Dave Wilson...the product of a brick and mortar?

Dave Wilson, in his LA Times article wrote:

Since the dawn of the Internet age, boosters have predicted the end of leafy college campuses as schools go virtual. The miracle of the Internet was supposed to let great teachers reach any student, any time, anywhere. People all over the world would get the equivalent of a Harvard degree through a computer and a network connection.

What a crock.



The only "crock" in that paragraph is the woeful absence of a cited reference to his matter of fact comments. I have been directly involved in distance education via the web since 1994. May not seem like a long time, but the web has not played a significant role in distance education for much longer than that. In that time, I have researched, studied, and discussed Internet based distance Ed with significant effort. I have NEVER seen any credible reference to support Mr. Wilson’s assertions that, "boosters have predicted the end of leafy college campuses as schools go virtual" and "People all over the world would get the equivalent of a Harvard degree through a computer and a network connection". It might make for good copy, but it is not a basis for credible dialog.

Contrary to Mr. Wilson's assertions, the often referenced "No significant difference phenomenon" contains the conclusion of 355 reports providing a solid foundation for anyone looking for research on distance learning outcomes compared to on-ground learning outcomes. Additionally, a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled Scholar Concludes that Distance Ed is as Effective as Traditional Instruction, offers specific contradiction to his poorly supported position. There are, of course, many other examples that directly contradict his unsubstantiated claims.

I know numerous professors who teach both on ground and distance learning classes that would thrash his lack of references. His article would be returned with "insufficient citations in support of your position" in red letters at the top of the page.

His statements are unfounded and lack any sign of research. He clearly shows his ignorance regarding the significant number of well-respected brick and mortar institutions that offer all manner of degrees via distance only means. And his comment about "cyber education" being doomed to failure...well, ask schools with increasing enrollments such as Capella, Phoenix, UMUC, etc., how close to failure they are.

His ignorance on the subject of distance learning degrees, and the distance learning paradigm, manifests itself through his cursory and grossly inaccurate coverage of the subject.

 

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Excellent comments, but I would also suggest writing to the Times. I sent my letter shortly after reading this thread. His ignorance is shared throughout society and people still have so much to learn about DL before they will put faith into it.

 

I don't think that any but the most intemperate boosters of the recent internet bubble have made that hyperbolic claim. It's kind of like Wilson's assumption that we are living in some new "Internet age".

It seems that Wilson's primary source is Noble. Noble in turn seems to have made his career from being a DL critic.
Unfortunately, if you look at Noble's arguments, most of them turn out to be faculty labor issues and a quasi-Marxist revulsion against the profit-motive in education.

Noble is wrong about Stanford and Columbia. Both offer DL degrees.

And I believe that part of the reason that "prestige" schools have been laggards in adopting new technology is the fact that they want to protect their "tier rankings". As we have seen in other threads, accepting part-time adult students and offering in-demand vocationally oriented programs carries a tremendous penalty in the rankings. Since prestige schools' "ecological niche" is their high ranking, they will inevitably be slower adopters than schools whose niche is open education.

So why not replace the *performance* aspect of teaching, the lecturing in front of the lecture hall, with a video recording. And turn the professor's role into leading individual and small group tutorials on-line? The tutorial system works fine in Oxford, after all. It demands a lot of time and attention from the professor, but that individual no longer has any classroom teaching load.

So why can't that be done on-line? I think that many of these criticisms are actually emotional/social and not cognitive/academic. There is no reason why deep intellectual conversations can't happen on-line. But the critic feels that some emotional aspect is missing, the "going out for beers" factor. The problem is that the critic personally feels unable to relate to DL emotionally.

I would be very interested in hearing *exactly* what it is that can't be replicated. I'm willing to bet that Copenhaver can't define it, and it will end up as some personal feeling of his that the emotional immediancy isn't there. The feeling that an on-line relationship isn't emotionally involving. That probably says more about Copenhaver than about DL.

Hyperbole.

WGU has been in operation for only a few years. (How long does it take to create a large physical university?) It is still only a candidate for accreditation. Until recently it only offered a handful of associate's degrees. It was nothing more than a tiny on-line community college. Only in the last few months has it started to roll out new bachelors programs in in-demand fields.

It's true that WGU's enrollment growth has been slower than the original grandiose projections in the media. But that's a function of how quickly it has been able to get its programs up and running, which is probably in turn a function of its funding and support. Considering that each WGU member state is contributing a tiny fraction of what a new university would cost (<1%), it's still going to be a tremendous bargain once it is accredited and has developed more programs.

 

This is exactly what my Stanford Online classes are doing.

I login, see a video of the classroom lecture which happened only hours beforehand (Stanford claims less than an hour until online availability), and the same slides used in the classrtoom are keyed to the video and audio to change in my browser as they do in the classroom. If the teacher writes something on the chalkboard, then I get a photograph in the slide window of what he has written.

If there is a group exercise, then one group has a camera and microphone focused on them for the duration of the exercise so I feel as if I am part of that group. Stanford also asks the students to use microphones in class (mounted in front of them) when asking questions so that they can be heard in the online video.

I then go to the "Ask the Professor" Web site to ask any questions I may have.

I'll tell you, once you get engrossed in the lecture video, it hits you in a really odd way when you suddenly remember you are actually not in class.

Regards,

Christian

 

Some background on David Noble:

He didn't make his career out of being a DL critic; he made his career out of being a technology critic. But his first book on DL, Digital Diploma Mills, will be coming out in November, and he obviously sees this as a glorious opportunity to get the word out and sell books among...among...well, actually, I can't imagine why anyone would buy a short anti-DL book, and I don't think Susan Fungaroli's has done that well, but let's give the little slugger some points for trying.

Anyway, if this is a sign of David Noble's research skills, I don't think his traditional education probably did a whale of a lot of good. Writing a book on DE, pro or con, without being aware of Stanford's program is much like writing a book on renaissance art without mentioning Michelangelo. It's a glaring omission, but probably the sort of thing we should expect from a guy who doesn't use search engines.

Much of what he says about the Internet is sensible, BTW, and was picked up by Margaret Wertheim in The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace; we tend to see the Internet as a value-positive medium when, in fact, it's an utterly value-free medium. It's only what we make of it, and since the anonymous nature of the medium encourages cowards to misbehave more than they would in real life, what people make of it won't always be good. He was saying this during the heyday of the Internet hype machine, back when it was crazy talk, and he deserves credit for that. But he obviously doesn't know distance learning from a hole in the ground.


Peace,

------------------
Tom Head
www.tomhead.net

 

Perhaps Dave Wilson could be invited here for a discussion. I'm sure that he is confident enough in his findings to welcome the opportunity to explain them.

 

Trust me on this one:

No journalist ever cares enough to correct errors in their reporting. Especially when the factual information contradicts their personal opinion.

There is nothing to be gained by a public correction, and there is a damage factor to them in the eyes of their editor and readers when they have to correct a mistake they shouldn't have made in the first place.

A journalist also once told me that the average attention span of the average American is so short they will never even remember the story the correction refers to.

Best just to forget about it and move on. There will always be more journalists with the same bad reporting knocking DL for as long as you live. Other industries I have been in suffer the same bad reporting, so DL is not alone. Life goes on.

Christian

 

No doubt you’ve read his series of articles (“Digital Diploma Mills”, from whence the book probably developed) posted at various websites ( http://communication.ucsd.edu/dl/ ). I must point out that I tend to agree with his stands on the intellectual property rights of faculty members and share some of his concerns regarding commercialization. However, I cannot agree with his principal conclusion that DL is inherently inferior. He seems to think that it is not possible for any student to learn anything from him unless it can be done in his “godlike” presence. In addition, I find his attitude that individuals who are unable to enroll in a traditional learning environment (due to work, family, disability, etc.) are somehow unworthy of an education to be elitist. He’s quick to quote like-minded individuals who despise DL, yet will not recognize the defenders of DL in academia. Ultimately, I find his core beliefs to be dependent on at least four specific traits:

• his technophobia,
• his concern for faculty rights/prerogatives,
• his fear of commercial control of education, and
• his belief that students are incapable of properly learning when not in the physical presence of their instructors.

Mark

 

You're preaching to the choir. I guess I should've put <wink><wink> after my statement. I have nothing but disdain for the current state of journalism.