Higher Failure Rate in On-line Courses Tolerated because "cash-cow" ?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by warguns, May 23, 2011.

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  1. warguns

    warguns Member

  2. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    Dang good article, the comments are the best part..lol.
     
  3. okydd

    okydd New Member

    “It's because colleges can produce online courses much more cheaply while charging roughly the same tuition.”
    I am always curious about the ubiquitous “technology fee”. Why do online schools tack this on? It is just brutal. The profit on tuition is already lucrative.
     
  4. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    The tech fee at Clovis was almost as much as the course, it's just their way of beating a few more bucks out of you.
     
  5. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    I found Mr. Jenkins article a curious mix of thoughtful and innane. Here are a few instances of the latter:

    It's because colleges can produce online courses much more cheaply while charging roughly the same tuition

    Perhaps at Georgia Perimeter. At my institution, we do not pay faculty to develop their face-to-face courses, but we pay a development fee to those who create our online courses. Our e-Learning division has about 40 full-time professional staff (housed in a physical building) devoted exclusively to the needs of our online students and faculty. We pay a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for our LMS license and tens of thousands to maintain 24/7/265 technical support for our students.

    Can we agree that none of us would want to be operated on by surgeons who received all of their medical training online?

    That argument still sounds as silly as it did ten years ago. How many M.D. programs are totally online? Is Mr. Jenkins institution seriously considering establishing one?

    I think that's where we are with most online courses: They're not quite as good as face-to-face, but they're close enough. Are some of them just as good? No doubt. Might some be even better? Possibly.

    80 years of research comparing courses delivered with technology to those delivered face-to-face, have failed to generate any body of literature demonstrating that technology-delivered courses as "not quite as good as face-to-face."

    But a few, at least, should probably not be taught at all—"Advanced Brain Surgery".

    And does Georgia Perimeter even have a face-to-face version of "Advanced Brain Survery"?
     
  6. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    Are distance courses as good as face-to-face courses when it comes to completion rates? It is not difficult to find studies that show higher dropout rates for distance students. Like this one, for example.

    ****

    As another example, Degreeinfo recently highlighted a paper by a Berkeley professor, who concluded that "the online version of “Introduction to Shakespeare” course has consistently better learning outcomes than the on-campus version". Sounds great -- except for the part at the end of the paper, where the professor acknowledged that the majority of her enrolled online students dropped out and failed to complete the course.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 25, 2011
  7. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Yikes. Have you considered switching to a free LMS like Moodle, Sakai, or Canvas? You can skip the million dollar licensing but still buy the support you need from third party service companies like MoodleRooms.

    -=Steve=-
     
  8. Pelican

    Pelican Member

    How are On-line courses harder? I think a course is only difficult if the professor makes it difficult.

    Why does an On-line student need to be more self-motivated? There are still deadlines to pull you along, the same as any face-to-face course, right?

    Is it possible that the segment of the population who sign up for the courses would do just as poorly in the face-to-face format? Have they tried both?

    Did these people really drop out because they are failing? Maybe they just got tired of the design flaws in the courses' multiple-choice quizzes or coming up with questions just so they could get the minimum number of posts needed to meet the participation requirements or tired of reading the overly complicated course instructions, synchronizing their clock to deadlines, having to type out all of their questions, having to wait many hours to get an answer, etc. and the added stress of technological failure (e.g. your paper getting stuck in your professor's junk mail folder).
     
  9. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    For the average student, online courses require more participation. You can warm a seat in a lecture hall without much trouble. You can't slip through an online course, though, because there are discussion board requirements, etc.

    For me, I think online courses are easier because face-to-face courses tend to drain me. In general, I can absorb and critically interact with material much more quickly as an independent learner than in a classroom setting. This isn't a statement that the online course isn't as challenging, however. It simply is a reflection of my learning style. I have been this way my entire life. In my seventh grade algebra class, for instance, instead of listening to the teacher lecture about concepts I had already mastered, I generally worked ahead, and at any given moment I was at least 4-5 lessons ahead of the class.

    I do not like lecture-based courses. Some courses, such as languages or quantitative courses, may be harder in an online format for me, but I tend to be more engaged in an online format that is not lecture-driven.

    It is because you lack the face-to-face accountability. You don't have a professor staring you down. You don't have peers sitting next you, discussing their assignments.

    Some likely would. I doubt it would account for all of the individuals, though.

    This could also be a factor.
     
  10. cookderosa

    cookderosa Resident Chef

     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 25, 2011
  11. OutsideTheBox

    OutsideTheBox New Member

    I would another wrinkle how many people attending online programs at a traditional sense are really suited to do the work at a college or university level? I think one issue is people attend not-so-wonderful schools like the UoP due to not being able to do the work needed at any decent public or private college. It can't be just cost UoP is expensive or ability to learn on-line many fine colleges and universities offer a solid option but admission is still standard in them if seeking a degree.

    I would make a point it seems to me a decently motivated, college ready person seeking courses this way likely would do fine. But if its anyone else school in general could be hard and this would be harder needing a student ,as one noted, to participate in the classes.
     
  12. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Many other schools (like ours) do not have significantly different non-completion rates between F2F and online courses. This data is very institution specific.

    Most studies comparing student achievement in F2F versus technology-delivered environments show little to no significant difference. The latest studies of online are showing higher students outcomes in online and hybrid environments, due primarily to the phenomenon that courses that take advantage of the online environment (as opposed to those that merely put the face-to-face course online) encourage students to spend more physical time engaging with the course conten and activities (which influences achievement). This Shakespeare course study did not excite me much when it came out (for the same reason that you were less than impressed).
     
  13. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    The problem is that far too many students attending community colleges and state universities also arrive not being able to do college level writing and math.
     
  14. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    I like the saying that a "free" open source LMS is like a "free" puppy. You end up paying one way or the other, either in PhP/MySqL staff (Moodle) or Java staff (Sakai). Sakai has had a number of technical issues lately and, frankly, Moodle just does not currently have the administrative tools to do what we do now in ANGEL (however, some the best folks from ANGEL have recently been hired by Moodlerooms, so they will be worth watching in the next year or two). Instructure's Canvas is definitely the exciting new player, so we are investigating.

    ANGEL's life as a prodcut will last until 2014 and we have pricing locked in until then, so we are definitely weighing our options (Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Canvas).
     
  15. ryoder

    ryoder New Member

    My coworker is doing a but in seat MBA and he was amazed at the number of writing assignments i have to do at ncu. He did a PowerPoint with three classmates that was six pages long and he ended up doing all the work in three to four hours. They presented it and received a high B on it. I had to build three power points for sks5000 and each one required fifteen slides with 200 words of notes below each slide cited in APA format. The references slide covered two pages and the amount of research needed was exhausting. I think i spent fifteen hours on each presentation. This is typical though of a presentation for work. They take time to write.

    He also said that he shouldn't have to read the book for the class and that the teacher should cover all material in class.


    A lot of brick and mortar students probably think the same way. They probably think that all they are responsible for knowing is what they scribbled down during the lecture. You do not have this luxury at ncu. I had to read the entire 1500 page history of management thought book and then about 20 scholarly journal articles on the subject in order to complete my assignments. I did learn a lot though.
     
  16. OutsideTheBox

    OutsideTheBox New Member

    The counter question how many of these students including those going to on-line only programs from for profit schools if one goes by preparation for college or university work, would have been even in a four year program say in 1950? I could lessen that a bit if one is seeking a two year associates degree or certificate but still is it a case of to many students not traditionally ready ,IQ and an academic track to that end, to attend a school for a bachelors degree or higher.

    I'm a good example my tested IQ fell between 118-128 each time. I however can't perform mathematics over common use level and never could pick up a foreign language so am not likely going to enter a bachelors program and do well in it.

    I just think the system is partially to blame the bachelors is now the old High School diploma and that is forcing more students into degree paths that would decades ago have taken a lesser option or work right out of High School.
     

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