NYT: An Online Economics Professor Reveals All

An interesting article about Distance Education...from the viewpoint of the instructor.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/an-online-economics-professor-reveals-all/

 

Sums up the state of DL well.

I think this has more to do with the type of institution rather than the delivery method.

 

Great!

Thanks Eric! I missed this...

 

This was an interesting article. It would be an interesting research project to expand on. Get distance/online learning experiences, both good and bad, from professors and students.

 

I totally agree with this. I have taken online courses at Stanford and other reputable institutions and the experience has been good and equal or better than on campus classes.

However, the weakest point of many online classes is their lack of proctored exams. I believe that online exams low the quality of education as I have experienced so much fraud as an instructor. I have taught online courses with online exams and have seen many times students making groups to pass their exams as a group effort. Others just get someone else to do them.

The argument against proctored exams is that it limits access and not everyone might be closer to an examination centre offered by the University. However, many students abuse online examinations.

The other problem is the "discussion marks". Many online schools give marks for online participation. Although this is a valid way of learning, the issue is that at some schools marks are give pretty much by the number of posting the students posts. Given the massive number of messages going on on a threaded discussion, many instructors just count messages and assign grades based a message counter method. This is not acceptable but if you are working for UoP making 1K per course with 20 students, they leave you no choice but to be a "post" counter since it is not worth your time to read every post.

The best method I have experienced is the "external" study rather than online method that is followed by some schools as University of London. Students are required to do exactly the same work that an on campus student and is required to write proctored exams. You cannot diminish the effort of external students as they are producing exactly the same work as on campus students. However, from the business perspective, this is not very cost effective so the online learning model seems to be the preferred one for for profit schools.

 

Participation has always been a rather unfair way to grade, whether online or not. Online you have post counting regardless of quality, in person you have a subjective judgement by the instructor that in many cases is simply decided at the end of the course based on what they remember that particular student contributing.

Even a well administered proctor system is still, in my opinion, a good bit more risky than a well administered campus testing procedure. How many schools actually check to make sure an individual placed on a proctor form is in fact a valid member of the clergy? How does one go around verifying that information in the first place?

 

RFValve, I agree with a lot of your points. For my online classes, I require a proctored final exam with ID. However, my quizzes are open book. For my discipline (and for the timed-nature of my quizzes) open book is a supportable method. Even if the students are cheating and/or having a friend take the test, the quiz scores seem to have a bell-shaped curve to them naturally and the quiz score average almost always mimics the in-person proctored exam score. My feeling on this is that very few cheat on the quizzes.

Several of my fellow instructors also use a proctored final. Some don't but I feel that they are taking a risk.

I offer one in-person final at the school's campus; otherwise the students must find proctors. That doesn't seem to be a problem, even for students in Asia, Israel and all over the US.

Papers are another area of concern, but this can happen in a B&M school classroom too. An experienced instructor told me, when I began teaching online, that she learned to listen to the "voice" of the student via the online postings etc., so that she could more easily tell if their paper was ghost-written or purchased. Hard to do with 30 students but I try.

Regarding discussion postings. I require one reply to the case study and two other weighty replies. I do read them all and take points off if the major points aren't covered. It does take a lot of time but I feel it's necessary.

 

I do check to make sure that the proctor is valid. The internet is wonderful for this. I also email back and forth with the proctor beforehand, and have rejected proctors if I am suspicious at all. And I make them send me a copy of the ID/Drivers License/Passport of the student.

 

I read the comments posted on the other forum- the one where the Economics Professor story appeared. (I am also following a thread on The Chronicle forum along the same lines) I am not a member off either.
After a while, I find it too frustrating to read. It's not that people have opinions- it's not that people are ignorant- it's not that some people are afraid of change- or that change requires them to evolve too (and that pisses them off) - I think it is more the confidence in which they march onward in the dark that drives me batty.

Ok, here's the thing. The US Department of Ed website is very interesting- check it out if you have not. They have quite a bit of info on distance education. They report that 90% of public 2 and 4 year colleges in the USA provide some type of online delivery. 90%!!!!

So, the argument isn't "see, online education is growing in popularity, so we must X" rather the argument is "how can you generalize about 90% of ANY industry???" EVEN if someone has been a student / teacher /administrator at a dozen colleges in this country that doesn't REALLY justify providing an expert conclusion. Additionally, teachers and students view the process differently. Each process benefits those involved differently- not everyone loves every part of every process. This seems elementary to me, and yet...

 

According to this pdf "More
than 96 percent of the nation’s colleges and
universities currently offer online learning
opportunities. Roughly 4 million students
were taking advantage of these opportunities
in the fall of 2006."

 

Jennifer, can you provide a link to the Chronicle discussion of this article? For some reason, I can't find in there and the search function didn't work either. Thanks in advance.

 

Ok, there are a few, but I can't figure out why hyperlinks are not able to be pasted. Sorry, but here are the names of 2 threads- just type them into the advanced search box as "title only" and they should pop up.

1) Is it possible to teach online only?

2) A bit of fun with online classes

**let me add that that forum is mostly traditional PhD professors with very strong opinions about how "we" should all get edu-ma-cated, and it ain't online. So, for the eager, type in "online" in the search feature and grab a cup of coffee.

 

Thanks for sharing, Eric!

I found this article to be reflective of some of my own thoughts and opinions. I am both a student enrolled in an online program as well as an online instructor. However, the "flexibility" that students love about online learning is often misconstrued to mean "easy." There is a misconception that somehow it takes less effort in an online class. That is certainly not my experience. It takes an unbelievable amount of dedication and commitment, plus a tremendous dose of time management skill. School recruiters are terrible about stressing the "flexibility" aspect rather than the "self-motivation" aspect of online learning.

There are very few 100% B&M schools with 100% traditional classroom courses (nothing online). Both of my children went to college at two different well-known B&M universities, and both had conventional classroom courses. However, every class they took had some kind of online component including posting assignments, materials delivery, grade postings or linked required reading. Most schools also have student webpages for everything from online Libraries to burser payments to ordering transcripts. The modern student must be able to navigate technology as well as human interaction in a group setting, which could be virtual or f2f.

~Cindy