"Digital Diploma Mills" - A critical review

On the site of The Nation magazine you can read an interesting - and demolishing - review of historian David Noble's new book, "Digital Diploma Mills".
It's worth the reading. (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020422&s=brier)

Bests,

Giancarlo

 

Just to connect the threads, the Nation review is also discussed in the thread entitled David Noble: Digital Diploma Mills.

 

You're right Gert, I had not seen that - sorry for double posting.

 

No need to apologize. It should be here rather than "off topic" anyway.

 

Noble's name is a familiar one for those of us in the field of instructional technology and distance learning. He, like many, is an intelligent individual who has concocted a definition of "quality education" that is designed to exclude those features that are unique to technology-enhaced education.

By stating that "quality education" only occurs when a certain type of classroom structure or learner/teacher interaction is present, Noble creates a subjective (and flawed) standard that is based on philosophy and prejudice, rather than upon research and practice.

Decades of media comparison studies and evaluation research have shown that students can learn from a variety of instructional delivery systems--not just live lecture. Research comparing lecture courses to distance learning learning is now considered a waste of time, since the studies--with few exceptions--display "no significant difference" when the variable studied is how the instruction is delivered.

Noble has a particular agenda (to preserve historical roles of higher education faculty) that he sees threatened by the current shift toward student-driven educational systems (called "customer driven" by those who wish to implicate that the "evil" interests of industry are driving our educational system). Noble sees technology as the great tool of "de-skilling" faculty (a suggestion that I find ironic, since many of the most low skilled faculty are those who refuse to learn and utilize the new technologies of their fields).

Noble is loved by those who wish to wish to protect faculty from the obligation of professional development that would include gaining new skills in the utilization of the most current tools in their respective disciplines. His narrow view of education makes it difficult for many of us to take him seriously.

Tony Pina
(Who, for 15 years, has worked with K-12 and college faculty to help them overcome their technology phobias)