But there is a problem with it, at least according to faculty. It is the lack of support for the extra work involved in using and developing this kind of instruction. That's the clear message of a new study involving over ten thousand faculty.
One of the commissioners involved in the study opined that “The leadership of universities has been trying to understand exactly how [online education] fits into their strategic plans, and what this [study] shows is that faculty are ahead of the institutions in these online goals.”
How so? Well, more than a third of faculty who participated in the study had developed and taught this kind of course, but, they say, they aren't getting adequate support.
I suspect that faculty at our two institutions (Saddleback College and Irvine Valley College) are behind the curve on this. In my experience, senior faculty (including me) have been especially wary of online distance ed. (That's just an impression.)
In truth, research seems to show that, at least for many areas of learning, online instruction works.
Well, whether it is a good thing or not, it is developing all around us. It's a tsunami. Sooner or later, we'll be on board. And it won't be easy:
Almost two-thirds of the faculty said it takes more effort to teach a course online than in a classroom, while 85 percent said more effort is required to develop one. While younger professors seem to have an easier time teaching online than older ones, more than half of respondents from the youngest faculty group agreed it was more time-consuming. Nearly 70 percent of all professors cited the extra effort necessary to develop Web courses as a crucial barrier to teaching online.
…
Given the extra work, more than 60 percent of faculty see inadequate compensation as a barrier to the further development of online courses. “If these rates of participation among faculty are going to continue to grow, institutions will have do a better job acknowledging the additional time and effort on the part of the faculty member,” said Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group and the survey’s lead researcher….
Yeah, when you teach online, you're pretty much on call all of the time. Sheesh.
I can just see the likes of trustee Tom Fuentes grinning over this.
“Let’s make the lazy bastards work for a living,” he’ll say.
And, who knows? Just maybe that hateful fellow will be our next board president.
Won't that be swell?
“Let’s make the lazy bastards work for a living,” he’ll say.
And, who knows? Just maybe that hateful fellow will be our next board president.
Won't that be swell?
See also Challenging Microsoft With a New Technology (New York Times).
4 comments:
Then there is always the question of who owns the content. What if you develop the course and then it's assigned to another professor ?
I think the jury's still out on the effectiveness of online courses. I think there are peculiarities of the system such that students tend to do more work for online courses, and once these peculiarities subside, we'll see (maybe) the real effectiveness. On the face of it, it would seem obvious that online instruction is very different: old practices (discussion in a room) disappear; new practices (anonymous opinery) become standard. I doubt that we can gain a clear view of the meaning of these differences any time soon. It will take a few more years. As usual, we are careless experimenters: we drop a new chemical into our soup and cheerfully expect a tasty new flavor. Who can say whether we are poisoning ourselves or opening fabulous new and brave possibilities.
MOST excellent, 2:43. And thank you especially for "opinery."
You're welcome.
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