There have been some postings about ArsDigita University, which recently closed its (physical) doors. The goal of ADUni was to provide a top-notch bachelor's level Computer Science education in one intense year to people who already had bachelor's degrees. The program was residential, but there was a distance learning goal with material posted on web. Shai Simonson (Director of ADUni) has written about the importance of the residential environment and the interactions between students and staff. The following comment is particularly interesting (http://www.aduni.org/about/intro.php): "One of our best students, a physician by training, and a brilliant yet modest man, had to leave Cambridge after 2.5 months for personal reasons. He had the year free, and decided to continue the program remotely using our web site and email. I told him that would be acceptable, and furthermore that it would be a great way to test the feasibility of simulating the program virtually by distance learning. I asked him to keep a diary. This was a person who worked well on his own, who already had made friends with many class members, and who was as bright and motivated as any of his classmates. After three weeks, he stopped sending in problem sets and emails. He apologized and said that he could not maintain the concentration, or sustain the effort required, to succeed in the program without being surrounded by the environment. Experiences such as this, made the administration downplay the distance-learning goal." I think this brings home one of the real challenges facing "distance learning" -- how to provide the high-level of intellectual exchange and stimulation that one would get in a residential program at a top school. I've taken courses by distance learning at NJIT and Columbia, and at neither institution were the online forums dynamic or interactive enough to compensate for the lack of face-to-face discussion. And yet NJIT in particular are proud that they represent the state-of-the-art. So this seems to be an area where creative solutions are still needed. Comments? On the other hand, there's a silver lining to every cloud and I suppose that some of the denizens of this (and that other) forum are such sociopaths that we should be thankful that they remain at a distance...
