and lab courses.
If you remember the MOOC hoopla a few years ago, in which many top-tier colleges participated (and some still do), it because clear that online learning simply couldn't replace the sort of teaching and learning that places like Yale, MIT, and Williams engage in. (Most of these 'traditional' colleges now include online components with places to post weekly essays and comments on readings, though, as part of the "traditional" mode of teaching.) Online learning does a lot of things well and allows asynchronous learning and convenience. But not everything.
As others have said, face-to-face learning includes the ability to ask questions on the spot and to interact with peers and faculty both in and outside class. That's hard (impossible?) to replicate online.
The "technical skills/infrastructure" issues aren't the main questions, despite this article's assertion. The question for many places isn't whether or not students (and perhaps faculty) have the technical background to use online learning tools, It's how online learning compares with "traditional" college learning in all sorts of ways. Is the education itself comparable? How? What's the difference?
3
@NYer You are correct to point out the great difference between online and on-the-ground classrooms. However, I have to disagree that the technology issue isn't a main question right now.
I am currently a student whose classes just said goodbye to the classroom and hello to the online world. I've also worked with Instructional Designers who helped train UCLA professors and instructors with Canvas (a Learning Management System).
Most of the professors who have never taught online are now struggling to provide their students with anything (communication, lectures, resources, assignments, assessments) because they don't understand the tool through which they're trying to educate us. Just like with any application, it's a tool that needs to be learned (self-taught or through the university itself).
I'm guessing (hoping) things will get better, but right now I feel like I paid for some classes that don't even exist anymore.
5
Anything that on-line learning can do, a textbook does better. Both lack the possibility of interaction: the student asking questions (that the professor hasn't anticipated), and listening to the response.
They are the best we can do in the present epidemic, but they aren't good substitutes for the traditional lecture. Which is why students pay tuition rather than just buying or borrowing textbooks.
6
I will be teaching my class “remotely” - not “online”. A critical part of learning in my field — ironically, Bioinformatics— is discussing the challenges in the data, identifying uncertainties, and designing ways to ask questions of complicated data. Learning how to do that requires looking each other in the eye, asking each other questions, and, ONLY THEN, hunkering down and writing code to analyze the data.
We can all learn skills online. But gaining insight and internalizing know takes practice and dialogue. Doing this REMOTELY will be a challenge. My students and I know this. We will make it happen.
4
Well, handling an emergency is never a way to produce an ideal solution. It's all triage now. Planning matters, and online schooling has grown in limited places, but change is hard and few really wanted to gain the benefits it has to offer, hence the ongoing misery of so many students stuck in boring "non-virtual" classes, learning at a "non-virtual" slow pace that matches the worst performing students.
1
Had lunch with a friend who is a teacher at Penn State University. She has taught classes on line before. To her it is no big deal. She has a grad student help her grade tests. One of her freshmen classes has upwards 480 students. Something I forgot to ask her was how do you teach a class on line that has a lab?
1
@John
You don't.
You make it up after the epidemic is over.
4
The mass movement to online learning last week did feel a bit too much like a conspiracy when considering the push for online learning at my university. Ironically just a week before my proposal to convert a class I taught for 15 years into a hybrid online class was sent back by a committee because it "wasn't clear how I would use online tools." The sorrow I felt at being torn from my intimate 15 person classes in the thick of the semester on Wednesday heightened for me the value of face to face instruction. Teaching isn't much for me without the one on one interaction. Intuition and reading the room are teaching tools I have acquired over time as a teacher and they have no place online. I really hate for students to be guinea pigs in this mass experiment, but for the sake of students future, I sure hope it fails badly, or at least exposes the limits of remote learning.
4
Try to get a degree in geology, geophysics, chemistry or biology online.
That should tell you all you need to know .
6
@joel strayer Try to get a degree in film, dance or musical theater online.
1
The CONCEPT of going online is great. The REALITY is something else altogether. I have tried to slide my fundamental and entertaining educational material over to an online platform many times. The result is that I end up working TWO and a half full-time jobs instead of one and half that I normally work- called teaching.
Why am I doing the Curriculum Developer's job in addition to mine anyway? (O.K. admittedly, I would not be happy with their lessons anyway based on what I have already seen of the official online curriculum, and neither are the kids!)
Putting together good, well thought out lessons online is a huge job. I comb the web for great videos. and end up putting up three; for the kids who can't do their times tables (high school students), the average kids, and the few smarties- yes, we have them in the inner city! There went my evening and weekend when you add grading.
Once I have devoted all my free time to this, the district will switch to a new learning management system (5 in ten years so far) and I feel stupid. Meanwhile the kids HATE the canned online curriculum and the cheating/incomplete rate is high.
As much as "they" would love to replace us, I don't see it happening any time too soon.
6
I remember teaching college correspondence courses to prison inmates and soldiers stationed in war zones via snail mail. We can do this.
2
The success (or failure) of online courses depends entirely on the success or failure the course teacher/designer in delivering material meeting the student's "task relevant" maturity. The more experienced and motivated the student, the more likely ordinary material is to facilitate learning. As with face-to-face classes, this is very much a crap-shoot. In addition, opportunity for cheating by students is much higher, particularly on tests. Anyway, this will be an interesting and worthy experiment, though I have little hope it will be used to actually help learning, only that it will offer a facile response to this crisis that may be then monitized,
1
I've been teaching at elite colleges and universities since the late 1980s. Over the years various college administrators have introduced on-line classroom technologies to us faculty members in an uncoordinated and unsupported way. My colleagues and I have been expected to master a new on-line platform, transfer or adapt curricular materials to the new platform, only to find a year or two later, that some one higher up has changed their mind about the system and have introduced (without telling or asking us) a new system.
About a week ago, we were informed that later this month we would all be using Zoom to teach classes. Has anyone taught me how to use Zoom?
No.
8
The responses here reflect student, parent, and some academic and business views of "online" education. But there is no actual common understanding of the term. I taught online and face-to-face history courses from 2007-2015 as an adjunct faculty member at a community college in Colorado. Effective teaching and learning takes place wherever and whenever students and professors choose to consistently interact and exchange knowledge. Online education requires the same and more attention to choice of content, delivery mechanism, learning styles and individuation than in-person courses demand. But, it requires even more sophisticated development, structure, and innovation and constant retooling by faculty. Boring lectures and multiple-choice, machine-graded testing has no place in a college classroom or an office breakroom during a working student's lunch.
4
@Ginny As a college instructor who switched from in-class to online courses more than ten years ago, I completely agree with you about the planning and care that is needed to devise online classes. Much of the work has to be done before the class starts--designing assignments and discussion opportunities that make an online class a valid educational opportunity. Requiring teachers to suddenly readjust a course planned for a classroom to one taught online is going to do a great disservice to both teachers and students. I hope people realize that this is a reaction to an emergency and that the value of online education should not be judged by what harried teachers can devise in the next few months.
4
The author assumes (since he does not say otherwise) that all courses can move online with the only problem being resources and expertise. They can't. Many of us who teach on my campus in the performing arts, studio art and laboratory sciences for instance are trying to figure out how to teach students who won't have access to labs, art studios, dance studios and the like how to teach classes where those spaces are fundamental. Even our most privileged students are unlikely to have home physics or biology labs.
That this goes unmentioned in this article suggest that the author hasn't begun to understand the problem of suddenly going online in disciplines that aren't reading, writing and lecture based.
7
I'm a graduate student in architecture and will be graduating in May. Though I'm currently on spring break and my school has only scheduled to go to remote learning for the following week (for now), its going to be challenging to communicate with my project partners and professors. We depend so much on sketching, drawing, and making to illustrate ideas and the tectonics of our projects. Physical models are a big part of our coursework and without the ability the be present in studio and have access to machines (laser cutters, 3d printers, woodshop equipment) we can't make anything, which really does take away from the learning and design process.
7
I don't think any university administration believes it is easy to move online overnight, and I don't think any university administration believes that online instruction is a good substitute for in-person instruction. I think they all believe this is the only option at this point in time and they are right.
8
I teach at NYU, and we are now teaching all our classes remotely for the duration of the pandemic. There's a crucial distinction between "remotely" and "online" that the author of this article failed to make.
We are teaching *remotely* - the professor is live, the students are present at their computers (each in their own home or apartment). We can see and react to the students, and they can see us and react to each other. They can ask questions and a two-way discussion ensues. The teaching is similar to what we do in regular classes but adapted as needed to reach someone over a computer screen.
An online class is one that is presented, moderated, and scored by a computer program. There is no live human responding to questions, and the students' questions are (at best) answered by an algorithm, or instead of getting an answer they are told to research the topic.
The distinction is critical, especially for students from overseas whose financial aid requires them to attend actual classes with an actual teacher. Remote teaching fulfills this requirement, online teaching does not.
There are still things to be solved with remote teaching, but despite having this sprung on us overnight, we're finding some solutions quickly. Am I eager to get back to teaching in an actual classroom again? Absolutely. But in the meantime, remote teaching fills a gap that online classes cannot replace.
6
@McKernon Very clear distinction, but it's worth remembering that a "remote" lecture and student interactions in real time can be easily recorded and saved, so that students can go back to it again, and written comments and questions posted. Live broadcasts on Youtube work ths way.
Of course, this is a necessity right now, and it will not only be hard, many students (and professors) will underperform. We should take this moment to examine our usual rhetoric about all things virtual, which often implies that it is -- or will be, once we figure it out -- equivalent to or better than face-to-face interaction. The question shouldn't be whether online learning is "easier said than done," but how to make face-to-face (that is, "traditional") college more affordable and more accessible to everyone.
3
There is a fantasy land. Its called college that has little to do with the real world. We get very busy on trying to improve the fantasy with technology.
Granted, the author limits the scope of this article to the use of tech. Nevertheless…Why not use tech to put the student DIRECTLY in the real world?
Instead of a lecture on fluid flow in physics, put the student on a panel that probes the political, cultural, and tech reasons for the Boeing 737 crashes. [Many claim that the crashes were caused by culture and pilot training problems]
Instead of a course on Shakespeare, put the student on a film or Broadway production of Macbeth. Let the student watch the producer and director haggle out artist differences.
The real world has a better grasp on tech than colleges for a reason. The technology used to create the product is also the tech that goes with the product, or is the product. A software engineer does not study CS to get a degree, he or she builds an OS component.
3
@H Smith
By "political, cultural, and pilot training problems, " I assume you mean that politician's worried about offending a large corporation allowed Boeing to develop a self-(un)regulating culture of complacency that treated pilot training as a commodifiable "upgrade,' meaning that airlines who could not pay a premium could not train their pilots in New, fatal features they knew nothing about.
Making this sort of distinction in real time is the purpose of the real-time classroom, where students can react in real time to statements with a potential for subtle but dangerous misunderstandings. You might not read this. My students won't either.
1
@Danieo
Correct.
Not everybody is so critical tho. Some blame the slip shod practices of airlines in developing countries. We cant resolve that here.
The point:
The sooner that student gets involved in the real world, the better. If our cultural system (college) makes the student delay that by 4 years, and substitutes a fantasy world, he or she will loose out on real education.
And miss out on tech as it actually works in the world.
"But one recent study found that roughly 20 percent of students have trouble with basic technology needs. Their data plans are capped, their computers break, or their connections fail. Those with technology challenges are disproportionately low-income and students of color, who are also more vulnerable to dropping out."
Let's be clear.
This is not a question of "technological literacy".
This is a question of internet acces-- good internet access.
And that is a question of money.
Also, quiet space to use the internet effectively --
also a question of money.
6
@sam finn This is no doubt exacerbated by the more expensive and inferior Internet and cellphone access in North America compared with Europe.
2
I have participated in distance learning and would give a thumbs-up to distance learning.
I did have the unpleasant experience of attending UC Berkeley. At UC Berkeley I attended lectures and discussion sections. In the lectures, the professor summarizes the required reading. In the discussion sections, a graduate student instructor summarizes the professor’s lecture.
The UC Berkeley education model is OBSOLETE (and costly). Students are required to live in the VERY EXPENSIVE area around Berkeley and physically attend class in large OBSOLETE (and costly to maintain) lecture halls. The MODERN Distance Learning education model does not require your physical presence or large lecture halls.
4
I feel bad for the instructors required to make these online courses at a moment's notice, and I feel even worse for the students required to watch them. A reading assignment with weekly on-line quizzes and instructor feeback videos would serve everyone better. Ultimately, this epidemic may prove to be the needed disruption for institutions to re-think how they do education. I expect a great deal experimenting will follow.
3
@S Baldwin Necessity is the mother on invention, and I am confident that in the coming weeks remarkable advances will be made. Some experiments will succeed spectacularly, others will fail, so students will benefit in an unfortunately uneven manner, but in subsequent years all students will benefit from the successful ones... the losses and gains of overcoming a crisis.
1) Parents want the 18 year old out of the house. Doesn't happen on line.
2) College is still a class/social indicator and confirmation. Doesn't happen on line.
3) College experiences form the basis for many lasting friendships and social connections. Doesn't happen on line.
4) Fraternities and sororities are an additional class/social indicator at college. Doesn't happen on line.
And as a former on line and real time College professor, I can tell you that sticking with an on line course is much harder for most students.
And most professors/teachers are not prepared to interface daily and constantly with their students, or to adapt materials to the only format. You can't just 'record' your lectures, alas.
13
Online learning will make money for admin and managers. Professors will be rare, and they will only get income if they get "royalties" from the student fees. Huge reduction in jobs for teachers.
But "Intellectual Property Rights" don't do well on the web. Piracy is prevalent if not the norm. Online students will take courses and get degrees, but probably at a cost of lower education /skills/ knowledge. Maybe Artificial Intelligence will replace expertise, but what will the quality of graduates educated this way be?
In health care , I expect dropping skills of providers , lower life expectancy of populations and more billionaires from private for profit companies getting student tuition.
A very science fiction dystopia.
1
One important element of online instruction that seems to be missing is that lectures can be offered synchronously to allow for rich discussion and even individualized meeting times dependent on the platform. Also, the concept of "flipped instruction" whereby students absorb online content and readings asynchronously (on their own time) ensures that synchronous time (meeting together as a group at a specified time) focuses on discussion, application, and questioning in real time. This delivery can work well but as noted takes more than two or three days to pull together well.
3
The abrupt change to online education, though warranted, does not work for every institution. Currently at the Rhode Island School of Design, students are up in arms about being deprived of neccesary facilities required to continue effective working on their respective practices. They are demanding a partial tuition refund and finical assistance for the unexpected expenses required to follow through on their plan of closing studio spaces and on campus student housing. All request have been denied from the administration in spite of the students uniting together to form a petition expressing grievances and alternative plans of action with over 900+ signatures. Students have began taking matters into their own hands, starting a GoFundMe for the lower income students not anticipated being displaced (as the institution constantly reassured us that closing campus would not happen). Trade and art school online does not make sense, especially for graduating classes who require those spaces to create work that is supposed to benefit them in terms of employment, higher education pursuits, and future opportunities. It is a privilege to be perusing the things we want, but it is costly. Tuition, housing fees, materials fees, constant personal investment goes into our work. The primary reason we opted for schooling is the spaces and equipment they provide and being removed from said spaces with no adjustment to prices or offering of financial assistance has created a chaotic environment.
10
This is not a massive migration to online higher education. It was not intended as such from the start. It may end up making schools better at delivering online education than they are now. If that happens, it will be a good outcome.
Colleges and universities are instead trying to slow the spread of an unknown and potentially deadly virus while minimizing the harm done to students, staff, and faculty in the process. The intent is to help prevent replicating the experience of Italy, where a failure to spread out the course of the virus has crashed the health care system and lead to many deaths.
Most if not all faculty currently teaching are being required to transition their current classes to an online platform. Keeping their current rooms is often not an option. Training and refresher courses are being provided. On top of this, the faculty making such transitions are often smart and experienced. As Mr. Carey might appreciate, many if not most of them have even completed their Ph.D.s. It is possible that they might be able to figure out what to do under such conditions to provide good outcomes to their students. If that learning sticks after the crisis abates, then future students might even be better off.
Mr. Carey would do well to think more about what he is trying to say in his essay. Perhaps a revision might lead to a better result and a higher grade.
4
As a university student, I could not agree more. I've benefited immensely from the fact that all my lectures are recorded, but the intention of those recordings was to review material from the class and to accommodate the occasional absence. Trying to learn from recordings alone is extremely difficult and takes time to adapt to. It's harder to focus when watching a lecture from the comfort of your home vs when surrounded by your peers. There's no implicit social pressure to focus, you can't turn to the person next to you to ask clarification and you can't ask the professor questions in real time. It takes more confidence to answer a question on a public discussion board, where everyone can see and judge you, than to answer your neighbor's question. It's also much harder to explain things, since there's no way of editing your explanation mid-way if it becomes clear that the other person isn't understanding. There will no longer be in-person conferences, tutorials, or peer-tutoring sessions that are highly beneficial to learning. I like the concept behind online instruction, but the implementation leaves much to be desired even when schools have adequate time to plan. I don't know how we'll be able to learn when so many resources are no longer available.
10
@Sophie Sadly, too many students skip classes, don't read extra reading materials, cheat on assignments and tests, take classes that are anything but advanced educational materials, and demand high grades for average work. When the average student gets a C, we can talk about education vs. virtual signaling.
1
Bet these are mostly legacy students, mommies and daddies donated to the school and they are accepted, waste their time, hopefully mommies and daddies can support these losers for the rest of their lives.
1
On-line classes are not the same as going to college. Anyone who believes that you can obtain a college education on-line is very mistaken. Ninety percent of what I learned in college came from interactions with people from other backgrounds with different ideas and perspectives. You can't experience this sitting in front of a computer.
I would consider a job applicant with an on-line college education as unqualified for a position requiring a degree.
14
@Les Bois I agree that it's not the same, and I agree about all of the learning that comes from one-on-one interaction. But this is a rather unique set of circumstances, no? I believe we need to support the institutions and the students in doing the best they can with the hand they've been dealt--now especially, but really always. And not everyone can afford to attend college on campus. Let's not discount them for getting an education by any means necessary.
4
@Les Bois
So how are you going to view applicants with online education from Harvard, Columbia, Rice, Stanford, Amherst, Smith and more? Because of these schools, as well as their peers, have kicked students off campus and onto online learning.
@Les Bois Funny since most advanced research and learning is done by individuals or small groups. Most colleges are about parties, easy classes, sports, gyms and easy As.
a resource- low tech but offered in case its helpful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9NmBEFUYJA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3Jg_2TBmXIFjAe9WpUZHBLeRXebYYLRYqqX_HQRplsicJAAiHqlt14nJI
I paid $60Kfor my daughter education in an Ivy League school and yes I am a moron and soon to become an idiot as education goes online.
Why not to cancel the semester and return the fees to the parents using those ill acquired endowment funds? Online education, without peers, without office hours, without campus is not with 60k not even 15k
13
@Santos Rodríguez Yes, the cost would drop if we actually moved towards online education and more computer-assisted learning that's tailored to your needs and speed of learning. But don't expect unions and degree mills (all virtue signaling unrelated to actual education and mastery of advanced academic materials) or the government to promote independence, lower costs that diminish their authority over others.
1
@Santos Rodríguez I agree that a huge part of education is the campus experience, and not just the crucial classroom part. However, as a college professor at a prestigious institution that has been forced to go online during this crisis, I can assure you that most of my colleagues are not doing what you describe, e.g. removing peers and office hours. Everyone I know still cares as deeply as ever about our students' learning, and we are training ourselves with no additional compensation and sometimes little help from our institutions to do whatever we can to facilitate that learning. My classes are all meeting virtually, and I am creating more opportunities for valuable peer to peer feedback. It will never be a substitution for face to face, but I'm sure I will discover new resources to improve my pedagogy going forward, too.
3
@Santos Rodríguez I am sorry, but a pandemic, like any other "Act of God," isn't really covered by refunds. College doesn't work that way. We faculty are doing our best in the equivalent of a midnight fire at sea and are under considerable pressure to act as though everything is normal.
4
On line education is the safest. No bullies , no cyber bullies ,no teacher sexual abuse, no school shootings the list of positives goes on and on. Oh and no paying college debt for the rest of your life. Now add on avoid diseases and yearly colds. We need to shut done all the brick schools in every town and just think how much savings that would be. Can’t wait to see this happen .
5
@D.jjk Well, you still need places for people to work together, just not as much as we have now. Labs, sports, performing arts, you can't live a hermit an expect to improve society.
@D.jjk or why not just make American universities free like they always have been in Germany. That would avoid the college debt. As far as sexual abuse is concerned I am afraid it is going on all over the USA in every context. Keeping women from being educated will hardly help their ability to defend themselves from powerful men...
1
@D.jjk
Why do you think tuition would be made any cheaper if schools went all-online?
2
We'll get it done.
1
Grossly overpaid faculty and administrators must be shaking in their boots. More likely they’re too arrogant to recognize how they are going to be exposed for the way they’ve fleeced and impoverished generations of students.
5
@Kevin Saying that professors are responsible for the fees charged by universities is like saying that the people who answer the phone at a corporate headquarters are responsible for the actions of a corporation. They are just workers in a big system. They are also actually not paid that much. Most do not make the salary of a city bus driver.
12
Saying that faculty are overpaid is a gross error on your part. Admin, yes and college presidents and head coaches most definitely. Many colleges are primarily staffed with lowly adjuncts whose income can often be less that minimum wage.
1
While the initial reaction to this new imperative will surely be for instructors to recreate online what they had been doing face-to-face, the move may eventually involve new functionality that online enables. For example, in a large lecture course the meetings between the instructor and the TAs can be recorded and broadcast to the class. A different example is that colleagues at different campuses who teach the same class might do online discussion instead of lecture.
It's hard to tell what will work and won't work under the circumstances, but some experimentation of this sort is called for. I've elaborated on this in a recent blog post here:
https://lanny-on-learn-tech.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-next-bottleneck-as-instruction.html
This is going to be like Baron Munchausen pulling himself and his horse out of the mud by his hair. This isn't a referendum on "online teaching", it is converting ALL courses and ALL functions that take place within a university to an ad hoc online facsimile within one week. Something will happen, but do not expect it to be pretty, or for it to approximate what would have transpired in a normal semester by any stretch of the imagination. Also, read Dan Chiasson's article on the subject "Campus Life Ruptures Amid COVID-19 Closures" in the New Yorker.
6
I actually tried to sell my university on the idea way back in 1992. Professors make poor content producers and directors, I notice, so I’d develop it. They passed on it. Why? They had to change the way their institution of higher learning works, and they refused.
They were very difficult to deal with. I met with a total rejection that reminded me of Henry Kissinger’s famous observation about academia generally, that: “no idea is so or pure that an academic committee cannot kill it”. They just beg for more money. “They” being overeducated beggars with Ph.d’s after their names.
No sale. Look at them now. They’re nowhere. They’d rather ruthlessly exploit “gypsy” untenure-track faculty and lowly grad student TA’s.
3
@Steve Singer I suspect that the university picked up on your hostility and that is why they rejected your proposal.
The full quote is ” no idea is too good or pure that an academic committee cannot kill it”. I got distracted.
@Josiah Lambert -
No. They just played games. They didn’t want to “change the way this place works.” At the same time their hands are thrust out begging for more state and alumni money. There isn’t enough money in the world. It’s a beggars’ mentality.
They want some sugar daddy to materialize and support them in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. They resist changing with the times. Resistance to change that’s deeply ingrained.
2
While I've had my share of professors who stood with their backs to the class, mumbling into a chalk board, I've also had many whose total mastery of a difficult subject and animated delivery was motivating, inspiring, even galvanizing.
An online lecture is like a T.V. program compared to live theater; a music video compared to a live concert. There's a certain kind of energy that can only flow between people present close together in the same room; a force that only acts at close range; a near field effect. It's a pity this must be lost in the year of the plague.
10
@Robert M You don't need to watch a lecture of droning words. You need to look at quality online content. It's not a video of someone just speaking, but it's the "best ideas" (not restricted to the quality of the teacher in front of you, nor impacted by whether the teacher is having a bad day or not), presented in proven better ways, with interactive graphs, feedback on material leaned that's right away, and goes at the speed you can learn rather than being bored waiting for the least among us to pretend to "get it."
The US is so far behind on broadband implementation. I spend 6 months in France in 2014 and found home internet to be equivalent to what I have tofay in a well-connected city in the US. As with our medical care, public health infrastructure, and overall citizen safety net, our internet connectivity is an embarrassment.
5
@ELS This country is a failure and failing further and faster under this president.
I'm the head of a small department of clinical psychology in the Milano area. The coronavirus spread brought us to do online with zoom in few days and reading your paper and comments what remains to me that I will try to use is:
the teaching changes and the teachers have to adapt to a new teaching modality
chatting with students in between is so important
you can not concentrate to the few students who are always in the first line
it can be almost useful as a normal learning lesson but you will always miss the personal touch of staying together in corridors and classrooms
thank you very much
4
Creating an online course is no problem: most universities are very well positioned to do this. The problem is shifting all course material online by the end of next week. Staff has already designed coursework and exams for in person classes, and these are by and large not transferrable online. The extra work of creating new content (and grading it) will fall mostly on teaching assistants who will almost certainly not be paid for the additional hours. Furthermore, it takes time away from their research, which for scientists is already a mounting disaster because labs are shuttered. For grad students and post-docs, who have temporary contracts, and need publications to get the next job, this disruption is similar to other gig economy workers. Higher education administrators need to recognize that this is an industry, like any other, which will be severely disrupted in unequal ways.
8
@Allison No, shifting to online is hard and will be fraught with errors from malfunctioning computers, internet and under-trained staff and students. It'll be a lot of "can you hear me now?" type nonsense.
Online teaching requires much thought, much planning, much creation of video, graphs, interactive materials, feedback loops, tracking and scoring.
If you just put a person in front of video camera and deliver that over the internet, you aren't do online education, you are doing remote education.
1
I'm a professor in an institution currently undergoing this transformation. After taking workshops on Zoom I definitely see its usefulness and limitations. One of my concerns is that courses can't just be moved from the classroom to an online platform. Courses have to be designed from the ground up for online presentation. Another concern is that we really don't have the tech support staff for full online education. Our tech support is designed mostly for classroom teaching with some online components and some fully online courses. When I am teaching online, I become the lecturer, the writer, the editor, the producer, the videographer, and the audience manager, all at the same time. It's like being a one-man band. And I am in the process of learning how to do this as I teach. It's quite daunting. One top of that, I care about my students--their health, their anxiety, their capacity to manage the course on their end. I could use a technical assistant to help manage the technology, because there is no way I can learn and manage all the functionality of the program while also providing my expertise in the classroom. I am just coping for now, trying to learn the best I can, and keeping my anxiety under control.
13
Online education is the wave of the future. Tragic as the current situation with Covid-19 is, it may bring that fact home.
We cannot continue with the enormous burden of student debt now associated with antiquated teaching methods. We must find a way to make access to what professors have to offer more in line with what students can afford to pay. More imaginative application of technology is the answer.
4
The medical school for which I work had two days to adapt to online learning. I was highly skeptical we would succeed; however, we adapted seminars and small group learning with few hiccups using Zoom technology. We older professors underestimate the facile nature in which our students use technology. Though none of our students had previously used Zoom they banded together to "test drive" the technology before their first online module. These students have grown up with technology and do not fear its use. We had administrative support during the two day pilot phase. The support was far more important for the faculty than it was for the students.
7
In online classroom discussions, it's too easy for one or two students to dominate and direct the flow of discussion. They may move swiftly on from a topic before others can comment, or ask a question. In real classrooms, it's easier for professors to ensure this doesn't happen: the show of hands indicates who has something to say.
Having tried both methods, as a student and as a teacher, I'd go for the live classroom every time.
10
Not sure the fancy LMS systems work in an all online world. Schools have to create a social environment, not just an information one.
This is especially true K-12, where there's going to be a similar mass shift online, without the practice that colleges have. Just emailing reading assignments and a recorded lecture isn't going to cut it. Children need to participate, be heard.
Snarky comments about videoconferencing aside, those platforms were developed for business mostly. Educators need something different. Teachers need to monitor 25 children, for example. It can happen, but not on Google Meet or many others.
Forget bells and whistles. The platform that wins will deliver what educators need.
3
It seems a bit unfair to speak of "recalcitrant" professors unwilling to move to online education and in the next paragraph talk of students' challenges with online education. Online education done well has to compensate for those challenges and that takes an enormous amount of work. A professor teaching a large online course at a major university may spend 85 hours a week at it. And for what, precisely? Yes, it will suit some students, particularly well organized and self-motivated ones. Other students will just never really engage with a topic on line. The material becomes something to memorize and regurgitate on tests rather than intriguing or even inspirational. Then, after years of walking through requirements on courses they don't care about, they graduate with that fabled BA which they were told was ticket to Good Job Land but without the developed talents that will get them anything more than a job in the mail room.
11
Excellent article.
College administrators need to read it.
For example,
"But one recent study found that roughly 20 percent of students have trouble with basic technology needs. Their data plans are capped, their computers break, or their connections fail. Those with technology challenges are disproportionately low-income and students of color, who are also more vulnerable to dropping out."
Let's be very clear:
This is not at all about "technological literacy".
This is about internet access --
access to top-of-the-line connections to the internet --
top-of-the line in speed,
in capacity,
and in reliability.
Most ordinary homes simply to not have that kind of internet connection.
In addition, college campi have many spaces --
-- physically large, comfortable spaces --
for using that laptop --
quiet spaces,
with good lighting,
and good HVAC --
in dorms,
libraries,
study halls, etc.
that not only provide internet access
but also provide plenty of space,
tables,
etc.
for setting up that laptop.
Most homes do not have those kinds of spaces.
Further, most homes must be shared with other famili=y members --
siblings and parents.
Emergency or not,
"resdential colleges"
are shoving students onto their families.
Are the colleges going to make comparable sacrifices?
e.g.
Are the colleges going to reduce or refund tuition fees
which not only cover professors compensation
but also normally cover wonderful facilities --
facilities that will now be denied to the students?
8
@sam finn -
Most students don’t have enough money to pay for their college’s tuition. So, they go into big debt, else they work low-paying college town jobs; or both; emerging with their nice, gold embossed paper “sheep's skin” (mine is hanging right across the room, on the wall) after being thoroughly exploited, and deeply in debt. That debt creates its own terrible problems down the road.
2
@sam finn I agree that most students don't have access to the sort of facilities that online education demands, but this isn't about ideal or even good circumstances. This is about dealing with an emergency.
Also, in the case of most state schools, tuition doesn't even meet the costs. Those facilities aren't being "denied" to students, unless the coronavirus is standing there in the middle of the quad.
Online college education may not be optimal next week, but there is no reason that much of college can't be conducted virtually. Live-in colleges are a fantastic luxury, but they are a financial hardship for many who are saddled with a lifetime of debt.
My son, who just returned to California from New York after Columbia went online, spent 3 years at the Stanford Online High School, where online education was conducted at a very high level with vigorous discussions in all the classes--to my surprise. He and his classmates were completely at ease and some might have participated more than they might have if in a traditional classroom. The technology is there. No question, laboratories and arts still benefit from a brick and mortar environment.
What is even more amenable to a transition to the virtual are business and professional meetings and conferences. It is not longer necessary to travel across the country, using a car-year's worth of carbon, to meet with someone or listen to a presentation. After the next few months of virtual activity, businesses may realize that all of that expensive travel wasn't worth it.
9
@Gerry Gollin —Gerry: I hope that teachers at Stanford Online High School make some videos/blogs to help the millions of teachers and profs get ready for Monday. Your son’s experience sounds great, and it also seems like he is well positioned to finish out this school year. Thanks for sharing.
G. Gollin—What you say could be true if teachers simply stand and deliver a lecture. Except in certain courses, a good teacher observes and interacts with the students from moment to moment, encouraging new perspectives and ideas. It’s almost impossible to create the kind of experience that makes a student look forward to the next class in an online course.
The last thesis I wrote was on the Future of On-Line Learning.
Though the professors in the department and the
outside reader thought traditional brick and mortar
colleges had nothing to fear, I predicted that most of the
would close in twenty years, ten years later a 15 on the
Seismic Scale of College closures has hit.
When the first:
Steam Engine
First Telegraph,
First Moving Picture,
First automobile,
First airplane,
First radio,
First television -
humans vastly underestimated
their impact.
You can watch the change in On-Line Learning if you watch four videos of a Philosophy course being taught:
One is a professor sitting and talking and talking and talking, mostly about how he was the brightest graduate student and then occasionally wiggling his rather large nose,
occasionally he talks about Kant.
He never writes on the board.
No questions are asked.
The next is of a classroom lecture
you just see the professor lecture,
he writes on the board occasionally.
Questions hard to hear.
The third is of a professor lecturing,
but his power points are cut into the presentation
and he has integrated his teaching
methods into what helps his On-Line audience.
Questioners heard but not seen.
The last is Harvard's Justice course
where professional cinematography and editing is used.
Students are given a microphone to ask their
questions on camera.
The future is brilliant Lecturers
and dozens of assistants
to do all the grading and answering of questions -
On-Line.
6
@John Brown —interesting. What this shows is that professors need to help integrate what they do with the tools that exist, and perhaps make new tools specifically for profs and teachers.
1
@Minmin
It takes a lot of work to prepare
an On-Line course, the week or less
the Professors have will not be enough
unless you want the first or second version
of the philosophy On-Line courses I described
above.
The main thing Professors need is more than one
camera, hearing/seeing the questioner and going back over the video and adding in slides /extra explanation based on questions students may have emailed in.
1
@John Brown Wow! Won't it be great when thousands of professors are given professional cinematographers? Also, your vision of the future is sadly like the present, in which college instructors frequently need some sort of public assistance to get by.
I had the privilege of graduating with a B.A. in Ethnic and Multicultural Studies from the State University of New York, Empire State College (ESC) in 2013 after four years of online study. No class was 'ordinary,' even the '101s' were thoughtfully created. We did not enrol in American History, instead, we studied 'The Pursuit of Happiness in American History,' and it was such an engaging course, at the end, it had me thinking about running for office.
Our qualified professors were from all over the country, many of whom were educators at other distinguished institutions who needed/wanted more hours of instruction.
ESC was established for distance learning in 1971 and over the decades, they grew their best practices in order to create an educational experience which is profoundly rich and respected.
Other universities now offer distance learning and many are failing not only at the logistics but not truly serving their students because these programs may exist only to increase enrolment and revenue (I know students who felt neglected, forgotten and frustrated, ruining their desire to return to online coursework.). There is room for distance learning. It is more affordable and the only option for many of us (I am an expat living in Italy). I am so very grateful to have had the opportunity to access the open-minded professors, committed mentors and camaraderie of my fellow matriculates. We made our 'classroom' reverberate in the pursuit of knowledge. Epic. Lucky me.
5
Many aspects of traditional tertiary education are now done online in any event. While this should make it easier for students because they can access materials at any time, I think the reality is that the standard of education has gone down significantly from when I was a student in the 1990s. Today, lectures are recorded in almost empty lecture theatres and are available to students online with PowerPoint slides. Students need to be threatened with failure just to make them come to tutorials. When students come to tutorials these days most haven’t even listened to the lecture, let alone done the acquired reading, making it difficult to generate class discussion because no one knows anything. Yet, many students submit substandard work and still expect top marks and some them think they know more than their teachers. Good students will do well no matter what because they are self-motivated and want to learn. But, too many are there to just coasting and are trying to do too many other things.
9
Excellent article! Kevin Casey has so aptly written about the issues professors and students face all over the nation, as the level of disruption in education nation-wide is unprecedented.
We are truly in uncharted territory, together but at a distance.
2
Look, wonderful thing can be accomplished online, no question. But, as an instructor for many years, I can attest that there is no substitute for the classroom give and take that's possible with a committed teacher and a group of 20-30 undergraduate students exploring the age-old questions implicit in finding oneself a human being in the particular gestalt of our time or whenever.
We may need to accommodate to the demands of our current crisis, fair enough – but let's not use this crisis moment to pretend that online teaching and learning can truly replace what happens face-t-face among engaged participants in an actual room anywhere on the planet.
29
Thanks for this article. I'm recently retired after 30+ years as a full-time, tenured professor at a tier 1 University. For ca. 10 years, and continuing today, I've taught an introductory class online. The latter is a good course, and I'm delighted to see how much students grow over the course of the term. It's proof, I think, of the potential of online courses. That said, creating the course was a major undertaking. I drafted ca. 200 pages of text, and the project occupied many months. Asking faculty to simply take their classes online vastly underestimates what this is going to involve.
14
@Jean
It is going to be a disaster.
If they lecture live to an audience
how will they see the questions and respond to them
if the students do not wait until a natural pause
to ask them.
What sort of camera system will be used,
one camera, two, or three operate by competent
camera operators ?
How will exams be given ?
3
@John Brown -
The old, traditional class presentation methods must be adapted by those who are more media savvy, like the late Carl Sagan, the one who made “Cosmos”. They hated him, by the way, because he was good at teaching a complex academic subject, but they “don’t want to change the way this place works.” Not with its life-time tenure, low teaching loads, and job security. And being supported by their institution in their research. Many felt badly exploited while grad students, so senior professors insist that they have the right to exploit their’s.
@John Brown
Online software allows the teacher to see the students and the students to see the teacher as well as one another.
You press an icon to virtually ask a question. You can also ask questions in a chat box all or just the teacher can see.
Everyone will likely use webcams to begin with it; it's adequate. You can clip to top of monitor; laptops have them built in as do cell phones.
This tech was available 10 years ago when my children attended online elementary school. It's improved since then.
1
There is a need for online education at all levels of education. In addition to the problems noted above, there are enormous socio-economic and cultural differences in access to and ability with computers and the internet. Unless these differences are addressed and reduced, gaps in education and economic opportunity will persist and likely widen.
What is needed as a step, perhaps a first step, is the equivalent of the Depression-Era Rural Electrification Act (1936). We need a Universal Internet Access Act (2020) to ensure that all households have access to computer/internet technology.
7
I taught Astro 121 at ASU to 900 students. It was a disaster. Course material was fine. Software was abysmal. Grading and exams were beta-versions of three people's incompatible ideas. The whole system was a dog, and students' parents threatened legal action and for good reason. Instructors (me) were trapped. The good news, things are now much better and just in time for the virus, the bugs have been worked out, har har. Online ed can be excellent.
It's about time, & maybe this will bring prices down from the stratosphere as colleges no longer have excuses to charge what they do - the purpose of college whether it be education or marketable skill gets lost in the arms race toward nicer campuses, upscale dorms and healthclubs, & bigger administration staff. I think the public is starting to see it all as a bit of a travesty.
4
I'd argue that it is also a stretch to say that these colleges that are moving their instruction online with very few days preparation are even "conducting traditional education at a distance." Most will accomplish less than that, and I am not saying this to be critical. Online instruction is tough, few do it well, and I worry that students outcomes are bimodally distributed, w/some doing very well and some doing very poorly.
The only fair approach given these circumstances is for professors to do their best, students do their best, with both groups not judging the other too harshly, and this includes grades. Give fewer Fs ad Ds (than indicated by the actual course points' totals), curve more generously. Remind students about upcoming deadlines. Reach out to those who miss the deadlines. Try to keep students connected. And remember that if students learn a little less this semester, it is OK. We are all sacrificing something to flatten the curve.
18
Completed my MBA online via the UMASS Amherst Isenberg school. Excellent education. Yes, you need an internet connection and a computer. Distance learning is a must for both educators as well as students of all ages and walks of life.
Free internet is everywhere, and free computer workstations are around. Used laptops can be had for $100. No room and board charges either.
2
I see comments here bemoaning that higher ed is too eager to convert everything online; they're chomping at the bit to rent out the buildings; they love cutting teachers and throwing money at Blackboard so much, they'll never go back to in-person teaching after this.
If any of that were the case, we wouldn't be in crisis right now.
The reason my own college is self-imploding is because we dragged our feet on distance learning for decades. Our previous president said students always drop out of online courses, so there's no point in offering them. IT decided providing cameras and software to faculty is a waste of money. Instructional VPs told our three-member eLearning department to build an "innovation center" for that kind of thing, but with no funding for equipment or staff. Faculty trainings? What for?
Now BOOM, every class must be moved online. Right now. We want you techie types to do a Zoom thingy in three days--just show every employee everything they need to know about teaching online in two hours, 'kay?
Few of our instructors have experience with online pedagogy. Many have never used the LMS even for assignment submissions. The college doesn't have the resources or support staff to help them, much less the students who will inevitably run into technical issues, melt down, and drop out.
If the college had embraced online learning years ago, we'd be a lot better prepared to handle the current crisis.
11
I have the week of spring break (now, and I’ve barely recovered from the flu and an infected lung) to convert my two courses into online courses. I have never taught an online course, though I have used some of the tools. There seems to be no help. Oh well...at the beginning of the current semester the computer accidentally attached me to an advanced course in a totally different department to teach a subject I know nothing about (electrical engineering...).
4
Don't get fooled by colorful PowerPoint presentations. These you can google by the hundreds in a few seconds these days. What really matters and is worth paying for is the quality and motivation of the instructor the other side of the TCP/IP connection. NYU Tandon moved to online classes since last Wednesday. All the professor that was lecturing the presential classes had time to prepare were handwritten notes that he scanned and sent to us minutes in advance. The he called into the Zoom meeting. There was no video. All we had was talking about the subject while over his notes and stopping once a while to allow for questions to posed and to make sure the his phone connection was still OK. He is a true and humble expert in his field and this simple class he prepared was for sure the best online experience I ever had (I have been working for 30 years so I saw and made a lot of them). Again don't get fooled. If the online course does not support the student in all his/her needs, and if the professor can't project himself as mentor online in one way or another, it is better to go to YouTube or Wikipedia, specially if you are a graduate student and is doing all the effort to really learn and not only to get paper a nice (and sometimes handy) certificate of conclusion.
10
Working as an "instructional designer" for about 10 years in higher education, I find this whole situation fascinating. The debate of online vs. face-to-face seems like the wrong approach. It is not a zero sum binary choice, but has somehow turned into one. Where we see failure is when online course design tries to be “the classroom on computers”. It’s a different modality. However, when course design tries to hybridize the two, we start to see real instructional innovation, such as on-demand video instruction that can tutor students with difficult tasks and discussions or group activities that take place outside the classroom, but are still part of the classroom community.
What the sudden pivot to online courses, or as one Big 10 school calls it, “alternate learning”, shows is poor administrative policy towards course design and delivery. The other blind spot is seeing how some learners don’t have the bandwidth to participate, which goes beyond higher education.
Being able to interact with peers asynchronously, through web conferences, delivery speeches via video, or navigate social media are all skills that students can and should develop.
I am arguing for a push for innovation that uses the best of both online and face-to-face. This way, if an emergency shift is needed (or an individual student has to miss classes), the disruption is minimal.
14
i teach a class as an adjunct; in my professional life i am a lawyer. the need for remote learning in the current circumstances is pressing, but will likely deprive my teaching of much its usefulness. i don't have a theory to press. i don't have a view of the world. About one-third of my criminal-justice situated class relies on slides and facts. The rest, and all of the vitality of the class, relies on figuring out what those slides and facts might mean and how they could be used as we go forward in the world. I do not deny that some remote learning is needed to expand opportunity, but i fear that too much of it, even temporally, will hurt our potential to think things through. there are reasons individuals don't speak out in class, but i fear they are dwarfed by the disincentives to speaking out online.
3
I'm a college instructor caught between these two worlds. I've been receiving intensive training as part of a cohort developing hybrid courses for our department. The training and the development of a single hybrid course is a year-long, exhaustive and exhausting process.
Now, I have been enjoined to put four traditional courses online in the next two weeks. I've prepared my students as best I can, making sure they can access the LMS and supplying materials that I cannot put online, but it's going to be hard going. Some students are going to fall through the cracks.
I agree this social distancing has to occur to save lives (including mine, as I'm high-risk), but I'm grateful to see awareness of the difficulties we teachers face in carrying it out.
17
Good Online and Good Education are Mutually Exclusive. Actually I kid, but you have to be really technology savvy or have an exceptional online teacher to make it work for beginners and less tech oriented. Online eliminates the crucial question and answers--that so many benefit from what others ask. it's the essence of followup questions with a dimension of "in the moment" that you will never get online.....
4
As someone fearful of online anything- shopping, banking, social media- I was pleasantly surprised with the ease and support offered in the online college course for which I received an A.
2
I earned my masters online from a very good academic university. It was a positive experience over all but it’s not for everyone. I was a working husband with two babies, so the flexible nature was crucial. I still highly recommend brick and mortar for undergrads, though.
4
One thing not mentioned in the article about online courses is that they must be accessible to the hearing impaired and even the blind or low vision students. I work in this industry, and is the law that every student have access according to their needs. That means transcripts of lectures for the hearing impaired, and it increasingly means video description for low vision students.
Imagine a video of a biology lab class. The hearing impaired student cannot hear what is happening and isn't getting the instructions. The low vision student hears just fine, but cannot see the steps as the professor demonstrates them.
It's actually been shown that hearing students also benefit greatly from transcripts.
There are companies that provide one or both of these services, and this adds another layer of complication and expense for those who are not veteran online course creators.
12
I taught my first online philosophy courses in the summer of 2000, and continued to teach online summer school courses for the next 12 years. I was pretty good at it, but I also grew deeply aware of how difficult it is to design and deliver a truly good academic course online. And for some subjects, it is virtually impossible. There are also security issues that can be difficult to deal with (how do you know who is taking that quiz or exam online?). It's great advantage, as you suggest, is indeed access to educational resources from a distance. The demands it makes on professors' time and energy, and on the technological resources of both students and institutions, are very considerable. The rewards are much less certain. Those rewards also require a very lively agreement between teachers and their students to genuinely cooperate in the learning process. It is, I submit, difficult to use online instruction to replace the traditional classroom altogether.
21
I suspect that people who are worried about the rigors and quality of online education are missing the point. I teach college, and I know that my students (who are not wealthy) will be facing all kinds of financial, personal, and medical issues because of our massive economic slowdown.
My goal is to give them achievable, simple goals to finish out the course and learn the most essential requirements.
This isn't the time for getting fancy. This is the time for getting people through. They will have enough challenges to deal with as it is.
83
@RVC Thank you so much for this comment. I also am having to shift to online instruction, and I'm focusing on essentials: doable, accessible, humane, supportive.
27
@RVC It's all we can do. Miracles, everyday!
3
@RVC thank you! People are acting as though these kids will become stupid because they don’t have two months of face to face learning-
I am the parent of two college students. Two of the four classes they take are completely unrelated to their interests or career trajectory. The other classes are only meeting 10 more times before the semester is over.
If they have managed to learn after all nighters, with hangovers, in the middle of drama with their friends/lovers/parents, and while checking their Social media accounts every five minutes, they can finish their last ten classes online -_-
1
Thanks for the article and especially the last paragraph. It was inspirational in a time of great uncertainty.
2
When the country was in the middle of the Cold War, the government built bunkers, shelters - all stacked with medicine food, blankets in case of a country-wide catastrophe. Not full proof, of course, but it was something. The government had a continuity mitigation plan. Having squandered the peace dividend and having Wall Street launched a nuclear looting attack to our economy, no, we’re not ready for anything. That much is clear. There are no medical tests, hospital beds nor staff to care for a potential pandemic. And, no, neither primary, secondary schools, nor colleges and universities are equipped to fully deal with this crisis online or otherwise .
7
When students in many rural areas, like mine, go home they will find that their internet connections are not adequate for distance learning. That is why towns like mine are building fiber broadband networks. But there is still a long way to go before high-speed internet connections are ubiquitous and affordable in rural America. Don’t college administrators recognize this gigabit gap? What are the unserved students supposed to do?
14
@eyesopen I've had a lot of ed tech training, and technological accessibility is always a factor that is discussed. Students in urban areas often have similar problems as access is more an issue of economics than distance. Bandwidth is expensive. Equipment is expensive. Training teachers and supplying IT experts is expensive.
We need political will at the state and federal levels to make this work for everyone.
1
I taught as an adjunct for 25 years. I learned that no teacher, however gifted, can make up for a lack of student effort. I often taught a large class of law students in a theater type room with seating rising from the front row to the tenth row. Students always were concerned at the beginning of the semester about how well they would score in my class. I pointed out that they should note where they sit..front, back, our on the ends of the aisles. Where they sit was the first, and a powerful, signal of their interest and desire to participate. Those were also proxies for their preparation, which was the best indicator of their future succss.
Online classes are a wonderful, efficient and inexpensive means of disseminating information. But they payoff most to motivated students, students that have the self discipline to study, to prepare, to work independently. No teacher to nag you, no parental figure to goad you or prod you. The students that need that...and many many do.....will learn even less when the success in the course depends even more on their weakest disciplines. Sure, its easy to cheat, the bureaucracy can promote them and then declare victory (thus preserving their funding), but the students will graduate knowing nothing. And business will then have to train them, or they will be tossed out of the labor force. Eventually, they will end up at a Bernie rally decrying income inequality and student loan forgiveness.
10
@shirleyjw I was with you until those final sentences.
All students need great self-discipline. Online students need even more. A well designed and administered course -- face-to-face, hybrid, or online -- provides a framework that helps students succeed no matter what their personal failings or politics.
5
I know a dance major. How is that going to work?
14
@Kristine I know some music teachers who are using Skype and Zoom for classes.
Online education is the modern equivalent of a correspondence course. There's a reason that degrees earned remotely have generally been considered inferior.
31
@M Davis - I work with some incredibly talented, self-taught, globally-recognized, award-winning UX, visual and media designers and developers. Online education has helped many learn the skills they need to participate in higher value jobs with digital skills.
For self-directed learners, I see a lot of evidence online education is as good or better than classroom education.
5
The challenge for professors is to find the time to make syllabi adjustments and learn the technologies etc while having to take care of small children who are not in school or daycare. It’s going to be not-so-great learning however way you look at it, but this is like wartime... :-/
14
NYT,
I wish you'd provide a means for professors who are highly qualified in online teaching and learning to share our collective knowledge. It would be a much better use of your time, rather than criticizing the practice and generally demoralizing students and faculty who are trying to find the best way to keep our classrooms going in the midst of this chaos.
15
@Beanie
I have taught at the University level in the online modality for over 25 years. The quality of an online course, as is the quality of an in-classroom course, depends on (1) the course design and (2) the skill of the professor. There are many things that are better done online and many others that are better done in a classroom. Proper design of a course, any course, takes advantage of the strengths of the modality and minimizes its weaknesses. The skill sets needed to be effective as a professor in an online class are not identical to those needed to be effective in a classroom. One can learn the needed skills but one needs to be taught/shown them through proper faculty development.
As to learning outcomes, a 2010 Department of Education study (available at https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf) concluded "The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning
conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." In other words, a well designed online course promotes student learning as well as a well designed classroom course.
Two unspoken issues in this sudden movement to online delivery are (1) server capacity (including connection speed to servers) and (2) help desk support. The latter is crucial for both student and faculty success, especially if they are new to the modality.
7
@Beanie The article is not criticizing online teaching, it is making the (correct) point that thousands of professors who have no training in how to teach online suddenly have to migrate to that medium without any experience with or skills tailored to it.
1
@Beanie That's not the Times' job. Go start a Facebook group or something.
There’s a great scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid where Butch and Sundance are cornered on the top of a gorge with a raging river below. Butch wants to dive down into the river, while Sundance argues to shoot it out. Finally Sundance confesses that he can’t swim. Butch laughs and says, “Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you!” They then yell something that is bleeped on TV as they jump together into the river.
Mr. Carey really knows his stuff, and every one of his observations is on the mark. Yes, this won’t work smoothly. Except this is a “the fall will probably kill you” moment. We’ve already made the decision that we won’t hold face-to-face classes. So we can either abort the semester half way through, or we can do what we're doing—call on the faculty to switch as best as they can into a technology-enabled mode.
So look on the bright side. For many if not most professors and students this WILL work. One thing that will enable this is that the use of learning management systems such as Canvas has been universal among students for some time, and almost universal among professors. So almost everyone is already posting readings electronically, hosting online discussions, allowing “papers” to be submitted online, etc.
And, we can allow this experience to serve as a “pop quiz” on how we’re doing with learning technology, both in college and in K-12. OK, we won’t ace the quiz, but when the smoke clears we’ll have a much better idea of what we now need to do.
8
Online coursework is a risk mitigation necessity due to the pandemic. Snarky reporting on the negatives is SOP for the NYT, but of little value. ( Their data plans are capped, their computers break, or their connections fail. Those with technology challenges are disproportionately low-income and students of color, who are also more vulnerable to dropping out.). Should we instead let the 20% be exposed to COVID19? I support my children’s university’s decisions in putting personal and societal safety first. And they ain't Harvard or MIT.
3
Might we use the emptied campuses to quarantine people, way spaced out? They have the requist food sevices etc.
6
Can a student pass their physical education requirement on-line? Do you have to wear your gym suit?
3
In my freshman year, my psychology 101 course had 800 students in an auditorium with 300 other tuning in via CCTV. That was in 1967.
If that is not 'distance learning' I don't know what would be.
Look, it's all about 'getting in' (Rick Singer I'm looking at you) not actually about what you learn.
In the really old days you looked at the number of the books in the library and the star faculty (their course taught by TAs).
Today, any student can get all the info from Google including the 'Star' prof's views on xyz.
Columbia University, my alma mater has a vidoe course which allows you to get a masters without attending.
https://cvn.columbia.edu/program/columbia-university-computer-science-masters-degree-masters-science.
Of course, you have to pay for the degree (proctored exam).
So you see it all boils down today to 'getting in' and then taking exams.
We can do all of this online
9
This author knows what he is talking about. Having been on both sides of the desk, both literally and metaphorically; on-line education is far from perfect. I just finished taking one distance course from the student side, and am half way through another. They're not bad, but far from a perfect learning experience. For instance, there's no way to handle my fundamental questioning of which answer is really "true," and which one "false."
Of course, what happens in the classroom doesn't necessarily approach that, either. But sometimes it does, when there's magic between prof and students, unplanned ed new ideas introduced or even co-created, curiosity catalyzed, possibly a student motivated to make the subject a part of their future lives, even if the prof never finds out. Plus, these days there's an opportunity to model civil expression of differences, something badly lacking in society.
And then there's the opportunity for fortuitous connections in the hallway before or after class, or the prof seeing an opportunity to utilize something seen while walking to class as a useful prop.
I'm not sure there's much thought on how to even approach these admittedly rare learning goals at a distance. Plus, with the latter, while supposedly "frictionless," you have to worry about lost connectivity, sticky "L" keys, barking dogs.
Still, the times are calling for distance. I just hope it's done with modesty, not with the typical spin, and as a learning experience for all concerned.
5
@Matt Polsky
" For instance, there's no way to handle my fundamental questioning of which answer is really "true," and which one "false.""
That's an issue of course design, not learning modality. In my courses there is extensive asynchronous discussion of course concepts and questions along the lines you raise. Depending on the course level, the nuances of concepts may be as important as the concepts themselves. Additionally, in many disciplines there are "unsettled issues" for which the best we can say is that "it may be A or it may be B (or even C, D, etc.), but the data so far do not provide a clear answer."
2
Having received both a traditional classroom education and earned a degree while taking largely courses on-line, classroom learning is better, hands down.
On-line is affordable but that is about the end of its advantages. What's missing is the interaction with the professor and other students. And when you're stuck, struggling with a difficult problem, you are really stuck and alone.
On-line is great for older students who can't uproot their lives, move to a college town, and live in a dorm. But it is a virtual education. Close to reality, but not quite like the real thing.
14
@Garth
"What's missing is the interaction with the professor and other students. And when you're stuck, struggling with a difficult problem, you are really stuck and alone."
That's an issue of course design, not learning modality. Interaction among students and with the professor is in all the online courses at teach at the University level. That it was not in the courses you took is a failure of course design at the university at which you were enrolled.
The online education push is the perfect metaphor for the Trump administration - lots of talk and promises, mostly one-way communication, and blame the people who don't share the same vision of what's good for everyone. Everything will be just fine! (Right? What could go wrong?)
20
It's funny that my requests to teach online classes have been consistently turned down because I have not taken a series of classes for certification---a process for which I'd receive 0 compensation. As an adjunct who works for little more than minimum wage with no benefits, I would never have worked on certification without compensation or assurance of a job or a contract even if I were to get an online class.
Now I have one weekend to transform myself into an online instructor, likely for well beyond the two weeks administrators seem to be planning for.
14
@DMS
"It's funny that my requests to teach online classes have been consistently turned down because I have not taken a series of classes for certification---a process for which I'd receive 0 compensation."
As noted by Louis Pasteur, "Fortune favors the prepared mind." Perhaps taking those classes, even without compensation or promises, might have led to a yes answer to your requests.
@Dave
Perhaps doing the right thing from the beginning and paying notoriously under-compensated adjuncts for the time required for certification would have allowed this emergency switch to all-online instruction go off without a hitch. But that's not what will happen now, and all because of people like you who think adjuncts' "pay" is a non-issue.
15
@DMS yes, we’ll put. I had the same sort of experience.
I also had to ask: why did regular permanent faculty want the online courses? They took the “certifications,”
often on release-time from their full-time course loads. The pay was somewhat less than what they received for their regular courses. Often they were taking the online assignments as overloads.
Now, I once met a permanent faculty member who was teaching a mix of online and f2f courses-ten in all! In one semester! This prof btw didn’t believe in the “grade system”
No doubt an outlier, but...
I don’t know what the mix is- A little more money? (Well, with 10 courses a semester maybe more than that). Love of online tech? (Sure) Ability to work from home?
This latest golden opportunity for the online cartels is wearying to so many of us, adjuncts or not. All I can see is a crummy education, “delivered” by a hodgepodge faculty with a weird mix of motives and interests, or needs, and all of it increasingly surveilled by armies of sub-deans.
But now I must talk to my iPhone and post the results for my suddenly online students.
Please don't speak for all professors. Some (if not most) of us have been training to teach online and have already been offering either fully online courses and/or hybrid courses.
We benefit from strong computing and instructional support and well, we are in academia because we love to learn, so this is another learning experience and we are embracing this opportunity to not only maintain the academic integrity of our courses, but to explore innovative ways to be effective and engage our students in meaningful ways.
Also, in this particular case, we already know our students since the semester is half over, so it's a different situation than starting a new class fully online at the beginning of the semester.
And yes, there are lots of ways to personalize online instruction.
3
This is so true. Suddenly, professors must offer a course online without any real training or preparation to do so. It may be essentially a Skype course, which is not going to work as well as an in-person course. But there's not much choice but to go this route for now and try to make the best of it.
14
@Neal Obstat No, it's not. We've been teaching hybrid and/or fully online courses for years now. This is nothing new.
2
@Haumea YOU have been teaching hybrid and/or fully online courses for years now. In my experience as a staff person in academia (at a Research I university, no less), many faculty have little to no experience teaching online, and will struggle mightily with this transition.
7
@Haumea No, "we" have not. Please speak for yourself only.
5
There will be a forced evolution of techniques and technology. Because there is no alternative, students and faculty will find ways to make the systems work. Sometimes they won't. Some promising ideas will turn out to be duds. And in business and industry, the same thing will occur. This is what is called, sardonically, a "learning opportunity."
One of the lessons that will be reinforced is the necessity of making high-speed internet available to everyone.
Like a war, this epidemic will result in accelerated innovation. Unfortunately, this will not be the last epidemic, and there is nothing to say the next one won't be much worse. We have to be able to act much more rapidly and more comprehensively. This will push automation, the evolution of self-driving vehicles, and of course changes in education and training.
I hope that the people in charge of responding to this crisis, in education and elsewhere, are taking notes on how to do it better next time.
How will it all turn out? I haven't the damnedest idea. Too many complex and interrelated systems and people are involved. It's going to be interesting.
7
@writeon1
"One of the lessons that will be reinforced is the necessity of making high-speed internet available to everyone."
Absolutely critical if we expect students to get any benefit from online instruction.
6
Online education works only when the will to learn is strong. I find the same issue in business meetings that we do online.
10
@NorCalGeek
"works only when the will to learn is strong."
Equally true for in-classroom courses.
1
I'm currently getting my master's from NYU and the transition to online learning has been pretty awful. I mean, on a technical level, it has *mostly* worked fine. (I've experienced a number of technical connectivity issues on my end -- Spectrum internet is not great!) But for our program, so far about half of the classes have become very useless via remote learn. There is just no substitute for in-person classes when dealing with the performing arts.
21
@Julie Or the visual arts.
1
This is long, long overdue. Ten years ago, you could see a future where there would be perhaps five top general university lecturers for a given subject, with videoconferenced small group discussions and submissions to a remotely located set of TAs. The intensive, in-person, high-labor approach to higher education is the reason our educational costs are astronomical without any obvious benefits in bringing along a smarter, more educated generation of college graduates. I know many love to think that Dead Poets Society, Goodbye Mr. Chips and History Boys are the models for inspired learning and teaching. Most forget those were high school students, and in any event, most people never have those kinds of experiences as older students (and even if they do, it is not obvious that benefits outweigh the costs). Graduate school and work are admittedly a different matter. But there will be a lot fewer PhD candidates pursuing a college professorship in this kind of future.
2
@madmax159: I cannot even begin to express how wrong you are. It's not the costs for the professors that are driving the costs of education; more than 75% of classroom learning at US colleges & universities is provided by adjuncts who in general receive no benefits & work for wages that work out to be less than the minimum wage. At present the pay that an adjunct gets to teach a three-credit course is in the $2,500/3,000 realm. I'm not a college professor or adjunct, but I do teach on a college level & am very familiar w/what goes into preparing for even just one lesson in one class. Many of the adjuncts I work w/teach multiple classes at multiple different colleges & universities to try to make ends meet. And getting back to your comment on astronomical college costs, you might not be aware that college administration jobs have increased by something like 40% over the last quarter-century or so, while numbers of teaching faculty have remained the same or dropped. When college administrators decide that a DIII school's priority is to have a brand-new sports stadium over refurbishing 50+ year old classroom buildings, priorities are badly misplaced...& that's not a decision made by the teaching faculty.
17
Nearly 20 years ago, The Gates and Hewlett Foundations, made a grant to a small group at Carnegie Mellon University, establishing the Open Learning Initiative (known as OLI). From this investment came mountains of data that was used to develop learning platforms that “embeds the learning process in technology” (to quote the article) and built algorithms that deliver “The long-sought-after dream of technology-enabled education is to build machines that can assess these differences, react to them, and give students a better educational experience — personalized to what they know and need.”
I disagree that
‘There are decades of research in this field, and many promising theories and tools, but as of yet no breakthrough technologies in terms of cost and student learning.” The decades of research existed to build OLI, a modern technology with an easy-to-use course builder to enable any school to input their lessons and output a ready-to-use version of their course intended for use for online, traditional, or hybrid environment. What has not to-date existed is the motivation of any administration to invest resources to push through the meaningless objections of the old guard educators and push them to adapt and adjust to the changing times and new modern tools that will not replace educators but make them more efficient and effective. Oh the irony that even CMU, host of the treasure that is OLI has never really implemented it across their catalog in any meaningful way.
3
Contrary to almost every statement in this article, most US universities have for over a decade made contingency plans to move their entire curriculum online in the event of just such an emergency.
Will everything work as planned and move ahead glitch-free with the same quality of instruction and learning experience as in a live classroom? Of course not. But are most higher learning institutions "Ready for Big Migration"?
Actually, Yes.
4
@DLS "US universities have for over a decade made contingency plans to move their entire curriculum online in the event of just such an emergency."
As someone who has actually taught at several US universities, I can tell you this is false. If the contingency plan is "buy a subscription to Zoom or Skype", then sure, but you are flat out wrong if you think it's more developed than that.
13
@DLS Nope. One thing that became painfully apparent was that my University had NO contingency plan and has been scrambling to suddenly move curriculum delivery and testing online. It's not a pretty sight, and definitely not going smoothly. Why would it?
4
There are A LOT of challenges to converting courses designed for face to face delivery to being delivered on-line.
However, I am heartened by the efforts of my university (Fairleigh Dickinson U) leadership and faculty colleagues working together to create a great second half of the semester for our students.
We can't recreate everything, but please know that so many dedicated faculty members care A LOT about doing right by our students/your children.
19
Many schools operate on a quarter system calendar, where there is a whole academic term after spring break. Some of these are prestige schools, such as University of Washington, University of Chicago, Dartmouth, UCLA, and Northwestern University. These schools are proposing to conduct a whole term by distance learning. This cannot go at all well. I anticipate demands for refunds of spring quarter tuition, especially at the costly elite schools on the quarter system.
13
For years, ed-tech companies with enormous resources have been shaping the discourse of academic administration with the aim of lowering the cost of expertise while capitalizing on the potential growth. We may look back on this epidemic as the turning point where online education became the primary mode of college access for the rabble while the wealthiest ten percent or so (including the children of the ed-tech profiteers) continue to send their children to elite brick-and-mortar schools, complete with all of the social connections, varied campus events, nuanced and truly interactive pedagogies, and personal relationships with faculty necessary to propel them to the high paying and high status they aspire to. And we'll see, that was the plan all along.
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@CraiginKC
It will be how college was before World War II
and the GI Bill.
1
It's a libertarian fantasy - one instructor teaching 25 classes online. A couple of years ago, there was a polling of CEOs from the Forbes 500. Overwhelmingly, the skills they sought in employees were the ability to think creatively, and an ability to work with a diverse group of people. You don't get either online, and you don't get much of either in a strictly STEM environment.
35
I've sold & been using webinar / online tools for over 10 years.
If the task is to sit like a bump on a log & pretend to absorb yet more "cartoons for adults" (PowerPoint decks) the tools are acceptable.
For learning... looooooooooong way to go.
25
Gee, the intellectual crowd is happy to see every other field taken over by computers/internet-but they "can't be replaced" in such a manner.
If anything, posting one very good lecture online for everyone to watch at their leisure is very easy to do.
2
@skshrews
And how do you replace your fellow students?
1
@skshrews
"posting one very good lecture online for everyone to watch at their leisure is very easy to do."
Properly designed online courses go far beyond that. In my courses there are questions/issues for discussion to which students must respond and then engage in further discussions with their classmates and me. There often is a more in depth paper due each week as well in which students are expected to provide a summative discussion of the course concepts covered in the week. In addition, I can provide a variety of supplemental resources and sources to enhance student learning. As noted in another post, success in student learning outcomes depends on both the course design and the skill of the professor (in addition to student motivation/effort) whether the course is online or in-classroom.
1
@Sonja
You have online discussion rooms.
Question sites and lots of Graduate Students
to answer all the questions.
1
On line learning has created a second class higher ed system.
Would wealthy families - the ones who attend Bowdoin and Tufts - stand for such a thing in non-emergency times? Absolutely not.
17
I would have appreciated a link for this observation: "the popular idea of individual 'learning styles' has been largely discredited by academic research." Is this as much the case as Carey claims?
8
@Shane "Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence" in Psychological Science in the Public Interest is an excellent article summarizing the lack of evidence for learning styles.
3
Please do not spread the myth that catering to learning styles improves learning. We have our preferences but they are based on content. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/557687/
University of Virginia Cognitive Psychology professor Daniel Willingham has, among others, done some solid research debunking the theory of learning styles. If you search for his work on the internet, you’ll be off to a good start.
1
A very good article. One additional point: under normal circumstances, many people who don't have reliable personal Internet connections go the library. But the libraries are closing, too.
17
Some skills have to be learned in person. The psychomotor skills involved in medicine, nursing and other disciplines cannot be taught exclusively online. They form a part of every semester of learning. How now?
20
Online courses are good for first or second year survey courses but are not a choice for courses that are teaching skills, like nursing, social work, and occupational therapy.
College is best as a whole experience, not just a lunch ticket to a job.
12
@nora m
I see your point -- but from experience, I can tell you that first and second year survey courses teach some of the most essential skills: how to read, how to study, how to learn. Online courses are great for adults who need a good introduction to a subject and who already know how to study and to learn. But that's about it.
10
Not so easy as that. Online coursework opens up higher education to more students, not less. The privileged may be able to afford on campus tuition and housing, but many many others simply cannot. And it opens opportunities for those who have to keep a day job. Brick and mortar campuses are by no means more supportive of low income students.
12
@KJ
Brick and mortar campuses SHOULD be more supportive of low income students, and would be if we, as a country, valued education. College costs in the U.S. are vastly higher than in many European countries, and in the long run, our ability to have a flexible, robust economy will suffer because of the inequality in education. And I'm pretty sure you wouldn't use a lawyer who got their degree online.
13
My engineers continue their education online. Brick and mortor bettet experience but elitist to shun other methods of higher ed.
2
Online testing is very feasible. From my experience taking online classes, all tests were open book AND time limited. The time limit allowed for testing all basic knowledge without allowing the time to search the book for many answers.
3
@PB
Yea, open book! It means you don't have to memorize those pesky facts. "Say, doctor, what does this medicine do, exactly." "Uh, let me look that up."
2
I am a professor at a major research university. A significant number of courses in my school (may not apply to other schools on our campus) were already, at least partly, online. Which made the campus' decision to go online in the spring quarter with two weeks notice somewhat easier for us, but still, given the sudden scale, quite challenging. In the short run, what you're going to see is faculty teaching in empty classrooms with the class being live-streamed and recorded for subsequent viewing which is a big plus. Videoconferencing and learning management systems are essential and will help maintain ongoing engagement and Q&A with the students.
While there is no question you lose some positives, especially around interaction and figuring out in real time if students are keeping up and in helping them stay motivated and interested. On the other hand, we've learned that online courses have advantages too. It requires faculty to be more structured both in dissemination and in testing learning. We are now working with instructional designers, who are incredibly helpful. I would argue that that this process makes most of us better teachers. Prior to now, we engaged infrequently with instructional designers.
All in all, this is a necessary step to flatten the curve. There may be some bumps in the road, but classes flop quite often in the traditional world of teaching too. We'll get through this, without too much loss to our students, and perhaps, good outcomes.
12
@California Dude How does one do science labs?
Also I see many advantages, especially after Biology Discussion sections I taught at 7 am, 8 am and 9 am.
Participation increased with hour; and one student evaluation (from 7 am) compared me to a zombie.
I was.
7
@Ivy I don’t teach science though I studied science in college. I don’t see a good solution. However, sadly, I think this pandemic is going to be far worse than people realize and we’ll have to accept weak solutions.
Of course all will not be perfect at first, but what an opportunity to get much better at distance learning techniques and technology.
All the bottlenecks, issues and best practices can then be assembled, addressed and learned from for the future.
4
@Si Seulement Voltaire
Watch depression rates rise among young adults as the country moves to an increased use of online courses. The lack of socialization will be killing.
4
There's a very real assumption of privilege in assuming that all students can get online and work online easily. Those assumptions include but are not limited to a student's internet access away from campus, either because of financial constraints or because of limited or poor service due to region or provider, regular access to a functioning computer, a quiet or otherwise focused workspace away from school, and varied levels of digital literacy/skill within a classroom population. As my students might say, "just saying!"
16
I've taught fully online and in person. I hated teaching online. It took away everything I love about teaching: the interpersonal interaction, the energy from students, the unexpected insights from class discussion that taught me something new.
128
@prof
At my college, about 47% of students have taken an online class. Almost 0% take all of their classes online. That should tell us something.
12
@prof That's why my department is developing hybrid courses. My course will be 50-50, with one face-to-face meeting each week and the rest online. The classroom meeting will be "flipped" because the students will be doing the reading and most of the work online before coming to class. I'm curious as to how that will change the dynamics.
4
Spring break starts today for my son, but his school has opted to close for the remainder of the semester and complete classes online (I decision I fully support).
In his case it will be especially interesting to see how it all works out, as his college is a music conservatory. Fortunately for him, most of his coursework this semester is in composition and film-scoring, which I assume shouldn't be TOO difficult to do online. His private weekly private piano instruction may be trickier (he was also wondering how they will teach his conducting class!).
Had this happened when he was in high school, and dealing with a late-diagnosed mild learning issue, I would have been really worried about his ability to manage his time and stay organized. Fortunately, he's VERY focused on his musical education, and I'm sure that he will handle it very well. But for others who might have similar issues it's going to be a difficult transition.
His school may actually be better prepared for this than most, as it has had a thriving online education component for a long time. It's also helpful, I think, that he's had much of the semester to get to know his professors and vice versa.
For students without access to the necessary technology, I hope that we can all make an effort to help where we can by donating computers, etc. I wonder if a fund can be set up whereby donations can be made to provide help in paying for decent wifi, etc. These are bizarre times, and we need to help each other.
10
@NGB I know that my college is keeping Disabled Student Programs & Services (DSPS) open. Those tend to be one-on-one sessions and therefore not so likely to spread infection.
1
Call me a boomer but back in my day...I learned how to be a gourmet cook by watching Julia Child every afternoon. I must have learned something because when I went back to college to study chemistry, I had a first lab test. And I literally treated the entire test like it was a Julia Child episode complete with her accent. The lab director offered me a job in her lab on the spot.
The last few years, I have been studying recording engineering. I went to a local college for a while until I got very sick and had to drop out of college altogether. At least 80% of what I have learned, I got from 2 different Youtube channels. One is a master producer/engineer with awards up the ying-yang. I have asked questions and he has almost immediately responded to. There was no one at the local college with his experience and he doesn't teach at any university so if I want to study with him its either online...or move to L.A. and try and become an intern working for free.
As for lectures? When I did go to recording school, I took a summer class in theory/piano. Only about 7 students ever showed up. And being the oldest in the class, I quickly took over and made it my own private tutorial for the summer. I suggested to the professor years ago to put a webcam on a tripod in the back of the room and record/upload the lectures for the 43 or so students who couldn't make it to class due to sunshine in Seattle.
We got to the moon and back without a phone app - we can do this.
15
@tom harrison
That's great, but what happens when you're actually standing in front of a mixing board that you've never once touched
2
Actually, it very much depends upon the student. Self-directed, highly motived learners can definite get a good bit if not all of their education on line. However, there are people who need peer support and more hands on approaches to learning. But think of how the cost of higher education could be reduced through on-line learning. Also, it would reduce the need for housing on campus and the associated cost (you know those thousands in “fees”). It would also facilitate education for those who need to work while in college. Not for everyone, but had it been available, it would have worked great for me,
7
@T Smith
My neighbor took an online degree. He tried to take statistics but failed it, as he might have anyway, but there was very little direct instructor interaction that could have made a difference. Some folks really need that.
12
@T Smith It is a common fallacy that online education is cheaper. A few decades worth of research has shown required infrastructure, training, etc. is actually very expensive. And there is actually a lot lost that people who teach online all the time, like myself, are in a constant battle to attempt to recapture.
11
@T Smith
Every student needs peer and professor support, even the straight A students. Support isn't always academic, sometimes it's just listening, sometimes it's pointing a student in the direction of mental health services. Sometimes, in my experience, the most seemingly self-motivated students are in many ways the most depressed, especially if that self-motivation comes from having really intense parents.
10
Having taught extensively online at multiple universities, I know full well that the transition from F2F to online is neither quick nor easy.
Online teaching and learning can be richly personal, deep and peer-interactive for instructors and students alike, but effectiveness requires extensive training, practice, acclimatization and tolerance for disruption. It isn't achieved overnight for a short period followed by an equally sudden re-transition back to the traditional classroom.
I may not know much, but this I know like the back of my hand. I wish students and teachers every success during these challenging times and urge patience. Know that many extra hours of work will be required if people intend to manage this professional transition successfully.
43
@John lebaron So well stated! Thank you! As a fellow online instructor I too have had many enlivening and deeply satisfying experiences teaching virtually. I believe that this crisis will be a defining moment in higher education. We will see the inequities and disparities in our higher ed ecosystem. I am proud to be an alumnus of a community college and now I teach online for a community college that has invested heavily in online training and capacity building for instructors. My students are mostly first generation and come from various socio-economic and ethnic groups. Online education is the great class equalizer providing a vehicle for upward mobility for underrepresented and marginalized segments of our society.
7
The problem we are facing today. Right now, Friday, March 13 is not the debate over what's more effective--face-to-face or online instruction.
Both have their place in education.
The problem is, for example, Monday afternoon the University I teach at shutdown the campus and ended classes at 6:00 pm. Students were given 24 hours to be out of their residences. Instructors--tenured, non-tenured, adjuncts-- were told to immediately get their classes up and running online. Oh, by the way, here's a link to a video on how to do it!
Moving from a classroom teaching environment to an online environment doesn't happen with the flip of a switch.
Online teaching and learning requires different skill sets.
The online courses at MIT, Harvard, and every other college and University weren't put together in 24 hours. They were built and tested over time. And, like any in-classroom teaching, modified as needed in response to the effectiveness of the program.
A number of my students were completely panicked. Not only did half of them not have access to the software needed for the course once they left campus, many in this group didn't even have a computer at home, or at the very least one current enough that they could work on.
But my students are great. Once the initial confusion subsided, we coordinated email discussions about projects, exchanged PDF files with comments in-place, and provided some alternatives for the students without software. Okay for a couple of weeks. Long-term. No.
70
@GM
Are you suggesting that institutions should have had a contingency plan for such a crisis? But, that would have required forethought.
7
@GM "Oh, by the way, here's a link to a video on how to do it!" I SO hear you! Unrealistic expectations, to say the very least. The dedicated faculty I work with will do their best to create a good online experience for students, but university administrators needed to have an emergency plan in place. They did not, unfortunately.
4
@JenD They get paid 2-4+ times as much as we teachers do, though!
1
As an engineering student, one thing that is unclear is what to do about lab and design classes. Some classes can’t be pushed online and other require university resources. So far many of these classes appear to just be abruptly over.
19
Yes. My chosen fields of study were chemistry and architecture which, at the time, required lab or studio time. I don't imagine that the performing arts students have it much better ( how do you teach dance onli)?
11
I teach at a college which is suspending classes and moving to online/distance teaching in a week. As an old dinosaur who has never had any interest inlearning how to teach online/remotely, I suddenly have to redesign two courses half-way through the semester. This is forcing me to consider things that I've never had to consider.
For example: Once I learned about my campus's Zoom system, I thought: "OK, that's not so hard. I can use that for some of the class sessions which require group interaction."
Then a colleague asked me: "But your class is at 9:00 am on Eastern time. What will students who live on the West Coast do; join Zoom at 6:00 am?"
Uh oh, I never thought about that! And even though I attended a training session about how to use Zoom presented by our IT department yesterday, no one brought up that issue either.
It's one thing to read how-to manuals about "the benefits of asynchronous instruction"; but what we really need is people to tell us (in non-jargon): "Hey, before you do that, think about this."
29
@Paul-A
you can record your lecture.
2
@Paul-A
Use Canvas. It's simple, and you don't have to worry about how you look on camera.
1
@Bob Canvas uses Zoom. For video, it's important to be fully dressed and to make sure there's nothing embarrassing in the room behind you!
Just an observation: I see many experienced online instructors here or those who have tried it making definitive statements about how students learn and how to teach, but in my experience as someone who does know these things and works with many faculty, the great majority of faculty don't have this knowledge (even Phds in Education). I feel that it's a great mistake to believe one is an expert in teaching and learning simply because they are an expert in one (different) content area, and/or because they've taught for a long time.
15
@John
Maybe they're expert in how students learn by being around learning students for 30 years.
In my experience, an online academic environment is far inferior to a traditional collegiate environment. There is no way that the professor gets to know her or his students to the same extent as in face-to-face classes. There, the professor can easily talk to students before and after class; humanize herself or himself by remarking on or discussing humorous personal or other public events, which he or she would not do online; and get to know the students' personalities and capabilities. Faculty form informal professor-student mentoring relationships. They also start clubs and organizations with students, devoted to common community service interests not necessarily related to the course. In short, online teaching, distance learning, non-residential campuses (granted residential campuses are not always possible due to costs to students), etc, severely erode the benefits of a university education. However, in my own experience, higher administrators care vastly more about what looks good on their resumes than what constitutes an excellent education.
19
@Monsieur Wikipedia
Your last sentence is mostly true of young professors working on tenure at a university that requires publishing. Once you've got tenure, unless you're a driven sort of person, you can turn your attention towards your students. It's a lot more rewarding than publishing another article no one will read.
1
@Bob
At my college, we are required to devote one quarter of our work-time to service work, and one quarter to research. Failure to do so results in loss of merit pay and promotion to full professor. And I'm at a regional state university, not an R1 school.
Of course if rather than develop an online version of a particular class taught at an institution, they simply import a class for the same material that has already been developed one would actually realize immediate advantage. Do we need 10000 instances of English 101. A bad example because if it is a writing class, maybe yes we do. But for many other courses we only need one version, taught across the country or the world.
Higher education has to date avoided significant increases in productivity, such savings as have been achieved are mostly by substituting cheap adjunct contract labor for full time faculty with the same old teaching model.
4
@GeneD
What you're suggesting is a one-size fits all sort of class. One American History 101 class for the whole nation. Now, that'll get 'em thinking. And, for those of a libertarian bent, you'd really only need one teacher to lord over 50 different classes. Get the software to read the papers, and who needs the teacher.
I've taught online and in person courses for graduate students for years. In the online world, it's essentially a flipped classroom model where students interact with prerecorded material (readings and lectures and uploading responses that I monitor and can reply to) for half the content and then a live session in zoom to practice, digest and discuss the material together. I find it to be very effective and students get a lot out of the course. I've also taught on the ground, and I find the experience different in one main way: There is less of the fluid give and take in the online class - student responses seem to be more structured (have to raise a hand) rather than a free-flowing conversation. Sharing material, demonstrating something, watching video, having students present information is all essentially the same as in an actual classroom. And by the way, most material for courses is now online anyway, so this is less of a stretch than imagined. I am in the midst of taking in-person courses online, and I'm not too worried.
6
@Fran
You'd be worried if your passion was dance. Or studio art. Or ceramics. Or acting. But who needs the arts. It's all about STEM now. Which reminds me. Gen X went big time for MBAs in business and finance, and the country suffered a brain drain because of it. Imagine if those smart people went into public service instead. The next brain drain will be in the arts. Isn't Netflix bad enough now?
1
This article is using the imminent forced shift from classroom learning as jumpoff point for a discussion of the merits/challenges of online/learning. While this a great discussion and is unquestionably a large amount of work needed to optimize a course for online delivery, we must not lose sight of what is upon us NOW.
To slow the pandemic spread so that our healthcare system won’t be overwhelmed and to allow time for antivirals and vaccines to be developed, we are forced to stop large gatherings of people. At that point we have two choices: do nothing until we can start traditional learning next month, or semester, or next year or when? Or do the best we can and leverage a non-perfect medium that exists today? I vote enthusiastically for the latter.
Many, many of our newly anointed digital projessors will do fine and continue to impart knowledge and inspiration on the majority of the relocated students. And all will immediately be immersed in this experiment and being to learn the new skill and leave ideas on how to dramatically improve this medium going forward. As a result of this next 3-6 months, I think we will learn a lot more about online learning and its role in an inevitable future that benefits from face-to-face and online distribution of knowledge.
6
@Jim Pollock
Absolutely true. But those of use with a bent towards conspiracy theories, it seems like a really convenient way to test the waters to go "online all the time!" Now, there's a slogan that makes a kid want to go to college.
4
What company provides the best online platform?
1
@Bob
Canvas.
1
In an Advanced Placement (AP) History course with 11th and 12th Grade Students, a study was done to evaluate the impact of Visual Syntactic Text Formatting (VSTF) on Remote Learning. The first semester demonstrated equivalency between study groups.
In the second semester, in-class reading began. One group read in the computer lab with VSTF, while the control group read from the paper textbook. Quizzes were provided by the textbook company, and were administered directly after an in-class reading session.
For the first 4 quizzes of the second semester, students from both groups were first listening and taking notes from a teacher’s lecture about the section topic; then the reading was done, and the quiz came right after the reading session (LECTURE- READ-QUIZ).
For quizzes 5 through 8, the process was reversed, with students in both groups reading and taking a quiz first, and then the teacher lectured to the section as a backup (READ-QUIZ- LECTURE).
The experiment showed that, for quizzes 5-8, without the auditory, traditional instruction, the control group dropped quiz score averages, from 80 to 60 percent correct. By contrast, the students in the VSTF group maintained high quiz scores, at 80 percent correct, even without having heard the lecture before the quiz. The results are significant at a p< 0.001 level.
http://www.liveink.com/pdf/NECC%20Live%20Ink%20research%20synopsis.pdf
1
@Toms Quill
As an AP US history teacher, I am all ears. I feel like I missed your key point though. What I got from the link was that VSTF is a way of formatting text to increase comprehension? And that means what? That the sequence of instruction (where to put the lecture component, for example) wasn't as important for the VSTF kids because they had better skills? Can you explain a bit more?
@Toms Quill
An AP class is hardly the demographic of most high school classes.
@Teacher The point here is that Reading is the original technology for Remote, or Distance, (in space and time), learning. Reading challenging texts in VSTF improves one’s comprehension of the text. In a situation where in-person lectures cannot be given, and where, quite likely, a streamed or recorded lecture seems “too distant,” and loses effectiveness, then getting better results from one’s reading can mitigate the loss of the in-person lecture. The AP experiment was used to assure that the texts were truly challenging for the students, as many of a class’s better students read too well for mainstream content. Also, it is an indicator of probable benefit for actual college students. Conversely, similar experimental results have been shown with mainstream students, reading mainstream texts.
Full-time teacher at one of the Ivies here. My colleagues and I have been shaking our heads at how the University administration thinks we can "go virtual" with the snap of a finger. They also have unrealistic expectations about online testing. Academic integrity will go out the window for many students (not all) when there is no proctor present. My University never invested in remote proctoring and now we will see the results of that decision. Faculty are working many extra hours (uncompensated, of course), trying to move our courses to the online environment, while also trying to maintain a rigorous and highly informative academic experience for our students. The students deserve such an experience. We are pretty stressed about this, as are the students. We know that trying to do this in a hurry (we start back up in a week) is so far from optimal as to almost be a joke. But we will do our best, because the pandemic leaves us little choice.
For me, the upshot of this experience has been one of shock. Shock that a huge university did not have an emergency preparedness plan in place and has been flying by the seat of its pants. Did we learn nothing from natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy? Clueless administrators (or administrators in denial; take your pick) have been engaging in magical thinking, sending out optimistic emails to students and assuring them that they will still get a great Ivy education this semester. Somehow, we faculty will be expected to deliver.
162
@JenD
Of course the administration want it moved online. That way they can charge the outrageous tuition fees to an unlimited number of students, without having to pay anything extra for the "personnel" (which is just a cost in their spreadsheet to maximize their profits). Once the course is "in the can", they don't even have to pay for "labor".
28
@Chris my daughter is at an Ivy and they are planning to refund room/board expenses on a prorated basis. Just FYI.
2
@JenD
How will the courses be filmed or will it just be
the professor talking to the camera on their computer ?
Without students to ask and answer questions
during the filming of the course, when and where
will the lecturer pause to let the students catch up
in their note-taking and understanding of the new material.
1
OK, boomer. (I can hear that already)
Having attended college multiple times - and receiving multiple degrees - at brick-and-mortar institutions, I can safely say that a large part of the education was interaction with other students and faculty, both in the classroom and outside of it.
My teaching experiences at the collegiate level mirror that. Before electronic devices the students paid attention in class or they failed. PCs and cellphones appear to have eroded the learning process by creating an infatuation with the tools, and not the processes. Everything is supposed to be available for them to download at their own leisure.
"Why should I learn how to do this? I can always look it up online!" was a common refrain.
61
@Chris - I'm a boomer and have gone back to college a few times in life and can interact with students and the professor online just as easy as I am interacting with you. If I need face to face, I can ask my Samoan neighbors how to use Portal since they have evening prayers every night with family back on the island.
I guarantee you that almost every student sitting in those classrooms is quite adept at an online video game with teams and they have no problem interacting with each other.
M.I.T. offers an entire chemistry program online complete with quizzes and tests. No credit is given and there is no charge but if you want to learn chemistry its there.
I have spent the last couple of years studying recording engineering both in college and online. For a nominal fee, I could get one of the top producers/engineers to personally go through my tracks and give advice.
If a bunch of boomers could get to the moon and back without a phone app, surely we as a country can start acting more like Star Trek and less like Gunsmoke.
Signed,
Boomer who builds web-responsive websites for millenials who can't figure it out on their own...even with a phone app.
5
@tom harrison
CEOs from the Forbes 400 disagree with you, Tom. In a poll from about two years ago, they overwhelming said that the skills they need most, and most lack, and interpersonal skills - the ability to work with a diverse group of people. Gamers can relate to other gamers. But CEOs are saying they need gamers to relate to people who don't play video games.
8
Many quite rightly fear that the shift to online education will compromise quality, intensify equity gaps, and diminish experiential learning opportunities. In the mad rush to go online virtually overnight, most small classes will become videoconferences, while larger courses will consist of digitized lectures, PowerPoint presentations, multiple choice exams, and discussion forums. But online education can offer much more: Personalization of pace, content, and learning trajectory; sophisticated simulations and interactives; access to a wealth of learning tools and resources; rich multimedia; shared displays and whiteboards; sophisticated simulations and interactives; collaboration opportunities through hangouts and chat rooms; field experiences; and frequent formative assessments and nudges to keep students on track. Unfortunately, due to a lack of preparation, most students will experience impoverished examples of technology-enhanced education’s possibilities. -- Steven Mintz, University of Texas at Austin and Hunter College
7
@Steven Mintz
All true. I'm an online graduate student at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. And I can honestly say that I have interacted more with my peers virtually (through discussion boards, webinars, and GroupMe), than I ever have face-to-face. In a lecture hall, I can sit back and disengage, essentially disappear into the mass. I'm just a number. In a virtual classroom, my grade not only depends on how much I engage, but also on the quality of my engagement, the citations I include, and on whether or not I have addressed the specifics of the rubric in detail. My online education involves a much deeper dive into the course material making the assignments and work, in general, that much more rigorous. In turn, I have become a better writer, I'm more in tune with my professors, and without a doubt, I will be more than prepared for my next profession.
3
@Texas Gal
If you sit in the back of the room and disengage, that's on you. The best students sit up front. Also, you're likely to find yourself in a workplace where you engage face to face most or all of the time. It's be nice if you had some practice that mimicked the work place environment. Online doesn't mimic the work place.
1
I teach at a U. This move to online is being done to close out the term because we are in a world crisis. You cannot have tens of thousands of kids on campus in close interaction. The resulting chemistry would blow up the health care system.
What kind of testing, homework, quizzes and labs will be done remotely? We will wave our hands and say this is something.
But please, don't confuse this with real higher education.
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@pat Yes. And the social aspect, too. College is a great place for learning how to be a citizen in a society. Yes, one can read about how to be a citizen online, but it is quite another thing entirely to enact.
Not to mention the enhanced social cues and nonverbal feedback in a classroom...
16
Online classes aren’t that hard. I excelled in my online high school system with a 4.0 GPA. It teaches students responsibility because we have to teach ourselves.
Obviously many people will struggle. Not everyone learns as easily as I did through an online system. But there really isn’t no need to stress over this transition.
1
@Nathan
The question is not whether it’s hard. It’s whether it’s good.
20
@Nathan
You gave yourself away when you said online classes aren't hard. If they weren't hard and you have a GPA, you're not challenged. I wonder if the same will be true when you go to a university where you have to engage with both the professor and your fellow students.
@Bob I am at a university. Online (and homeschool) gave me an advantage because I had to learn to teach myself. Still on track for the 4.0 GPA.
I learned well through online school. Its something that worked for me. Yes there were hard classes. I had a dual credit online English writing class. Hardest thing I ever had taken in school. I'm surprised the teacher wasn't annoyed with me since I went to her office hours every....single...time.
Obviously many students will struggle to transition. Many people need the face to face interaction. But my point is it's not that big of a deal.
I have been teaching online for 15+ years (not all courses, just those most suitable to this environment.)
Given the constraints of the situation, my advice to first timers is:
1) Teach only ASYNCHRONOUS courses: students will work on assignments when it best suits them;
2) Because of 1), be absolutely ferocious about deadlines. My deadlines are always at 11.59PM of a given day. (If I wrote 12.00, AM or PM, 50% would get it wrong regardless.) No extensions, no exemptions, no make ups.
3) Don't even think about teleconferencing or uploading video lectures. In teleconferencing nobody pays attention. With video lectures you will never like what you did and waste time for nothing trying to do it better.
Finally, good luck. And when supercilious colleagues tell you dismissively that online teaching is for the lazy, ask them if they want to switch.
43
@College Prof
So do you upload lectures of some sort? Just audio? Powerpoint decks?
@ST - The best advice I got on this was to do an audio narration over a PowerPoint slideshow (Slide Show >> Record Slide Show), then ideally publish it using the iSpring plug-in. The students will be quite happy not to see your face. And if you want to fine-tune your voice you can do it one slide at a time. If your school doesn't support iSpring you can upload the whole video.
I remember a commercial for an online college that said you can now go to class in your pajamas...Okay but if you ever walked through a college campus you'd realize that the students are already doing that.
I do feel bad for the seniors that won't get to celebrate their last few weeks before graduation with classmates.
10
So-called "scaling up" will result in dehumanization the same way the 500 person lecture hall does. I created my first online class in 1995, writing the html by hand, cobbling together mailing lists and hosting services on my own. I know the challenges of teaching and learning online. Humanization and scale are inherently and fundamentally incompatible. Just think back to the great MOOC fraud and failure.
13
No. Rural America doesn't have the infrastructure for neither advanced nor elementary.
7
@Phil
It appears that Nashville lacks the resources for teaching English grammar.
Billy Preston says this best about any promised technology that the tech Wizz kids tired to fostered on us mere mortals - Will it go around in circles? Millennials ask any boomer what that sentence means.
2
@Missiandei
I'm a boomer. I know who Billy Preston is. I have no idea what you're talking about
My university has recently chosen to switch to entirely online classes for at least two weeks, and it's wreaking havoc on lab classes. You simply can't identify specimens or attend field trips online. Not only that, but medical and veterinary students aren't able to do the hands-on learning that they need right now. It's wishful thinking to say that our education in this stunted online format would be of the same quality as it would be in person.
66
@Elizabeth
You're absolutely right, Elizabeth. If you online only lasts two weeks consider yourself lucky. If it lasts for entire quarter or semester, I can only wonder if your students will be prepared for the next level.
2
@Bob I think it's highly unlikely that it will only last two weeks given the exponential increases in viral cases worldwide.
Undergraduates in the traditional age range do not learn as well online as in person. But, this is not either/or. The best learning designs, now, use a "hybrid" of online and in person ("face-to-face") learning designs. And, true, most faculty do not have good experience translating their classroom methods to an online venue. Learning is not content; this is a huge misconception. It is process: conversation, brain-storming, testing ideas and so on -- learning is a social process, not a performative process. Online is a pallid imitation of learning in person. For older students, different factors figure in.
44
Please do not assume that all or even most college instructors cannot learn and/or need "help" teaching their classes online any more than teachers ever needed "help" engaging in their profession face to face. The fact is that instead of actually hiring full-time instructors who would and could be in charge of their own "instructional design," colleges have preferred to add an entire new layer of non-teaching staff and full-time salaries with benefits to be the sudden arbiters of good education, nudging actual teachers down yet another notch into "graders" or "facilitators" who basically stare at screens and click buttons as directed by the instructional "experts."
22
I am your ideal case study, with control group:
This semester I was teaching two sections of the same course, one f2f and one online.
The f2f course was much better, students enjoyed it much more and learned much more.
The online course is adequate, but not nearly as good.
Anything they write is immortalized, and in the public domain. Socrates was right when he said he would not write anything down. Discussion is stilted for the same reason.
Most of the grading is in weekly quizzes, to make sure they are doing the reading. In f2f I can ask them...5 nod yes (and talk about the reading), 2 sheepishly say no (and don't talk).
That's not to say there's no value to online. They do learn the basics. And the ones who don't do the reading will fail. In f2f a teacher's subjective judgment just might let the non-readers pass.
26
Based on 35 years as a university teacher, I am decisively ambivalent (irony intended) about online teaching. There is no effective "one size fits all" approach to teaching online, but unfortunately that is what available technology and software packages tend to impose (granting that both have steadily improved). Online teaching seems to work well for courses involving straightforward delivery and individual mastery of content in which clear procedures and answers exist, less well for courses involving nuanced presentation of materials whose mastery requires critical engagement with multiple viewpoints. Too often, online teaching requires that the syllabus become almost a script to be followed rigidly, with no opportunity to build on "learning moments" when both students and instructor see things from a different, unexpected perspective. I don't doubt there are instructors highly skilled at online content delivery, but I am far less certain that effective teaching and effective content delivery are at all the same thing. Effective teaching is highly performative, requiring two-way active involvement of both student and teacher. Online instruction too often diminishes the student's role to that of respondent rather than participant. There is a place for online instruction, especially in the present crisis, but it imposes constraints on learning that must be acknowledged.
36
Far from being a "tipping point" in favor of online teaching, as some educational consultants, marketers, and software designers hopefully declare, this crisis will decisively drive people away from it.
Its inherent shortcomings will become painfully plain, and the accidents and glitches that necessarily come with it, though fixable, will be so maddening as to seem insurmountable.
The negative experiences generated in the coming months will set online education back two generations.
15
@Jim
Let's hoping you're right.
2
First: Being "technologically challenged" because of inferior internet capability or computer costs is insignificant when compared to the challenge of attending on campus based courses.
Secondly: On line course development will not be achieved just by having tenured professors switching from on campus lectures to on-line lectures. It will be achieved with the development of new course work that is less dependent on individual teacher/professor input.
The model of individuals paying $$$, travelling to live on campus and attending classes lectured by tenured professors or their non-tenured lower paid adjuncts is a modern day anachronism.
3
Online education is NOT preferable to learning in a class with a great instructor/professor who lectures well.
The US has online college classes which have been co-opted by educational publishers. Of those publishers, nearly zero have QU'd the content of their online material/study questions and answers. The content within their books is suspect of being wrong.
The Publisher O'Reilly is the best of all the publishers on computer programming, design, networks, and any subject which is highly technical. Though their books are expensive, are authored by PhD. level experts and have been QU'd.
O'Reilly has online classes but not with college credit.
US Colleges use textbooks marketed to them. The colleges permit the instructors/assistant professors or professors to use the online tests that the publisher creates for their "books". The online college tests' questions are flawed. The mechanisms which calculate score are broken often.
As such, the online testing puts the students in an adversarial relationship with their instructors and colleges. A student will not trust the instruction he/she receives.
California plunged into the online studies and failed to test the tester.
The students will revolt against being graded by an online testing program that was not authored entirely by their instructor.
Finding solutions on the internet which is rife with erroneous technical content is a waste of time and energy. Stick to good books.
25
@RR I'm sorry your experience has gone badly.
I have some knowledge w/online publishers' learning systems and they shouldnt all be tarred with the same brush.
It might not suit all learning styles, but educators want successful students, so responsive, accurate learning systems are a must.
We have access to personal service for any issues, usually handled on the spot, and the ability to input/edit material.
Frankly since students nowadays have access to their instructors' emails/cell numbers, educators have a vested interest in quality material and goof proof mechanics!
Online education will never be able to completely replace in person education for a couple of reasons:
1) Many instructors have not received proper training in teaching online and therefore are nowhere near as effective as they are in the classroom
2) Even the best video-conferencing software programs don't do a good job of conveying tone/body language
3) Online discussions are not as good as in-person class discussions.
There are certainly topics that can be effectively taught online...but online education is not the panacea that it's proponents often make it out to be.
29
@Matt - You have obviously never lived with a Seattle gamer:) Anything that can be done in person can pretty much be done online.
My neighbors have evening prayers every night with their family back in Samoa. They all gather around a table in front of a laptop and everyone can see everyone - body language and all. They don't even have an IT department.
2
Perhaps that's a bit cynical of me, but if the said universities and administrators really cared about the student education, they would waive the tuition charges for the next semester to allow the students to receive the education they originally signed up for. If my mechanic told me they got sick halfway through the oil change and didn't finish the job, but are still keeping my money for the inconvenience, I'd feel conned.
10
@Alexander The professor is not sick, it is that the universities are trying to prevent the students from spreading/catching a potentially deadly disease. We will finish the job, and well. Most of us are spending long hours each day in video chats with our students, helping them through problem sets and research tasks.
19
@Alexander
"Perhaps that's a bit cynical of me, but if the said universities and administrators really cared about the student education, they would waive the tuition charges for the next semester to allow the students to receive the education they originally signed up for. "
A lot of colleges and universities are really struggling financially and could never afford to do that.
6
@Engineering Prof. I am spending long hours each day in video chats with my students as well, and I hope they will find my performance satisfactory, as they have always done in the past. It's just hard to pretend that depriving them of the structure of in-person lectures, access to lab space and state of the art software that they can neither purchase nor install on their (sometimes nonexistent) computers is a problem I can fix by becoming a YouTube persona overnight. As another comment pointed out, this is an act of disservice to the students, with a subpar replacement frantically showed in place of a well-designed and tested course. And no, I'm not allowed to slip on any of my other work requirements while solving this emergency for my for-profit school.
10
Reach out to education experts in your community: The Association for Talent Development(ATD) and its local chapters are resources for how to transition educational content from face-2-face to engaging and educationally effective virtual deliveries.
2
Compared to the money saved on room and board, the cost of an unlimited data package seems trivial.
2
@Will -- Not everyone attends a college with "room and board." The CUNY system - the largest public system in the world - is an almost completely local commuter population. (BTW, there happen to be plenty of commuter colleges everywhere else too.) For some of those students, the cost of an unlimited data package is absolutely not "trivial". And when student mom and student kids, both in schools shut by COVID19, are trying to livestream at the same time, it gets tricky.
10
@Lowell
Whatever. The best data/internet package is still less than the cost of commuting, not to mention the time saved from not commuting.
1
Harvard University Extension School has online learning down pat. It's very successful with both students and faculty.
Perhaps they can be of assistance to all of us.
4
SUNY is shutting down classroom instruction and many of us have kids coming home to be part of questionable online learning.
A technological neanderthal myself, how do hands-on majors like Education, Nursing, and Engineering carry on? Where do students get tutoring? Some Old School professors have no experience with online learning.
Seniors should be rightfully concerned. Good luck to all.
22
Seems provosts are declaring victory a little too early- wonder why. Perhaps a remedial course in experimental design is in order
9
Well, only a fool thinks the right time to plan and execute an online education is in a mad panic during a pandemic. Zoom is going to fail, I suspect, when all these students attempt to use it at the same time. The Internet is likely going to slow with all the additional traffic of video/audio streaming. Ancient professors simply won't know how to use this, and we'll likely hear about lots of "can you hear me now" type stories. We'll find out Monday....
8
@David The "can you hear me now" stories are not just because professors don't know how to use the computer, but because the technology is not perfect (eg. your comment about bandwidth) and because the equipment is not always up to par either on the sending or receiving end.
8
College is a joke. Have you been inside a lecture hall at 1000 AM? it is completely empty. The students that are present are texting or on their phones. When I went to college I was expecting intellectual curiosity and seriousness towards studies. In fact most are squandering their parents money or financial aid. Make military or civil service a requirement for the first two years. At least it will reduce all the unnecessary student debt.
9
@Jonny K. Guess you have visited the wrong schools. The students at the universities where I have taught are largely brilliant, dedicated and extremely hard working. I am fortunate and proud to work with them.
47
@Jonny K What is 1000 AM?
3
@chris That could be why the lecture hall was empty then.
Given the ridiculous cost of a college education these days, I would hope that these institutions would dip into their overgrown and overblown endowments to help ensure all students have reliable internet access and a decent laptop.
Wait. Who am I kidding?
3
@Kat The universities and colleges with enormous endowments are doing fine making sure their students are connected.
It's the ones without enormous endowments that are having trouble. Which makes sense, if you think half a second about it.
14
Great article. On the other hand my provost just sent an email saying how great the 2000 zoom classes are going. I guess there must be 2001 classes
6
I have three degrees gained with traditional physical campus attendance at state universities, and one degree from a public online university (Western Governors' University, BS cybersecurity 2018). My online degree is by far the least expensive, since I was able to move at a rapid pace without paying extra tuition to do that. The WGU quality was also good, and I gained several valuable industry cybersecurity certifications along the way. I didn't need much personalization, and the available topics are limited, but if your interest is in computing technology or another WGU offering, I urge you to look into WGU. I avoided the for-profit online options; WGU was a lot less expensive.
3
So many people scorn online college classes or degrees; yet, in the real world professionals and regular employees use online classes all the time to gain certifications to move up in their jobs. I realize many of these certifications are fluff, but there are good ones (and some required for employment).
So why is that good enough for serious work, but can't be used and recognized respectfully for higher education?
4
1. I have a degree in library science that was earned completely online. In preference to my next statement, I will note that I had worked in libraries as staff or a student worker prior to that time for somewhere around 6 years. With all respect to the institution where the degree was earned, online learning is, largely, lots of busy-work and a whole lot of self-teaching. Personally, I would not hire someone whose degree was from all or mostly online courses, and I'd question most any online classwork.
2. I am finishing up a BFA in studio arts. Bluntly, there is no reasonable, much less practical, way to study (or teach, I am sure) studio arts online because it is all hands-on work. While one can set up a studio at home, it is expensive and, for much of it, requires specialized (read: expensive) equipment and furnishings (from kilns to easels to print beds), modified and installed safety items (plumbing, waste reclamation for oil-based paints, solvents, etc., proper venting, etc.), and thus, generally not practical for the budding artist or craftsperson.
As well, let your insurer get wind that you're oil painting or doing metal work, etc., at home, and you'd best be prepared for a major increase in your insurance(s), if not a cancelation for those who don't want to deal with an acetylene tank in the "shed out back".
So, this "virtual" education is problematic for certain fields, even one who focuses on drawing, such as myself.
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@DKM
"In preference..."
Well, that's pretty embarrassing. Ahem. "To *preface* my next statement..."
I'd blame it on aging, but I refuse to submit to Old Age.
Sigh.
5
I work for an online program at a highly respected, research university. I don't think anything can replace face-to-face learning, but I do think after this pandemic has subsided, we'll see an increase in colleges investing even more in IT and ensuring that all students, faculty, and staff have access to work remotely in the future. There are faculty at my university who have not been trained to teach remotely and that will to be a major problem for those having to quickly learn how to do this. I also fear for smaller colleges that do not have the tech resources to provide for all faculty/staff.
9
I teach at a community college in class only although I have taught online. While I can adapt and move to online, we need to talk more about the students who signed up for in class and are now being forced online. While I agree with the need, I do worry about the students. I intend to simplify. I cannot put up a full online course as my students did not enroll in that course. I'll make it easy to use and to learn while knowing some students will struggle to succeed. I'll devote extra time and resources to helping all my students do the best they can. Do I want to do this in less than a week? No. But it will get done. My focus, as it should be for any faculty moving online, is my students. How do I help them in this unprecedented situation. If I keep that in mind, we'll all be OK.
31
During this crisis, many adjuncts will be called upon to teach online courses. We have been in the front lines since the beginning of the revolution of online learning in higher education. We worked side by side with instructional designers to develop vibrant, content rich and student focused online courses that rivaled if not surpassed the learning objectives of face-to-face courses. Having taught online courses for over 15 years, I can attest to a time when some full-time faculty looked down at adjuncts who taught "distance learning" courses. Well, our time has come and we will meet the challenge and showcase how our pedagogical flexibility, digital know-how, and student centered approach to online learning.
18
@JRF Adjuncts have been the vanguard of teaching but they are paid poorly and are often looked down by the tenured faculty. Universities are essentially mismanaged and rely on adjuncts to shore up their budgets. Further, universities produce too many PhDs for too few jobs. The situation may get better with the increase in online teaching. I am not optimistic, though. There are too many PhDs out there hustling for teaching positions and it's a buyers' market.
7
I am a retired high school Mathematics teacher who has been teaching on-line "live" classes for the past 10 years. These are NOT just "watch and work" videos but a live classroom where full interaction among students and teacher can occur on an electronic shared whiteboard with all the features need by most teacher. Video is available so that students and teacher may see each other, uploading of documents to be shared in the classroom, drawing tools and graphing grid are included and classes are all recorded for absentees or for those students wishing to view the lesson again.
One of my hopes is that such an online classroom might encourage more personalized interactions among the teacher and the students, something,I find, often missing in college classrooms compared with high school classrooms.
I find that teaching an online class in this manner is the next best things to being in a classroom with students which certainly is the very best way to teach.
So university teachers in this environment where they teach smaller classes anyway would not have any extra time needed to prepare for such classes. They could simply continue teaching from home on the same schedule they already use and the students just come to the class using their browser.
Certainly not all courses can be taught this way but Mathematics in particular works very well in such an environment. Support for other types of classes could also be handled this way as could tutoring perhaps.
5
Holly NYC comments are spot on regarding the challenges of converting to online classes. Readers’ comments on the benefits and difficulties of distance education are all valid points. But the real discussion should focus on the immediate conversion of face-to-face courses to online instruction and learning. As a science instructor at a major university, I taught majors face-to face courses, hybrid courses and online courses. One online course typically enrolls about 650 students each semester. Adapting face-to-face courses to online instruction basically overnight is a major challenge to faculty, especially if faculty has never taught in online format. Learning management systems like Canvas and Blackboard are organizational backbones to courses, but it takes time and creativity to develop meaningful alternative curriculum. The laboratory sections cannot be replicated online and at this late date in the semester there is no catch up. Video conferencing is only one component of adapting instruction from a distance. Faculty need support too!
27
These interim situations are not really on-line classes. They are just regular classes where people are in different rooms, at the same time. No recordings, no archives, no on-line texts. You email take home exams, essays and papers to the professor. The professor sends out handouts, if applicable, via e mail prior to class.
Private firms have successfully done it with simple tools for years. The problems and prep issues occur at the student side, not the school. If a student just wings his set up prep, he will be the one that suffers.
Online college will never be as good as the real thing -- and it may never even be good.
It is a necessary compromise in quality these days, considering our economy and world.
This is a tragic reality of a world brimming with inequality.
23
I fear that my university will declare the move to online to be a great success -- regardless of the reality -- and that we never go back. Online classes save lots of money and fit the ideology that we are here to create and disseminate knowledge, and that students are passive recipients (customers) rather than co-creators of that knowledge. I think this is terribly misguided but the attractions of the revenues without the costs are, I fear, going to be irresistible to deans and presidents.
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I taught on campus at Brandeis University and at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I now teach online at Embry-Riddle. The two options were like stations on the radio dial - pick the one you like. I say were because online is now becoming the de facto channel.
To make online work, one needs:
- disciplined and persistent students
- faculty that are available
As a professor, I give my students my cell phone and tell them to call, text, whatsapp, or email. Students must feel like they are not alone and that you are walking alongside them, as it were. Otherwise, the experience will not be the same as an on campus course, especially that of a seminar-like setting, which is probably the optimal.
26
@Alf Yes, but this is still really limited in its scope. I teach an introduction to sculpture class which is now going online. We were in the middle of a woodshop assignment, which was to be turned in after spring break. I have some ideas for 3D modeling, but that's one skill in a class that was intended to introduce them to a range of very, very hands on skills. Texting, whatsapp, etc isn't useful if you don't have access to the facilities you need (a woodshop, or a science laboratory). I get that this is necessary right now and I am in no way opposed to it, but I think the reality is that some courses - my partner teaches ceramics! We're still stumped on that one - won't translate well no matter what sort of supplementary technology or materials we have available to us.
22
@Dale Agreed. You teach a class that should be presential. I don't. My classes are all "quant" so all you need is a spreadsheet. That said, the key weakness of online classes, especially quant ones, is that the problems are not refreshed every time the course is taught. This saves money but does not prevent students from posting solutions online for others to copy. I bristle at that and change my course questions every term. That's the price and I am willing to pay it. Most schools don't pay it.
9
Like most college students, some of my classes were large lectures with little interaction between students and lecturer or among students. Some lecturers were engaging, some were dull, but all could have been viewed remotely, live or on-demand. The back of a 300 seat lecture hall was already quite remote!
On the other hand, I also had some small classes with 15-20 students and a professor, with lots of engagement and interaction. Those were the best classes, the ones with questions and challenges and instruction not available in a book or set of Power Point slides. Those were the classes that taught me to think.
It is inevitable that on-line instruction will expand significantly. The current pandemic is just a big push in that direction. But, there should always be a place for classroom instruction as well.
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@MEM As a frosh at MIT, I took independent-paced Calculus and it was liberating. No internet, it didn't exist - just me in the Math Room. Calculus was the exception. The rest of the classes were large/medium/small classes taught by great researchers but mostly terrible teachers. Further, they did not want to see you - if you look at their posted office hours and you don't get that message, then maybe you are dumber than you think. So, I learned to think on my own. I can do that today online.
3
@Alf
No one has ever learned to think on their own without the presence of living, breathing, in-the-flesh fellow humans. Our minds are literally shaped by the presence of others, living as a part of a community. We would never acquire language itself any other way.
4
@MEM I am now at a 50-yr “distance” from my university experience. No question the classes I remember vividly are the 300-400 level courses where 15-25 students interacted with a fine prof. AND the teeny conversational sections where we practiced beginner-level for-langs. Of the huge core-course lectures, only those of a singularly accomplished international expert in his field – which could of course be delivered online today. However the reading and big papers I did for those courses also taught me a great deal about “how to think” – that domain is not restricted to small classes and superb teachers. Remember “reading for the law”? Many wise and accomplished thinkers of an earlier time got their education through reading and correspondence. Those lacking the motivation and dogged perseverance to learn under less than ideal circumstances will struggle, period.
1
On-line humanities professor here. One cannot underestimate the challenges to learning on-line courses impose upon students. Despite its convenience, a student must possess the diligence, discipline, intelligence, honesty, and academic ambition to succeed in on-line coursework. My experience has been that at least one third of on-line enrollees drop out, withdraw, or submit minimal work for an on-line course. In a brick and mortar course with person-to-person instructional contact, the professor can better engage and motivate more students to pursue work to successful conclusion. No number of on-line bells and whistles works as well, alas.
Institutions of higher education need to anticipate that conversion of all coursework to on-line may well adversely affect student retention, even if one assigns the very best instructors to the courses. There are indeed other important issues involved here (e.g., instructor preparation; content management; tech support; supplementary student support services; et. al.), but at the end of the day one must acknowledge that many students (and faculty) will find on-line formatting to be pedagogically too challenging and ultimately an inferior educational experience.
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@Holly Thank you for your insightful comments. As a graduate school adjunct for over 20 years, I have experienced an increase with all on-line courses, and observed similar situations with these learners. Overall, I find the more research-based and technical concepts most effective and suited for this communication style. However, may topics do not receive the depth of discussion that I enjoyed in a classroom setting (put those phones away, LOL).
14
@Holly
I write from real-time experience.
The quality of the instructional information is at issue during online instruction. College textbooks are notoriously flawed, inaccurate, factually erroneous, and so on. That fact is amplified when a college "goes with" a particular publisher which provides online tests for its textbooks. Those tests are equally as problematic as the junkie content of the textbook.
Only at very high level and expensive colleges/Universities will you find an online instructor who not only knows her stuff but knows the entire milieu of reliable technical content, which can be exhaustive.
13
@Holly
You correctly note that "a student must possess the diligence, discipline, intelligence, honesty, and academic ambition to succeed in on-line coursework" and that "at least one third of on-line enrollees drop out, withdraw, or submit minimal work for an on-line course."
These are the students that should never have been in college in the first place.
12
The university where I teach is switching to online instruction Monday. I downloaded the video conferencing program for which my institution has a license and started a session last night to do a trial run. It worked like a charm.
The real test will start Monday when I actually "meet" for the first time with students online. Fortunately, all my classes this semester are small seminars, so it should not be very difficult to handle online discussions. If all goes well it shouldn't be too much different from holding a video conference call as many businesses now do.
What remains to be seen is how well a sustained learning environment can be maintained online. I will be teaching from home, but students may be online in spaces where there are a lot of distractions. I am at once cautious yet optimistic that we can make this happen in ways that provide a good model for future scenarios when in-person instruction is complicated by severe weather, natural disasters, or other acts of nature.
19
@Metaphor: I hope that the positive experience continues for you online. I'm an academic librarian at one of the small four-year liberal arts institutions in the State University of New York system, & had a senior come to see me almost in tears. She had tried out the online system w/a seminar class & found it to be, frankly, terrible. It was text only & slow/unresponsive. A discussion wasn't possible. She's also taking a piano pedagogy class & uses a piano on campus, as she doesn't own one, & doesn't know what she'll do if campus closes completely. I don't know if things will improve in a few days; I'm hoping so, but based on how things have been going this semester already (the library staff is temporarily encamped in a building because the library building is closed due to asbestos being found just after New Year's...& many of our personal belongings & most of the library's collections are trapped in the building w/no plan to get them out anytime soon), I'm not expecting things to go smoothly.
7
I must admit. Online learning can be an efficient tool. For many students it can facilitate learning as effectively as in class instruction.
As a college student during the 70s and 80s online learning was virtually nonexistent outside of videotape recordings of lectures. Personally I have no problem with online courses, and in most cases, actually preferring the format. However many students need the hands-on tactical environment of the classroom. In addition, there are obvious examples in which online learning would be a challenge (science classes with labs for example).
Online learning can be a very efficient and profitable tool used by for-profit universities. The ubiquitous nature of the Internet, with its vast reservoir of knowledge, will initiate a societal re-examination of what an education actually entails.
This current pandemic may very well force many paradigm pedagogic shifts.
4
This is the most perceptive article I have seen on the reality about colleges suddenly moving their curriculum to an online format. You cannot move classes to an online format in two or three days.
A retired university professor
128
@MSchrock
Actually you can. There are universities that are already doing this. If the university already has the technology infrastructure in place to support online learning, it's not that difficult to video record lectures, present the Powerpoint slides for the lectures and have discussion boards where student can discuss the course material. Students can collaborate in real-time on group projects using Google Docs.
Today's students are fluent on the use of technology and are very comfortable using a variety of tools they can probably adapt better to this than most professors, who tend to be very rigid in regard to change their teaching methods.
I've actually seen this done at Michigan State University.
4
@Carl I think what MSchrock is saying is that professors cannot just take all their courses and convert them to online with the push of a button. It takes time and thought to redesign courses for online, as you know, and 2-3 days is not enough time. Yes, the technology is there. But the heavy labor still has to be done by individual faculty.
164
@Carl You are talking about one university, likely for a minority of students attending, and where planning took place rather than a reaction during a panic pandemic. Much of the online tools will be overwhelmed with so many switching to it overnight and without planning or instruction.
25
As an adjunct, I teach two courses at a small 2-year college in Florida. As of yesterday, its president resolutely refuses to close, saying that migration to online courses is being developed. I teach English Composition. It could easily be done just with email--BUT only if students are responsible and responsive. I'm 67, not a good risk group. Considering what adjuncts are compensated, I have to really weigh whether or not it's worth continuing. It's 50 students for three hours twice a week. I don't go anywhere else on campus. I'm trying get some direction from my doctor but nothing forthcoming yet.
11
@pendragn52 - MFA in Writing programs are done effectively today through email, teleconferencing, phone calls, etc. as well as classroom instruction, which is really just talking about the pieces written by their peers, why they work or don't and how they might be improved.
Good luck and stay well.
9
@pendragn52
Tell him that Google has a program that is low cost or free called CANVAS. It does have to be implemented. There is also Blackboard which I like, and it took takes a great deal of technical implementation.
But either way, there are in place active and good systems for students to learn long distance.
2
As a recently retired geology professor whose university has moved classes on-line for the foreseeable future, I am thinking about how I would handle the course I would have been teaching this term-Field Geology of the Northeast. It had 3 one-day trips, a 5-day trip (to West Virginia) and a 3-day trip (to NH/VT). Virtual is not possible, and even if it was, the person operating the camera is deciding what to "look" at, not the student (which is a big part of what we're trying to teach here). While this is an extreme example, the situation is similar for other lab and field work in other sciences. There are reasons why, despite huge efforts to "reform" the system, instruction is still taking place in much the same way it has since the first university was founded in Bologna almost 800 years ago.
99
@Larry Davis Online colleges have more than one solution to this. First, they have regular meetings in person for such things as labs and field trips. Two, labs and field trips can be done by the individual student on their own. These work.
2
@Jim Those work because they were developed that way and the students signed up knowing what was expected and there is still a field element. If my university switches to online only after our brief suspension, my dendrology lab students will not receive the same quality of instruction and will not learn as much material as my previous students. Why? Because I cannot expect them to go to our field sites and find the specimens as some students will likely be scattered all over the state and country as residence halls will be closed. The set up you're describing is not online-only, which is the situation we are facing.
17
These schools will use remote synchronous classes. That process, outside labs and performance sessions, is the same as a company’s team meeting. Remote asynchronous learning is totally different. That process is what on-line schools really do. None of these schools will do that path, not without the serious prep work. The author should make clearer the distinction.
2
@Michael Blazin Some are looking into the eventuality that internet issues, and the fact that students are spread over many time zones, will not allow for synchronous classes. I imagine a Harvard student in Hawaii with a 9 AM EDT class.
The very nature of an education needs to be re-examined in view of the availability of so much information on the internet.
2
@ndbza I think all of us in higher education *have* adjusted the way we teach in light of in internet resources. For example, we have to do more teach students how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information; we also have to address issues of plagiarism, intellectual honesty, and intellectual property differently when so much can be cut-and-pasted. But an education is not just the acquisition of "information." It's the development of habits of thought and inquiry that cannot just be googled and downloaded.
13
@KSE: As an academic librarian I'd like to recommend your comment multiple times!
While I commend the effort to move classes online there are many disciplines that just can't be taught that way because they require hands-on learning.
- Many science courses require lab work: chemistry, geology, physics, biology, etc.
- Many courses require field work: geology, anthropology and archeoology, for example
- Many courses require clinical work: law schools; medical training including doctors, nurses, technicians, dentists;
- Many courses require working with materials and critiques: design fields including fine arts, industrial design, product design, packaging design, architecture and related fields
- Music instruction (composing, creating music, learning instruments, etc)
- Dance and physical education courses and training;
- Engineering--much is classroom work that can be done online but much is also hands-on creating of structures, with groups.
There's only so much online learning that can be done
151
As a tuition-paying parent of a college student, I am concerned about the quality of learning being compromised by the loss of on-site, in-person instruction. Students at my son’s university will complete the latter half of spring semester online. As there is no comparable replacement for the lab portion of his three physical sciences courses, I’m having a hard time conceiving how the courses’ objectives will be met. As students are already too far along into the semester for classes to be canceled, finishing what’s left of the semester via online delivery does make the most sense, though the case could be made for resuming normal delivery of classes in the summer, if one were optimistic about the pandemic being quelled sooner than later. If in subsequent semesters the need for online classes remains, families would need to seriously consider whether their students, particularly those studying in the disciplines listed in the original post, should postpone pursuing their education.
41
@Amy Lee I totally agree with you. Even though I teach online, I still believe that students still have better "a ha" moments in face-to-face instruction. Concerning quality, why would someone pay such high tuition for an online course at a private college/university than at a community college (who have developed pedagogically robust courses for years). My recommendation is that parents and students consider taking freshman and sophomore level basic education courses at community colleges during the summer.
14
@Alive and Well Don't forget any professional degree, medicine dentistry or in our case aviation technology. You cannot weld online.
10
I'm a teacher and administrator at a local private university. We are facing these challenges right now. Having to move-on line quickly will be big challenge. Behind the big push to move on-line, however, there remains one basic reality--many people prefer having a face-to-face element.
So for those of you worrying that universities will lay off all their faculty and move fully online--it isn't going to happen. Universities have to respond to what students want and need, and despite all our attempts at customization, convenience, and making online learning sexy, most students, most of the time, prefer a face-to-face experience.
10
Universities are chomping at the bit to have a test run at on-line education. This is not really a plus at all. Over time, there will be massive reductions in professor staffs and many other associated jobs at universities, and throughout the towns with universities. The net effect will be a lower quality education and growth experience for the students, and far fewer jobs for talented people. Then the universities can turn to their real obsession: real estate development in all locations (not just at the university).
42
@Kevin Except that students don't actually like online learning. And neither do faculty. That's why MOOCs didn't survive. Everyone hated them. And they were ineffective.
21
@Cam
But Kevin is saying follow the money.
1
Please address the question of the internet becoming overloaded and, in some cases crashing because of the load. My internet is already experiencing a slowdown because of people choosing to not circulate in public as much, and being online more. Our carrier is also about to declare bankruptcy.
35
@Taylor Elon Musk is attempting to solve these problems with his 5G satellite launches. Soon there will be no place on Earth without internet access. Of course, we may also see an increase in 5G/microwave-induced diseases , but who cares when we can download entire movies (or university courses) in just seconds from anywhere on Earth.
2
I am a full-time online student from Europe, studying at an American University. Many years ago, I attended the same university as a traditional student, so I also experienced in-person education. I am in my third semester online. Having taken classes in Summer 2019, Fall 2019, and Spring 2020, I can state that the environment and experience of online learning is rich, rewarding, and the comprehensiveness is on par with in-person instruction.
Nonetheless, I don't think online learning will work for everyone. Some just need personal interaction to bounce ideas off of each other face-to-face. Of course, my online environment provides discussion groups and collaboration, but it really is not the same. And, naturally, one of the biggest reasons young people go to college (besides learning) is to meet new people, with new ideas, and build friendships and contacts for life. This is very difficult, if not impossible, online. However, as with working from home, the online learning possibilities presented by modern society are getting an unanticipated shot in the arm (sorry for the vaccination metaphor), and I think these may end up being two of the unintended positive consequences of the current dilemma.
But, how can we justify making students pay for dorms they can no longer use, and a higher price for class hours than is typically charged online, now they are now being forced into this situation? Moving online may allow for education to continue, with further economic impact.
18
As a graduate student in business, I take half my classes online and half in person. I do love the convenience of online classes and being able to go back and repeat parts of the lecture, but there is no way to really ask questions and forget any kind of Socratic debate. I also miss interacting and building bonds with fellow students in online classes. Skype, WeChat, and text chats are sad substitutes to face-to-face conversations before and after class.
158
@Kate: I once sat with a friend, a retired DuPont senior executive, who taught an advanced course in finance for Tulane Grad School of Business, from his house in Pennsylvania. He was able to interact with questions from students online, and he was able to manage discussion among students. I was quite amazed!
The students in this virtual classroom were widely scattered geographically -- some foreign. How it worked, I cannot say, but it most certainly seemed to me, as an observer sitting next to the prof, to be working just fine.
1
"The reason that many colleges are signing away up to 70 percent of future online tuition revenue to private for-profit companies is that those firms offer the financial capital and expertise needed to convert traditional courses online."
That's very disturbing.
58
@Sirlar Agree! It’s extremely disturbing. Not sure what is really going on with Corona Virus panic but wondering if Fed Reserve has crashed and burned and how that will affect the education in this country?
2
@Diane Marie Hopefully, the privately-owned "Federal Reserve" has (or soon will) crash(ed) and burn(ed). When the US government takes back the power to create its own currency from these private bankers, then we may begin to see the emergence of "democracy" and real higher education in the USA.
1
@Sirlar Why is this disturbing? It seems like a reasonable approach, particularly for a lot of the core courses.
1