whoever can get the job, I guess Who Is A College Teacher, Anyway? Audit Of Online University Raises Questions : NPR Ed : NPR
Never taught a course for WGU, but did develop test bank questions for them, and the parameters they set for the questions pretty much forced the developers to make everything pretty easy. The questions I put in assessments for students at Average State U where I teach would never run the WGU gauntlet, they'd force me to take all the challenge out of them. So this report surprises me not at all.
Of course online educaton is similar to "correspondence schools of yore." Can anyone really make a coherent argument otherwise? Even with so called live lectures, you have no idea if the student logged in and then went away to make a sandwich and eat lunch, returning from time to time perhaps. Where did the Inspector General's employees get their education anyway - Kaplan University?
Certainly there are differences between many (not all) online courses and "correspondence schools of yore," but the same arguments of lack of continuous engagement can be made for "face-to-face" courses. Just because the students' bums are in the seats does not mean that they are not mentally out-to-lunch, returning from time-to-time to pay attention in class. Even in face-to-face classes, we have breaks.
Me! I'm a college teacher from Chicago and in our school (CCC), we really take pride in preparing our students for the real world. More than the book-based knowledge, we hone their mental thinking. I find it really essential and more "important" than some subjective topics/learning. If you happen to be near our area, we can talk about the curriculum!
