Our Administrative Motives Can Create the Online Haves and Have-nots

Anya Kamenetz of the Huffington Post in her article the “Online Education and the Laying on of Hands”  May 18, 2010 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anya-kamenetz/online-education-and-the_b_580769.html) covered UC San Diego professors, one of whom was an opponent of what we in Connecticut would call fully online education programs. While Ms. Kamenetz herself apparently is not such a Luddite, she thought some points were valid…and she has managed to convince me of the potential problem in at least on area.

Financial and budgetary motives are behind our decisions to build and grow online courses and programs. Over the years I have worked to convince many colleagues at my institution of the value of online courses to our commuter population of students. It is so obvious from the online instruction at institutions all over the world over the past two decades that students can and do learn well online when we design the courses with best practices in mind. It is so obvious that commuter students want and need more flexibility in our course scheduling to achieve their goals in a timely fashion. It makes so much sense for the institution to stop using only what in football would be called its “ground game.” We are gaining yardage this way but it is a grinding slow game; we could improve our overall student success numbers (certificate and graduation completions) with more properly designed and managed online courses. Nothing seems to spark any interest until begin to talk about the potential to generate greater revenue. If online courses can help us here, collectively we show great interest. This is the problem…for our students.

In the past, several for-profit colleges and other entities have tried creating online programs and failed due to the costs of building infrastructure, marketing problems, accrediting issues, staffing and recruiting talented faculty and staff, lack of any experienced online educators, and myriad other more minor problems. A college program must have a mechanism to overcome these problems if it truly desires success online. Ms. Kamenetz expressed concern that in resource-poor institutions the mechanism may include gimmicks, poor content infrastructure (open source?), unedited publisher content, courses that only include assignments, courses with no interaction ,and heavy use of video and audio in lieu of the hands-on instruction. (The best practices in online instruction encourage facilitation and student-student work but, based on constructivist thought, is still extraordinarily hands-on.)

One of the faculty Ms. Kamenetz interviewed expressed the following.

“The less fortunate citizens of our state will make do with underfunded campuses or settle for inferior and dehumanizing ‘virtual’ alternatives.”

The statement, while a too-generalized and flawed comparison between good on-campus courses and bad online courses, should cause those of us who work at commuter colleges to tread more carefully as we make decisions about growing online. We should want to grow online but for the right reasons. Our community college students academically fall into the demographic of the average college student. To the non-academic challenges we should not add programs that are solely profit-driven if we want to avoid creating haves and have-nots online.

Why Scrutinize Distance Learning ?

Originally published in the Distance Education Report July 2011

It is a question that refuses to die. I have heard it quite frequently over that past decade.  Why does there seems to be greater scrutiny of distance learning courses than the traditional face-face classes?  The distance learning faculty members at my college have asked me, even as recently as the past semester. Showing this is not just a regional concern, a couple of my LinkedIn groups have recently taken up similar issues. An interviewer asked Larry Ragan, the distinguished Director of Faculty Development for the Penn State World Campus, this question…again…in the March 15, 2011, Distance Learning Report.

When interviewers ask, the question seems to be an attempt either to stir up a good conversation between the face-to-face and online instructors where there are sure to be individuals on both sides or if talking to distance learning professionals like me to get an indignant reaction.

Having mellowed enough I now accept that there are multiple factors involved in the question, many illegitimate but some expressing warranting concern.

The relative newness of distance learning is an expressed reason. Although our college has been offering distance learning courses for over a decade now, many still perceive it as “new” rather than as is the case a part of the fabric of learning. Distance learning is not new. Classes conducted in learning management systems have been occurring since the 1990s. Classes conducted at a distance have occurred in a variety of other formats going back many decades. Recall correspondence and telecourses. The didactic foundation of most online programs, constuctivism, dates back to Jean Piaget in the 1950s and tributaries to constuctivist thought date back several hundred years.

Degree mills, disreputable, unaccredited institutions, that offer courses with little if any of the academic rigor we expect in our colleges and universities have added to the distrust of distance learning. Actually, I believe we are out of the “Wild West” days during which any institution could post a “degree-granting” program with money as its sole quid pro quo. While it is true that there are unscrupulous programs, I also believe that regulatory agencies are watching and that the average potential consumer of online education programs is better informed.

Some see the greater regulatory scrutiny of distance learning itself as evidence that something is wrong with the whole notion of learning away from campus. The US Department of Education has directed the accrediting organizations to have greater scrutiny over the distance learning programs. Accrediting organizations are particularly concerned with the resources devoted to distance learning programs and to methodology and processes to prevent student cheating, concerns we should have in all our programs. Rather than see this as undue attention, I view this as the attention that places distance learning on par with its sister campus-based programs.

Of all the arguments I hear, perhaps the least reasonable and most pernicious is that regarding whether or not real learning can take place online. It is as if either without the student sharing the same physical space with the instructor or without the student’s ability to see the instructor the human brain cannot retain memories and experiences. This argument is a visceral reaction by those who do not understand and likely have not participated in online learning. It is wrong and rooted in the nostalgia of classroom magic. A synergy that contributes to learning does happen when a student is in a seat on campus but the synergy also happens in a discussion group online. In fact, the US Department of Education’s meta-analysis study, the “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning” (September 2010) concluded that “online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction”; that “the effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types”; and that “students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

College administrators sometimes express that they do not feel as in touch with adjunct online instructors. If the instructor is not within the geographical area, they are not able to call the person in for a meeting if needed. Obviously, this hypothetical scenario is also based on a misperception that college administrators are engaged with any appreciable number of adjunct instructors, whether on ground or online. As an adjunct for a number of years at multiple institutions, with just a couple of exceptions, I found it rare that I communicated with anyone at the institution about classroom instruction. I was fond of saying that being an adjunct is a lonely duty. Unless I made it my absolute mission to do otherwise, I could spend an entire semester having no contact with other faculty member or administrator. The most engagement with other faculty and administrators that I have experienced as an adjunct was in teaching online courses where there were discussion groups, online adjunct activities, email, and phone/web conferences.  Thus, it is exceedingly rare that we need a face-to-face meeting with an adjunct instructor.

The scrutiny then is both unwarranted when it comes to questioning how it is different than other venues for learning and warranted when we are interested in improving learning overall. It seems that the best concern is the is not that we need to watch this shifty-eyed new fad called distance learning but that we need to take care as we are building all our courses, face-to-face and on-campus. Students can and do learn this way. Distance learning gives us the chance to take a fresh look at courses with a renewed focus on pedagogy. There is the potential to learn from those who care most about learning, those will to put in the effort and time it takes to build and conduct distance learning courses. College opportunities can be expanded with more courses and time conveniences. Why should we have the greater scrutiny? The best argument is that we care about learning and getting it right.

Missing the Value of LinkedIn

A few weeks ago I participated in a discussion about the difference between elearning and distance learning with a number of educators: a consultant, CEO of a mission, a professor, an online trainer, a CLO, a teacher/writer, and a technology director. They were from Washington, D.C., Utah, Great Britain, California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Virginia, and Oregon. They had all volunteered to be a part of the discussion, to share their knowledge and perceptions. For each of them I was able to see online resumes so I could verify that they had some experience, education, and/or background knowledge. I could tell quickly that their comments were valid and reliable during our discussion. We had this conversation asynchronously over a couple of months. A couple of individuals posted research links and other references. I do not normally directly network with any of them but I know people who know some of them. With this asynchronous conversation happening I received emails each time someone posted so that I did not have to constantly check this for two months. During this time several people looked at my background and experience, some desiring to connect with others in my profession, others looking for collaborators or employees with my skill sets. All of this happened in LinkedIn.

In the paragraph above, I have done more to explain what LinkedIn does than the sum total of news coverage for the past couple of weeks. The media focused on the initial public offering and continually asked us if the fact that the IPO did so well was due to a new dot-com boom. They asked us this question even though they gave us only one possible answer. They did not talk about the possibility that LinkedIn has intrinsic value, how it is different than Facebook and Twitter, how the business has grown over the last five years, that it is populated not by everyone you know but by colleagues, that LinkedIn profiles people but has ways to plug in business and industry, and that because LinkedIn is connecting individuals with the same professional interests it is also building the most powerful electronic “mailing list” in the world. The news media—all the media—really failed in informing us so that we could answer their question intelligently.

For five years, I have been trying to generate interest at my college in LinkedIn which I believe has enormous value for our students and faculty. I have always placed Linked in the pantheon of social media: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I organized workshops and talked to many individuals as we worked on other projects. It has been an uphill climb but some of our faculty members are encouraging students to get the account and those students are using LinkedIn to get jobs.

For their part, the students initially do not like LinkedIn. They want it to be Facebook. Although LinkedIn is making what I believe are some antithetical concessions, it is not the place where you post what you are wearing or where you are eating dinner. It is not the place that you post your favorite jokes and pictures of your vacation. It is not the place for concise blast messages. Not the playground Facebook has become, it is grown-up. It is the networking of the adult world, a digital place where time, money and other resources matter and a place where who you connect to online has more of an impact than on your feelings. Students have to be taught the value of LinkedIn, just as I have to teach our faculty and college administrators. Just as the media should be “teaching” everyone. Having stated this, I cannot deny that there is a potential for people to make a boat-load of money but this is not the only story. It is not even the main story.

Compfight for Images

From the January edition e-Learning review I discovered a really neat Web 2.0 tool called Compfight, which allows you to search the Internet for images. Okay so you’re wondering can’t I already do that with Google? Yes, you can but you have a limited—yes, Google, I said limited set of ways that you can search. Compfight is a Flickr image search tool. Compfight’s thumbnails make it easy to use as well.

Compfight allows you to search for images in safe and unsafe modes as Google does. It also allows you to the license. You can choose “any license, creative Commons, commercial” to sort the images based on the license. You can also find just the original versions of the picture, its copies, or both. Plus if you like the picture you find this button so that you can tweet it or Facebook it right away.

As a learning management system administrator and a faculty trainer at my college I must confess that it is difficult to help even our faculty users understand some of the ins and outs of copyright, fair use, and public domain items when it comes to their course. Lately we’ve been talking just a little bit more about Creative Commons which perhaps offers a middle ground, a place where others are willingly sharing their content but also specify exactly what you can do with it. This is what is missing in the general Internet search with Google.

One thing that always concerns when a powerful, new free tool appears on the Internet is its long-term prospects. So many web companies start out as free hope they will be bought out by someone “big.” Other companies are hoping that once they get us addicted to the usage their pages that we will be willing to pay for the service. Since change the college is a process not an event, training people to use something new is problematic if that item only last a couple of years. Come by which began in 2008 is already due for some administrative changes. And according to Site Trail it is respectable usage numbers. Still is valuable enough that for now I am advising people to use it before it becomes a pay service.

Too Much Interactivity in Online Courses?

The first time I heard it I was at a Sloan-C conference a few years ago. It was a small isolated study so I regarded it as a curiosity rather than a study to cause us to re-examine our online learning philosophy. Since then, I have seen it again a couple more times. Last year in the Distance Learning Report a different group of researchers reported that increased interactivity lead to decreased student satisfaction and may actually decrease a student’s chance of success in the course.

It makes sense to me that increased work places a student under increased stress to make sure the extra activities are completed in a timely fashion.

Despite the sample sizes and the program implications, I can accept the possibility of the veracity of the researchers’ claims. It makes sense that in the continuum of online learning activities there is both a point where the activities can be insufficient in number to allow the students to adequately achieve the course objectives and a point adding more does not mean the students learn more.

However, I am not interested in seeing more studies showing the same on either side, “those fer and those agin.” For those of you doing research I propose the following questions. Where are the lines to be drawn? Where is the “sweet spot” in the middle where it is ideal for learning, not too much but containing sufficient rigor? Is “sufficient rigor” the same for all institutions of higher learning? If not, what accounts for the differences? Who is best suitable to determine what is too much or too little, faculty, administrators, student, accrediting bodies, states, or the federal government? Is there a different point depending on discipline?

For now, I suspect that at most institutions for a sizeable percentage of institutions there is too little interactivity, especially if the institutions allow instructors to design their own content. Answering the questions above can help us to repair this problem.