Busy Profs and Effective DL Learning

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Bill Grover, Nov 19, 2002.

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  1. Bill Grover

    Bill Grover New Member

    Not so long ago I was chatting with a newly hired prof at an accredited B/M and DL school. I understood him to say that he supervises 230 students in DL classes he 'teaches.' I suppose he may also do some in class teaching and have various other school related duties as meetings, extended luncheons, and so forth. But just the 230 DL students would seem to keep him busy. Suppose each student in each class made six submissions (papers, midterm, final) for the prof to evaluate and suppose the turn over of DL students occured three times a year which this school's catalogue leads me to believe happens. Then we have 230x6x3=4140 work products to evaluate. Now say he works 300 days out of a year and out of each day he can put five hours into grading DL submissions. That's 1500 hours. Now if you divide 4140 by 1500 you get , uh, let's see now, well........you see my point right?

    Is this cause for worry about anything,( eg, good feedback and probing), besides my arithmatic skill?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 19, 2002
  2. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member


    Ditance learning is different to e-learning. If the model used by the University is the correspondence course model with very little student interaction, then I see it possible. Many professors have assistants for assignment grading. But in the case of e-learning courses where there is a lot of interaction with students like online discussions and virtual groups, then this is not possible. In an e-learning course, more than 15 students can be quite difficult to manage.

    UNISA and USQ follows the correspondence course model. The courses that I completed at USQ required very little professor interaction, it was basically a book and final exam coupled with few assignments. Many times, assignments are not graded by the professor but an assistant. A typical DBA course at USQ has around 100 students, but you don't hear from the instructor more than two times per semester.

    Dissertation is different, then you work one-to-one with a supervisor, that is why USQ charges you double when it comes to dissertation credit points.
     
  3. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    " I understood him to say that he supervises 230 students in DL classes he 'teaches.' I suppose he may also do some in class teaching and have various other school related duties as meetings, extended luncheons, and so forth. But just the 230 DL students would seem to keep him busy. Suppose each student in each class made six submissions (papers, midterm, final) for the prof to evaluate and suppose the turn over of DL students occured three times a year which this school's catalogue leads me to believe happens. "

    This looks like a poor pedagogy in which a campus based programme is being used as the basis for a dl programme. Of course it can't work and won't. With this load - six submissions! - the 'supervisor' will certainly skip the supervision and the continuous assessment element will be meaningless (apart from the risk of fraud).

    At any one moment there are probably near to a thousand dl students at EBS taking my subject - negotiation - and some of them access our student run web board ('Watercooler') and others e-mail me (about three a week). In a week or so this will be enhanced by the launch of the eMBA Negotiation package. However, some 600 a year will sit/write their Final Examination. No 'submissions', no contiuous assessment (are you sure whose work you are assessing, do you give it the appropriate consideration?) and no contact unless the student initiates it. The exam is rigorous but fair. About 25 per cent fail. The rest progress to their next of nine subjects.

    Apart from the myth of 'extended lunches', it is appropriate to question the pedagogy that tries to cram a campus programme into an alien environment for dl. No wonder dl gets a bad name when its proponents insist on undermining is scalability. Some of DL's friends are its worst enemies.
     
  4. Andy Borchers

    Andy Borchers New Member

    There is plenty of reason to worry here. As we see the rise of "commodity" education programs, "for profit colleges", "six week terms" and "the lowest price MBA", what quality of instruction goes along with such trends?

    My observation is that the quality of student / faculty interaction suffers. Iin my courses I typically have 15 or more graded items during a term. Load me up with 230 students and quality will suffer.

    Education is inherently labor intensive and, increasingly, expensive. Alternatives - like CBT (computer based training) don't seem to be a reasonable alternative for many students.

    Regards - Andy

     
  5. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Andy, you have hit the nail firmly on the head. Distance learning is not Distance teaching!

    It is 'learning', self motivated for the student who cannot get to a campus by virtue of distance from it, or from life history or job or personal circumstances, but not from lack of ability. They require personal characteristics not needed in the same abundance as with attendees at campus programmes.

    There are limitations on the output numbers in campus based teaching - even if you could break the academics' resistance to working the assets of the campus more intensely!

    That so many teachers have not grasped this elementary fact - and many of them try to deliver distance learning, which they have crippled by imposing distance teaching on the pedagogy - explains the real cleavage between those who understand the distance learning pedagogy and those who don't.

    Then we have the 'get rich quick' or 'graduate without too much effort merchants' who give distance learning a sham reputation. No wonder you have concerns. I share them but I also believe there is another way: back to distance learning where performance is measured by tough but fair examinations.
     
    • Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
      Like onie ditch;
      And then, O what a glorious sight,
      Warm-reekin, rich!
    Wonderful article in the New York Times today: Haggis, the Food of Poets. You need an extended lunch to eat one of these.

    James Macsween, whose company makes more than 500 tons of haggis each year, is quoted as saying: "We have a phrase, `He who tastes knows.' "

    Indeed.
     
  6. Homer

    Homer New Member

    ...........about 21 minutes per submission which, btw, I'll bet is considerably more than the profs spent reading the only submissions (final exams) for several classes I took at my traditional undergrad institution that contained anywhere from 200-250 students in a huge lecture hall. Not much interaction there........none, in fact.

    Further, I'm certain that 21 minutes is twice the amount of time my Civ Pro prof spent reading my 3-hour bluebook exam in law school. During the post mortem, she freely admitted that she spent roughly 10 minutes grading each exam and, again, that was our one and only submission.

    May be sort of off point but I'd give anything to know how much time the bar examiner spent reading the answers to my essay questions for admission to the Florida Bar. I've heard stories about a guy who walked into a restaurant, plunked a stack of bluebooks down on a table, and started reading.......at around three o'clock in the morning!

    Sorry for rambling on but it just doesn't appear to me that this purported "prof overload" is limited to the DL environment.
     
  7. Tyo007

    Tyo007 New Member

    I agree that exams are an important part of the assessment of a student's understanding of a subject.
    I believe that the way the big 3 give credits for passing exams is fair.

    I wouldn't say that exams-only graduate programs are best. I don't believe that because distance teaching is difficult and expensive it should not be done. I don't believe that because reviewing assessments is time consuming and that assessments are not absolutely fraud proof they should be disregarded.

    I feel that during my DL MBA studies I learned the most from my weekly assignments, the critics from the professors and the interaction through team work with the other students.
    I am glad I studied for my MBA at a US university because we used mostly Harvard case studies that were very relevant to my business environment and that gave me the skills required to act within an evolving business environment where most of the time no answer is just simply right or wrong.

    I am glad that for my business negotiation elective course I was paired with an argricultural conglomerate executive with whom for 3 months I had one new negotiation to complete every week. This to apply immediately the technique reviewed that week rather than reading about the possible outcome of the negotiation in a book.

    I feel that the risk of students faking all assessments in a MBA program in very unlikely. The movie scenario would be one rich but lazy guy saying to the smart but poor one " listen I want the Diploma I will pay the US$ 10k to 20K for the program so you go make all the work for one to two years on a weekly basis, you get the education and I will get the diploma". If the smart-but poor- guy has got to earn a living that would cost the rich kid another 20k US$ a year. The lazy one would still have to take the exams without having done any of the assignments, not a serious option.

    I also feel that when a professor continuously promotes his program in this forum by making vague criticism of other institutions/programs it reflects badly on his institution.

    Cheers,
    Bert.
     
  8. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Bert:
    "I also feel that when a professor continuously promotes his program in this forum by making vague criticism of other institutions/programs it reflects badly on his institution. "

    Mea culpa. However, I identify myself and my institution on the grounds that 'anonymous' contributions to a serious community of persons interested in distance learning are, in my opinion, less than convincing and weaken their credibility - even though they make some excellent points as 'Bert' has done. Again, by observation, 'Bert', I have found that the more certain someone is of their opinions, as expressed on such boards, the more likely they cover them by anonymity.

    I try to avoid criticising named institutions but I do critique the campus oriented distance learning pedagogies practised in many institutions. That is an important debate and one I have never shirked from in many fora besides an electronic one.

    I would have thought, 'Bert', that these critiques are of interest to people of differing or no views in this community. Where they are not of interest they are rejected, or ignored. Where they are defended we engage in an exchange of views, both from knowledge that there are different pedagogies and from some famiiarity with them.

    If by naming my institution I 'promote' it in your opinion (though that is by no means my intention and a pretty - and petty - futile one if it was), I also expose EBS to withering criticism from those bothered to read my contributions and decisive indifference from those whom I bore.

    On faking assignments, sadly I am unable to agree with you. There is a major scandal in Israel at present on fraudulent degree programmes, including faking assignments, and it is prevalent in other programmes in other countries. In the (long)distance education context it is a clear and present risk. In mentioning this kind of problem (and any others related to dl) I feel it incumbent to state how it can be dealt with by a dl institution. Data not anecdote is required.

    Now, in the interests of our implicit 'negotiation' I will take your point and try to avoid the charge of 'promoting' EBS by in future using language like: 'In a dl institution with which I am familiar...', or, 'It would be possible for a dl institution to ....', ''I have heard that a dl institution does ....', or similar constructions. Then, perhaps, labelling where I work could be treated as a sort of 'health warning' about the credibility of the views expressed.

    If, anything, of course, crticising named individuals from the posture of anonymity reflects far more badly on those who practice this behaviour for whatever reason than those who don't. But that is just my humble personal opinion and one endorsed by professional experience of the clash of ideas.
     
  9. Bill Highsmith

    Bill Highsmith New Member

    Here is an undergraduate DL pedagogy of which I am aware that is modeled on the classroom teaching at this state university:

    1) One or more tenured professors teach classroom students and teach (or are responsible for, as you wish) a large number of DL students. The resident professor designs the course.

    2) The DL students are divided into sections of 15 to 25 students, each with an online assistant instructor having at least a master’s degree in the subject matter. The assistant instructors grade, tutor and herd. The assistant instructors can be located anywhere, but must receive training on campus and receive certification. (Interestingly, quite a few of the assistant instructors are resident faculty at other institutions. Some are TAs on campus, also.) Email is the primary mode of communication between assistant instructor and student although telephone, fax and FTF meetings are sometimes used. The students may also contact the professor as needed.

    3) The courses are 16 weeks long.

    4) The professor makes available weekly downloadable audio lectures with slides (Real Audio presentations).

    5) Midterm and final exams are taken online and are timed (but not proctored).

    6) There is a research assignment each week but the last that is relevant to the study theme of the week.

    7) The sections are further divided into discussion groups of about 5-6 students. There is a discussion topic each week (but two) relevant to the study theme of the week.

    8) There are textbook and other readings each week.

    9) There is a culminating research project.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 20, 2002
  10. I disagree. I think Prof. Kennedy is quite restrained in his promotion of EBS, and that his opinions (which have been validated through many years of experience) are amongst the most valuable on this forum. I believe that his frankness reflects well on his institution.

    Both EBS and the world of DL in general will be much the poorer after Prof. Kennedy's impending retirement.
     
  11. Bill Grover

    Bill Grover New Member

    Re: Re: Busy Profs and Effective DL Learning

     
  12. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Campus v distance pedagogy

    Bill Highsmith's statement on a DL pedagogy for Bachelor students is revealing and conforms to what is know as the 'Open University' (UK) model. It is a distance-teaching model (which I submit, humbly of course, is different from a distance learning model). If I may, for the purposes of this discussion, I would like to discuss this as if it was applied to a DL MBA model, as this would avoid a separate discussion about whether a Bachelor degree (younger students, little or no business experience) requires a more interventionist teaching role than one for adults with business experience. I am quite prepared to incorporate that discussion if required.

    It is a resource intensive model (therefore unnecessarily expensive to deliver and inhibitive of learning too). The Professor designs the course (quality variability when Professors change) and is supported by Associate Tutors for every 25 students in contact with the students by e-mail (another quality variation involved, plus change over issues, especially mid-term). For 100 students the Professor supervises 4 instructors (7 if it is groups of 15); for 1,000 students this rises to 40 instructors (and for 8,000 it is 320). With each increase in staffing levels the quality issue re-appears, as is co-ordination and administration.

    There is more than one subject and at an MBA level of generality that usually means a specialist Professor for each discipline and corresponding increased numbers of specialised supporting Tutors. For 9 subjects that means Nine specialist Professors, plus 36 Tutors for 100 students, and 360 for 1,000 students. Now we have even more issues of variable quality.

    But the workload is indeed heavy (and relentless). Can there really be 15 assignments per subject, if so, how is this assessed? Each cohort of 25 has 4 weekly discussion groups covering 14 topics, plus a Textbook (presumably not one written for the distance student?) and Readings, and the Professor's audio tapes. All this, culminating in a Research Project (how long, how assessed and, presumably, 'self certificated' as 'original'?) involving some minimal work.
    That is on the input side.

    Measuring outputs - performance of students - the exams are on-line and not proctored. That would immediately cause problems with the Quality Assurance Agency in the UK, if it has not been questioned and prohibited already within a reputable University.

    In sum, the distance-learning programme attempts to replicate and convey into a distance mode a campus oriented teaching programme. It is resource intensive, and subject to severe administrative stresses. It does not take advantage of available distance learning pedagogies or their proven resource efficiencies and their potential for flexibility. It is not distance learner oriented. It sees education as about deploying teaching inputs over a distance and not learning over a distance. It has limited scalability.

    I am not, of course, dismissing it out of hand because I know of many programmes like the one described by Bill (including the OU), taught by very competent faculty (professors and support), that achieve acceptable results. But I believe dl faculty can do it better by replacing the inefficiencies of distance teaching with the efficiencies of distance learning.
     
  13. Bill Highsmith

    Bill Highsmith New Member

    I don’t think that what Prof. Kennedy said is all that controversial. In short, distance education is different from/to classroom teaching. However, I don’t see adoption of DE pedagogy occurring broadly in B&M institutions other than in the education departments thereof. The particular course that I was describing was a technology course. The professor had a Ph.D. in the appropriate subject area as is required for his tenure; I don’t know if he has had even one education/pedagogy course in is life. However many or few education courses he’s had, it is the same number in his classroom setting as in his DE setting.

    So I ask, outside of education departments in higher learning, is it really reasonable to assume that teaching in the classroom is really done more effectively than at a distance given that most educators are not trained in either pedagogy? There will be some osmosis from other educators, but even that suspect.

    Anecdotally speaking, I’ve had some completely miserable classroom-based courses/units, the worst two, oddly, from a husband/wife team. Professor He taught a coliseum-sized class of freshman physics students, not one of whom could understand a word he said due to a stronger-than-normal South Asian accent. (I took my first university exam ever in this class completely unprepared because I couldn’t discern his announcement of it.) I would have been much better off with a written text and no classroom “experience.”

    Professor She taught linear algebra to a combined senior undergrad/graduate class, which is a miserable-enough subject, but the typical class went thusly: Professor She began at the left-hand chalkboard working a problem. By the end of the hour, the left, center, and right-hand chalkboards were full, but Professor She was back at the center board trying to figure out what went wrong. (She would tell us in the next class.) She also gave three-hour tests, but you only had one hour, so the average grade, barring any grace from Professor She, was about 35. There were some very nervous graduate students in that class and I was a bit nervous myself because I was trying to graduate from undergraduate school that semester. Many of my old professors have faded away in my mind, but this pair remains firmly fixed.

    I could have said that more concisely: I didn’t detect a lot of advanced pedagogy of any sort at any time during my undergraduate and graduate experience. Some educators have more raw talent and intuition about pedagogy than others, but few have much training…outside of the education department.

    Another note about the DL scheme that I outlined: all students enter the program as third-year students, having an AA degree or equivalent. This is probably a good idea at many levels.
     
  14. Eli

    Eli New Member

    I know at UCLA, for example, most MBA classes are 300+ students!

    Strange as it may seem, through a DL system I had more interaction with faculty then a traditional classroom.

    Eli
    ABD, Touro University International
     
  15. Andy Borchers

    Andy Borchers New Member

    Bill - I would suggest that media isn't a significant factor in the quality of a course. "No significant difference" seems to be the case. There are good on-ground and on-line courses. And there are terrible on-ground and on-line courses. The difference isn't in the media.

    Difference in course quality is, as a recent IHEP study ("What's the Difference") suggests, dependent on:

    1. Instructor skill
    2. Student motivation
    3. Learning tasks
    4. Student characteristics - i.e. preferred learning style, educational background.

    Regards - Andy

     
  16. Homer

    Homer New Member

    Re: Re: Re: Busy Profs and Effective DL Learning

    Bill, you're correct; this is NOT my area. In fact, since virtually the only thing I know about John 3:16 is that there appear to be a lot of "John 3:16" signs at sporting events, I'll concede the point. ;)
     
  17. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    What works in dl

    Bill: "So I ask, outside of education departments in higher learning, is it really reasonable to assume that teaching in the classroom is really done more effectively than at a distance given that most educators are not trained in either pedagogy?"

    I do not think that which is 'best' campus or dl is an issue really worthy of discussion. They are different and for some students campus is 'best' and for others dl is 'best' and for an important third group (a majority?), whichever is 'best', dl is all they have available because of job, life, location and personal circumstances. That some people add 'personal ability' to that list is unfortunate (and incorrect) and a reputable dl programme should make no concessions to programmes that lack serious standards. The question then becomes, given that dl is their alternative to campus, how should dl be arranged?

    For that question it becomes important to decide on pedagogy - distance teaching or distance learning? Those pedagogic models that focus on distance teaching are inefficient, ineffective and resource expensive, leading to under funding and over stretched input, which leads to declining standards of assessment (in parallel with similar declines on campus).

    How should distance learning be delivered?

    First: subject specific research into the basic concepts required for competence in the subject (I have heard that in one institution this took nearly 15 years, including the field testing of the materials).

    Second: user-specific research that assesses the relevance of the basic concepts to the learners' objectives of competence.

    Third: creation of the learning materials (concept-example- practice method), field-tested in Executive programmes with approximately the same population for whom the learning materials were to be provided.

    Then creation of a delivery structure so that contact was minimal - the materials had to be good enough for isolated learners to learn and to receive adequate feedback.

    Finally, decisions about the examination regime for valid assessment ('attestation of fitness') had to be agreed in a 100+ country environment. Like Caesar's wife, it has to be above suspicion, or as close to that status as was possible.

    This throws a lot of the campus pedagogy out and is controversial for that alone. And Bill is right, most academics do not know much, if anything, about pedagogy. Indeed, most Universities use pedagogy developed in Scottish and English universities in the 18th-19th centuries - even the cap and gowns that feature in US campus graduations mimic the academic dress of the tutor and his charges (women were not allowed as students until the late 19th century and as faculty until the early 20th century). All the prejudices about tutorials, class essays, contact and what we now call 'networking', three terms a year with long vacations, and general tolerance of juvenile 'fooling around' all descend from these UK colleges for young 'gentlemen'. The solidly 'radical' defenders of this tradition, who sneer at dl pedagogy, amuse me sometimes. (Plus, the defenders of 'tenure').

    The expense of distance learning is mainly in the up front investment costs; its operating costs are low per unit. When campus faculty decide to embark on dl they often do the reverse. They accept campus prepared materials (which are seldom as open to wider inspection by their peers), re-purpose them for dl, ship them out almost untested and certainly not written as dl materials - they 'teach' but do not necessarily help 'learning - and support it all with campus level staff-student ratios (determined mainly by the physical size of a classrooms), and call it dl!

    At an institution that I have heard about, the 'class size' of dl students is over 1,000 a session (in Negotiation, I understand, it is 600 a year - and this is handled - would you believe it? - by one fulltime Professor with a PhD and no Tutorial Assistants with or without Masters degrees!). Scalability in dl is determined by demand, not supply.

    Moving dl technology on from purely print based to the Internet, we see similar expensive mistakes by some of its proponents (some seeing cash flowing like Niagara Falls, and spending wildly in anticipation). In alliance with IT services they adopted expensive formats that 'could be done' therefore 'they were'. Heavy costs led to heavy losses and disappointing sales from 'mega productions' that were not researched or proven, but were driven by inappropriate analogies to television and what technologists (not dl experts) told them was 'necessary'. The elementary question was not asked: what do learners want from on-line materials - indeed, any materials they were to study on their own? Top of most lists of student answers is a version of: 'materials that help we pass the examinations' ('otherwise I'll watch the History Channel, etc.').
     
  18. Thanks for the interesting post, Prof. Kennedy.

    There was a contributor to degreeinfo who wrote that the key to scalability is to get the students to take responsibility for their own learning. One large U.S. state university for which I am an occasional adjunct has failed in this regard, and it has significant problems. The academic staff are demoralized because of the extreme online workload, and many of the students are demoralized because they feel they are not getting the “teaching” they expect. There is a prevailing attitude of “I paid my money, now it’s your job to teach me this material so that I get my A.” The situation is so bad that we even have a course for academic staff on how to deal with difficult or disruptive students in an online environment. (To be sure, some of the disruptive students present even more serious difficulties – we have our share of inveterate flirters, manipulators, etc.)

    I am no expert on DL pedagogy, but it does seem to me that a key to success is to make it clear that students are responsible for their own learning.
     
  19. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Gert: “I paid my money, now it’s your job to teach me this material so that I get my A.”

    I completely agree that this sort of attitude is not conducive to distance learning - indeed, I would go further and say it is anathema to any learning and the fact that it is rampant in some environments points to a pretty serious problem in some institutions. Of course, a distance teaching programme, with its heavy emphasis on inputs, encourages it.

    At an institution that I have heard of (!) it is confronted from the start and confronted if it appears again:

    'Oh, No sir. You have to "learn yourself to an A" - we cannot "teach" you to one. If that is what you expect, we suggest you attend another institution with softer standards that accommodate your special needs. We have spent a lot of time and good money researching how people learn and we found that they do not learn by somebody else being responsible for it. That's your contribution; our's is to provide you with research proven learning materials covering the concepts with examples of their application, self-testing instruments,and practice exams plus good solutions. Our tutorial role is to show you how to correct your errors and confusion - that's how you learned in the past as a child - and your first lesson as an adult is to develop a realistic self responsibility for your own learning and development. OK, Sir/Madam?"
     

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