Can schools survive in the age of the web?
bbc.com
bbc.com
As Nicholas Negroponte, the founder and chairman
of the One Laptop Per Child foundation, asked in a
September article for the MIT Technology Review:
“If kids in Ethiopia learn to read without school,
what does that say about kids in New York City who
do not learn even with school?”
Or maybe we need more on-screen text in games like Call of Duty & Halo. For example, you can't complete a particular objective unless you figure out that a paragraph of text tells you to look up a "code word" from page 6 of a real book like The Lorax.
Schools and teachers aren't our problem. If parents and kids aren't intrinsically motivated to learn, how can you force them to?
I hope that more American parents will convince their kids to take education seriously, or else many other countries (with access to American online courses) will eventually surpass us.
People can give up wealth, sex, and addictive drugs. We can fast. We can even stop breathing for a little while -- or longer, with a little planning. But short of suicide, you can't stop thinking about the world around you.
It is by no means an easy thing to do, but it can be done, for short periods of time, and feels great.
Put that way, it's a silly argument because it suggests that most children learn with school.
Or here's another way "If 99% of the kids in Ethiopia learn to read without school, what does that say about the 75% of the kids in New York City who do not learn even with school?"
Put that way it has an entirely different interpretation.
So without numbers, that phrase - selected as being important - is actually meaningless.
This attitude comes from taking education for granted. We don't know what it's like to be without it and so we don't appreciate it. Those kids in Ethiopia aren't getting the simplest lessons that we get here in the states and they're probably seeing some people who do habe some education and they see what kind of opportunities come with knowledge and so they desperately want it and try to teach themselves.
Not having an education makes seeing those who have one very differently. I'm sure those Ethiopian kids envy anyone who can do simple multiplication or read a book. Because we can't even imagine not having those things we think they're basic entitlements like running water or the air we breathe. That's why, in my opinion, Americsn kids have no interest in learning while kids in underdeveloped nations want it badly enough to teach themselves.
The central idea behind MOOCs is that education is expensive now. It isn't -- just go to the library and pick up a book. Completely free, and if you're disciplined enough, probably pretty close to a university quality education. I'll concede that this doesn't apply to hard science education where you need sophisticated labs, but it does apply to a lot of students' fields of study.
When most people think "education", they aren't talking about learning, but the complete package of learning, social activities, and making connections. That is expensive. You need a nice campus with plenty of green space to lie about and play frisbee. You need a nice gym, a welcoming student center, and a nice dorm area for people to socialize. If you were to build a campus solely around education, it would probably be pretty cheap. Just buy up some cheap office space in a nondescript office buildings, and have professors give lectures there. But this isn't what students want.
Unfortunately this expensive-frisbee-throwing-star-gazing-social-networking-package is a requirement to just get past the front door of most places.
Some of us really don't need or want the social aspect of college. I'd like to get a BSStat degree and a BMath degree, and I'd like to do this without having to throw a frisbee at someone. At the same time I don't want to get a print-out from <insert shady fly-by-night internet college>.
Personally I believe there are more people like me (just give me the degree and keep social networking at the bar) but I don't know if there has been any studies to prove either way.
Edit:
There's another major advantage: formal qualification / certification. There's obviously nothing to stop me cheating at an online course, the certificate or congratulatory email they give you at the end is nearly worthless.
Hard science doesn't work with MOOC either. While I was getting my undergraduate degree, I was crawling around inside a wind tunnel setting up experiments. How do I do that online?
I have to say I'm bearish on MOOC. I don't think it buys you anything you couldn't do already with correspondence courses, etc, and I think many advocates of MOOC are missing the basic point of a traditional university education.
The elite will never be available to the masses, because exclusivity is part of its reason to exist.
Imagine having 5,000 students all wanting a MSCS, each student writes out a check for only $20,000 ($5,000 year). So you have $100 million dollars at your disposal for the complete education... what sort of 'online system' could you create for $100 million? Not just video, not just lectures, hell you could make games, interactive puzzles, you could pay to tape some of the brightest minds in the field... and you could change it --every year--.
You could offer a better experience for a fraction of the price that students pay today.
edit: fixed confusion over 20k
And you definitely lose the traditional brick and mortar school buildings. They cost so much money when the alternative, aside the bickering about the quality of online learning vs traditional lecture halls, is orders of magnitude less expensive, and even government is subject to economics in the long run.
You are more likely looking at 5k/year. At that price point it becomes a posibility for those who can't afford to quit their job and go to school but who still want to improve their life.
Then, from there, you can grow the reputation of online school (which still have a huge stigma attached to it).
As you've said, a better system could be built with less cost. And contrary to the popular opinion it would be better.
Consider those living in countries where web access is still rare or slow or a challenge to access. Online education isn't viable for these people though it may be in the future.
There is no substitute for being educated in the presence of a professor and a room full of students. You could email, IM, video conference, or voice call all day long but web based education takes a bit of the humanity out of the whole experience and it's importance should not be underestimated. Online education makes things more rigid in some ways. An instructor prepares lessons as usual, teaches, then receives feedback from students in the form of questions and their scores on assignments and tests just like usual but theres an advantage to being present in a room full of students. That advantage is that it is far easier to tell if students are catching on and if one or more students are struggling to understand certain concepts then it's easier to sort of improvise and immediately find out and address the cause of any sort of problem.
Individual attention suffers with online learning. You can still give individual attention but for many, having someone there makes all the difference.
That said, there are just as many benefits to online learning and I have to say, I don't believe one is better than the other, just that they're different and that I don't think either will become endangered any time soon.
As someone who went to but did not finish a prestigious university, I think online education should only be sought out in certain circumstances. The experiences you have when attending a traditional university are priceless and cannot be had online. Those experiences aren't part of any curriculum but are an important part of forming the person you will become after graduation. Online education seems, at least to me, better for those needing a cheaper alternative to traditional education. Also those who are unable to physically attend a university due to, again, cost constraints, or their location would also seem to be a good fit as well as those folks who are older, need a more flexible schedule, have difficulty learning in a classroom, and others.
I've dome online and traditional education. They compliment each other well and both offer certain things the other doesn't but given the hypothetical choice of choosing all of one and none of the other, I'd take the traditional experience any day.
The web is the most incredible thing that's happened to us since the Enlightenment probably but it isn't the cure to all mankind's ills. Online education is certainly a viable alternative to a traditional education but I still don't see it being able to rival or outmatch a traditional education. There are intangibles that come with a traditional education that have no on,one counterpart. So I doubt traditional schools have anything to fear and truly hope they don't.
Destruction of creativity, obedience, deferring to authority, loss of time, loss of identity, bullying, inability to pursue subjects in depth, learning to self-censor, second-rate materials, not being allowed to read, not being allowed to talk, have to ask permission to go to the bathroom, learning to tease those who fail to self-censor, everybody trying sooo hard to be normal, belief that exams measure knowledge, being put off math for life, inability to learn during adulthood, etc.
Learning to self-censor is a good thing. It doesn't mean you stop thinking independently, it just means you learn what's appropriate to say to whom, and how, and when, and where, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing and is an important part of developing as a person. We can't go around saying "hi, I think you're fat" when we meet someone overweight and then applaud it because self-censorship is bad. Kinda lame example but you know what I mean.
Trying to be normal and fit in is also an important part of growing up. Because I don't know any better, this point makes it sound like you're promoting non-conformity for the sake of non-conformity. You can be normal and still be unique. We live in the real world and learning how to choose groups to be accepted by and subsequently fitting in with them is an essential skill all humans need to learn. I personally am lacking in that skill so I have lots of awkward social interactions at work and other places. It's not a good thing and I wish I did learn to be normal. I can still be myself when its appropriate but sometimes you there's nothing wrong with just fitting in.
Learning how to handle teasing (regardless of whether you are being teased or doing the teasing) is, once again, an important part of developing as a person.
These three points you list are not negatives of schooling at all and they are just as prevalent outside of an educational environment as they are within one. Furthermore, being exposed to these things and subsequently learning how to cope with them makes you a more well rounded person. People who don't go through these experiences and don't develop these social skills will have a harder time out in the real world than those who have. It's my personal belief that people who tend to spend lots of time online (particularly the stereotypical nerd gamers and coders) have a hard time socially partially because they have avoided situations where they would have to learn to self-censor, be teased, tease someone else, trying to fit it. There are other factors but learning how to get through these challenges would probably help them a bit.
Now, you do make some good point about second-rate materials. The belief that exams measure knowledge is also highly debatable and probably false too, I'll grant you that. That said, the rest of your points sound more like a rejection of authority than anything that's detrimental to people. There's nothing wrong to deferring to authority. We live in a civilized society and there's a structure to it. The key is learning when its justified to stand up to authority. I can see you're coming from a sincere place but I just can't get behind you on this. It seems more like you're ant-authority for the sake of being anti-authority and nothing more.
The self-censoring issue is directly linked to creativity. Our first thoughts are the most creative; however, people learn to censor them so that these don't reach the level of awareness. Thus they don't have the option either to criticise or to enact them. HNers have retained a portion of their creativity. It's the majority and esp. the minimum wagers who have paid the highest price.
Learning to get on with people is a vital part of life but being herded together to perform make-work with people the same age as you is not the best way to learn this. Neither is prison nor the army. Voluntary relationships with friends and colleagues are more instructive, where people are unafraid and free to leave and there are real creative tasks at stake.
Apparently we're allowed to benefit from the profits they make with the BBC Worldwide service but we're not allowed to actually see the content.
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/9cac8469-887f-40fd-9401...
For example, in my senior-level AI class, we had lectures for the first 2/3 of the semester (approximately), and then for the last third, picked a project to do individually or in small teams, and met one-and-one with the professor once a week to develop and carry out our project. That was by far the most educational part of that class. And in physics, the physics lab was just as important as the lecture, possibly even more important when it came to learning how to actually carry out experiments properly.
I can imagine that kind of learning being tackled, too, but I think it'll require something considerably more innovative.
None ask how can MOOCs and online lectures increase the quality of our education system? What would happen if universities adapt to incorporate these tools?
You hit the nail on the head: more projects, more hands-on, more interaction with your professors, more labs, more experiments. The auditorium lectures become redundant thereby freeing up space and time for the aforementioned.
And if you look at the arduino, many people are doing interesting projects.
So i don't think projects are so hard to implement as a part of an online course.
A good analogy would be newspapers vs news websites. In the end, it is still the same news, but online it is more up-to-date, globally accessible, and more convenient to access. Lectures suck when they're at 8am and if you miss them they're gone forever. They also can't be paused or fast-forwarded. But most importantly, they only happen in one location. Putting them online puts them in the hands of students across the globe, and gives them the ability to watch them at any time, at their own pace.
Firstly, people tend to talk a lot in class. This is distracting and makes it difficult to hear what is being said. Perhaps if there was a recoding nobody would want their rude behaviour documented.
When listening to a class it is also very easy for your concentration to wander for long enough that you have trouble keeping up with the rest of the lecture because you missed something. A video trivially allows your to rewind those minutes.
edit: For me personally, the biggest advance the internet has brought in autodidacticism is actually mainly on the textual front too: Wikipedia makes it much easier to find and navigate bodies of knowledge, and nicely complements the linear style of learning that you get by working through a textbook. There have long been encyclopedias of course, but Wikipedia is much bigger than most, always at hand, and somehow much easier to get engrossed in.
BarBri courses include all the things you have with Coursera, etc. Video lectures backed up with a big stack of paper course outlines (for reference), work sheets, online sample questions, assignment submission, etc.
My experience with my bar course was that all the online/video stuff is superfluous. The most efficient way to learn the material is not to sit through the video lectures, but to work through the outlines, taking notes and doing practice questions. Text is just a vastly superior format to video for conveying information quickly. The real benefit of the course format is not the online/video crap, but collecting all the information into a series of self-contained outlines. That's the big advantage of the course over just going to a library.
Of course we've had paper course outlines for god knows how long. And they haven't replaced law school, even in California where there is no requirement to go to law school. I didn't go to law school to learn the law--that was what BarBri was for. I went to law school to get a name on my resume that would get me a job, connect with professors who could serve as career mentors, and start building my professional network. The education itself is just 10% of the whole purpose of school.
If it's for formal licensing, only four states let you take the bar exam without attending an ABA-accredited law school (California, Vermont, Virginia, Washington). A few others have provisions for you to attend only 1 or 2 years of an accredited law school, and then do self-study for the remaining portion without actually earning a J.D. as a prerequisite (Maine, New York, Wyoming). But even in these states you typically have to engage in some kind of approved course of study, although at least in California, this can be via an online law course.
I haven't looked into the others, but at one point I looked into it in California, and the two options are: 1) attend an unaccredited law school (could be an online one) for the equivalent of a 4-year course of study, and take certain exams along the way; or 2) follow a 4-year approved course of independent study supervised by a judge or a legal practice (the classic "reading law" apprenticeship option that was once standard, but has been phased out in most states).
The other way with some programs is to do "special student" (non-degree) for grad school, and then get undergrad and grad requirements out of the way at the same time. I believe there are no-prior-undergrad PhDs through this method, at least in math.
I've experienced schools that were directly tied to the industry, so that the local companies would first go there and check with the teachers to see what student would be suitable for their company, instead of advertising the position through the usual channels.
The student would go from graduation right into employment without having to do any actual job search.
If you are an institution that has an established connection to the local industry, then I think such a school would be able to survive the online offerings from other international schools/sites.
Maybe this depends on the country, but one example that relates to my original comment was a school which specialized in university students who are about to or just finished their studies and wanted to enhance their studies in a specific area.
The whole program was less than a year and the costs would be easily covered even by a few months of part-time work, so we're not talking having to get an actual loan to even attend.
And with government subsidies--and imagining the American education market as moving toward existing without them is a flight of fancy--they can be disastrously harmful and still continue forever.
College education will not change much either. If the purpose of college was simply exposure to factual information, they would never have survived the commercialization of the textbook. Colleges are about higher-level, deeper interaction with the material. (This means different things for different majors.) Moreover, colleges provide a simple, relatively efficient way of proving familiarity or mastery of a subject matter that would be technologically impossible for a web-course to provide (i.e., prevention of most forms of cheating).
The web may affect the number of colleges, but it will not affect the fundamental nature of higher education.
You can try to do that in college, but not below college. Kids would enjoy to go to school just to see their friends.
Another thing is considered is once again jobs. What are you going to do with millions of teachers? If each school makes a video, only 1/1000000 videos will be favored.
Online classes have many bad things, and personally I only use it to supplement my college courses.