</spelling nazi> <grin></spelling nazi> <grin>Figured I would also ping some of those who were discussing this and debating it on another technology thread and those who have discussed and shown themselves to be knowledgeable on this subject in the past.
C: I teach in a public high school (I’m trying to get into online private ed), and I earned my master’s degree online. If done properly, online ed is the future. Brick and mortars will still be here, but they will be for the “underprivileged”. Big Gov has to get the kids their “free” breakfasts and lunches!
The future of online education is wide open. Universities will have to offer online degrees in every greater numbers (even on the PhD level) in order to compete.
I believe that eventually, instruction will be separate from certification. Instruction will be widely available and at low cost or free. Certification of knowledge will be the measure of a “degree”. By that I mean that you will go to a testing center and will take a test that if you pass, you will be certified as knowing that subject.
Complete the set of certifications for a HS Diploma, AS, or BS and you will be granted that “degree”.
Much of the class time for the rest of the semester will be spent on tasting various wines. Reading assignments, course projects, and quizzes are all online. Three major tests will be in the testing center.
Used properly, technology can augment the learning experience. My concern is that educators will rely on technology to the detriment of actually teaching the students. For example, project based learning is IMHO a crutch used by teachers to reduce the effort they have to put into teaching.
They will be strangled in the crib by unions and traditional universities with so much turf to defend.
And until you can convince the bulk of employers to break away from the propaganda that they are a value-add, it will stay that way.
I think that schools will be completely replaced, not by online schooling but by the eventual economic and governmental collapse.
Whether the replacement will involve online learning depends on whether the internet survives that collapse in a reasonable working order.
Assuming it does, locally controlled schools will use online learning for reasons of economy and efficiency. This will be especially true at the secondary and post-secondary level if there is a labor shortage due to a booming recovery economy or a large population reduction from violence suffered during the collapse.
Minimum wage and teens with nothing to do will be a memory, as will public employee unions.
As someone that as experience teaching adults, I can say that people don’t learn the same way.
They are broken down into three groups.
1. Tell me.
2. Show me.
3. And a combination of #1 and 2.
Online education lacks the feedback mechanism for most people.
When I was teaching, I could tell, by their body language, if someone didn’t get a certain concept. This allowed me to re-state the concept so they can move to the next phase.
Some people can read stuff and learn a great deal. Some people can hear the same stuff and would understand it more than if they simply read it. Some people need to be shown what is what.
I think it will be much slower for K-12 to go that direction, although that is available here. I just don't see a lot of students that age with the discipline to self-direct their instruction.
Your lists might be interested in this.
the issue is liability.
a traditional university degree is a shield in negligent hiring lawsuits.
Unless it’s a parent driven or mentor driven choice (in the beginning) it’s not going to work. Everything wrong with education is a parent problem at it’s root, with the leaves feeding the teachers and industry. All we see are the leaves. We need to sure up the roots.
Content delivery is getting cheaper. Websites are getting better. Users are getting more accustomed to the weirdness of receiving education this way.
You have to pick your punches, though. It's a lot easier teaching something like history online than something requiring physical feedback, say, yoga or maybe drawing. But a generation of online games players are actually pretty used to the sort of feedback that turns a virtual classroom into something more than a glorified television set. Who is not used to it are the professors - I have a dear friend whose daily struggle with the mechanics of running a minimal computerized A/V setup is a real challenge for him. The educators are needing to be educated first.
It isn't the future, it's the present. Personally I like the intimacy of a classroom, but it means that I have to get there. The low here will be 1 degree Fahrenheit this evening with -28 wind chill. My computer is in a nice warm room with beer handy. Online education sounds pretty good in those circumstances.
They’re good if it’s a subject you’re strong in, or if you’re the type prefers reading a book to taking a class. If you’re weak on the subject though it’s a killer. My wife’s done a lot of online classes in subjects she was good in and breezed them, then she took macro-economics which she knew nothing about and it was a nightmare. Luckily for her owing to a lifetime hobby of FR like discussion I’m pretty solid on macro-economics and could steer her through until she got the core concepts locked in, but without some sort of teacher she would would have been doomed.
It will only get better and it’s a win-win for everybody. The university could pay some superstar teacher to produce a high quality lecture series on the course and upload it onto video. Anybody can download it and watch it as often as needed. Since there is no infrastructure to maintain, and the number of students who can take the course could multiply exponentially, the costs of education should drop like a rock.
A student would only have to go to campus to take the parts of courses they really can’t do at home.
It'll be devalued like the US dollar.
It won't replace traditional schools, but will provide another option for some kids - like the virtual high schools and online colleges we have now - but it will also enhance and perhaps change the way traditional schools function. Instead of each school having a French teacher, for example, maybe a few schools will share one teacher using remote, online class participation.
Already kids can get a lot of help with homework, etc. online. Continued growth in this area will ultimately lead to a situation where you can find help on just about any problem you have.
I've had first hand experience with online K-12 education, and it can work very well in a homeschooling context.
on-line education will continue to grow
how much traditional education loses out to online education and if it will someday fall by wayside is yet to be seen
I’ve dabbled at learning a little at the KhanAcademy.org site.Salman Khan proposes that his online lessons aren’t a replacement for the teacher, but rather for the textbook. In and of itself, this would seem to offer large possibilities for independence in education - any large institution could create its own video lessons, and evade the constraint of the limitations of available textbooks.
But clearly, a good online course would not require a teacher if a mentor is available to the student. And who is to say that mentoring can’t be online? Khan says he has the ability to track the spots in his videos which tend to hang up some students, and thus can make videos which do not tend to cause hangups.
IMHO, the need exists for a utility which would be the analog of hypertext, but for video. A student hangs up at a certain point in a video, and flags that problem for his mentor. The mentor then has the ability to put a “hypertext” link in the video, and any subsequent viewer of the video can click on the link and either read the mentor's text, or see the video which the mentor has made. Obviously that could get out of hand if too many mentors chimed in, so somebody would have to control the clutter.