Universities Abroad Join Partnerships on the Web
Over the last year, elite American universities have raced to stake out a place in the new world of free online courses — and now, universities around the globe are following suit.
This week, the two largest ventures providing what are known as MOOCs — massive open online courses — are announcing new partnerships with leading universities in Canada, Mexico, Europe, China, Singapore, Japan and Australia, and signing additional American universities.
Coursera, founded by two Stanford University computer professors, is adding 29 universities — including École Polytechnique in France, the National University of Singapore, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and National Autonomous University of Mexico — to its current 33 partners.
Meanwhile, edX, a nonprofit venture started by Harvard and M.I.T., is doubling its university partners to 12, adding Rice University, the Australian National University, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and, in Canada, McGill and the University of Toronto.
“We have had an international student community from the very beginning, and bringing these leading universities, from North America and Europe and the Asia Pacific, into the edX organization will help us meet the tremendous demand we are experiencing,” said Anant Agarwal, the president of edX.
The rush into a still-experimental field comes as no surprise to William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton and founding chairman of Ithaka, a nonprofit concerned with education and information technology.
“One of the characteristics of academia is that nobody wants to be left behind,” he said. “There’s great promise here, great potential, but we need more careful research, and there has not been sufficient attention to that, partly because a lot of the people creating these courses are missionaries, and missionaries are not by and large interested in testing their message.”
Coursera, which has attracted 2.7 million students to its 222 courses since it was started last spring, has recently had growing pains. This month, its course Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Applications, offered by the Georgia Institute of Technology, was suspended because of technical glitches. And last weekend, one month into his Microeconomics for Managers course, Richard B. McKenzie, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Irvine, quit, telling students that “because of disagreements over how to best conduct this course, I’ve agreed to disengage from it, with regret.” The course is continuing, with his materials.
Among Coursera’s new partners are a Spanish business school, several United States public universities, including the University of California campuses in San Diego and Santa Cruz, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and the California Institute of the Arts.
With the array of international partners, Coursera will offer courses in Spanish, Chinese, French and Italian.
“We are equally excited about the prospects of bringing higher education to places where access is limited, and of giving established educational institutions opportunities to raise their impact both on and off campus,” said Andrew Ng, a co-founder of Coursera, in a statement.
Both Coursera and edX are moving to help students earn college credit for their free online courses, for a fee, using identity-verified certificates, proctored exams and the American Council on Education’s recommendations, which many universities consider for transfer credit.
EdX, which began with a single M.I.T. electrical engineering course taught by Dr. Agarwal, now offers about two dozen courses, a roster that will grow to 50 to 100 next fall.
EdX expects to serve a billion students worldwide over the next decade on its open-source educational platform, Dr. Agarwal said. About 700,000 individuals are using the platform now, he said, with more than 900,000 course enrollments.
As important as providing free access to students worldwide, Dr. Agarwal said, is edX’s goal of using the platform for research on how students learn, and better on-campus pedagogy.
So far, most MOOCs have had dropout rates exceeding 90 percent.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/education/universities-abroad-join-mooc-course-projects.html?ref=education&_r=0
By TAMAR LEWIN
www.languagecorpsasia.com
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Universities Reshaping Education on the Web
Universities Reshaping Education on the Web.
As part of a seismic shift in online learning that is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, will announce on Tuesday that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In the fall, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally.
Even before the expansion, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, the founders of Coursera, said it had registered 680,000 students in 43 courses with its original partners, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.
Now, the partners will include the California Institute of Technology; Duke University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Washington; and the University of Virginia, where the debate over online education was cited in last’s month’s ousting — quickly overturned — of its president, Teresa A. Sullivan. Foreign partners include the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne, a technical university in Switzerland.
And some of them will offer credit.
“This is the tsunami,” said Richard A. DeMillo, the director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech. “It’s all so new that everyone’s feeling their way around, but the potential upside for this experiment is so big that it’s hard for me to imagine any large research university that wouldn’t want to be involved.”
Because of technological advances — among them, the greatly improved quality of online delivery platforms, the ability to personalize material and the capacity to analyze huge numbers of student experiences to see which approach works best — MOOCs are likely to be a game-changer, opening higher education to hundreds of millions of people.
To date, most MOOCs have covered computer science, math and engineering, but Coursera is expanding into areas like medicine, poetry and history. MOOCs were largely unknown until a wave of publicity last year about Stanford University’s free online artificial intelligence course attracted 160,000 students from 190 countries. Only a small percentage of the students completed the course, but even so, the numbers were staggering.
“The fact that so many people are so curious about these courses shows the yearning for education,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. “There are going to be lots of bumps in the road, but this is a very important experiment at a very substantial scale.”
So far, MOOCs have offered no credit, just a “statement of accomplishment” and a grade. But the University of Washington said it planned to offer credit for its Coursera offerings this fall, and other online ventures are also moving in that direction. David P. Szatmary, the university’s vice provost, said that to earn credit, students would probably have to pay a fee, do extra assignments and work with an instructor.
Experts say it is too soon to predict how MOOCs will play out, or which venture will emerge as the leader. Coursera, with about $22 million in financing, including $3.7 million in equity investment from Caltech and Penn, may currently have the edge. But no one is counting out edX, a joint venture of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Udacity, the company founded by Sebastian Thrun of Stanford, who taught the artificial intelligence course last year.
Each company offers online materials broken into manageable chunks, with short video segments, interactive quizzes and other activities — as well as online forums where students answer one another’s questions.
But even Mr. Thrun, a master of MOOCs, cautioned that for all their promise, the courses are still experimental. “I think we are rushing this a little bit,” he said. “I haven’t seen a single study showing that online learning is as good as other learning.”
Worldwide access is Coursera’s goal. “EPF Lausanne, which offers courses in French, opens up access for students in half of Africa,” Ms. Koller said. Each university designs and produces its own courses and decides whether to offer credit.
Coursera does not pay the universities, and the universities do not pay Coursera, but both incur substantial costs. Contracts provide that if a revenue stream emerges, the company and the universities will share it.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium-of-colleges-takes-online-education-to-new-level.html?ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
As part of a seismic shift in online learning that is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, will announce on Tuesday that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In the fall, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally.
Even before the expansion, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, the founders of Coursera, said it had registered 680,000 students in 43 courses with its original partners, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.
Now, the partners will include the California Institute of Technology; Duke University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Washington; and the University of Virginia, where the debate over online education was cited in last’s month’s ousting — quickly overturned — of its president, Teresa A. Sullivan. Foreign partners include the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne, a technical university in Switzerland.
And some of them will offer credit.
“This is the tsunami,” said Richard A. DeMillo, the director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech. “It’s all so new that everyone’s feeling their way around, but the potential upside for this experiment is so big that it’s hard for me to imagine any large research university that wouldn’t want to be involved.”
Because of technological advances — among them, the greatly improved quality of online delivery platforms, the ability to personalize material and the capacity to analyze huge numbers of student experiences to see which approach works best — MOOCs are likely to be a game-changer, opening higher education to hundreds of millions of people.
To date, most MOOCs have covered computer science, math and engineering, but Coursera is expanding into areas like medicine, poetry and history. MOOCs were largely unknown until a wave of publicity last year about Stanford University’s free online artificial intelligence course attracted 160,000 students from 190 countries. Only a small percentage of the students completed the course, but even so, the numbers were staggering.
“The fact that so many people are so curious about these courses shows the yearning for education,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. “There are going to be lots of bumps in the road, but this is a very important experiment at a very substantial scale.”
So far, MOOCs have offered no credit, just a “statement of accomplishment” and a grade. But the University of Washington said it planned to offer credit for its Coursera offerings this fall, and other online ventures are also moving in that direction. David P. Szatmary, the university’s vice provost, said that to earn credit, students would probably have to pay a fee, do extra assignments and work with an instructor.
Experts say it is too soon to predict how MOOCs will play out, or which venture will emerge as the leader. Coursera, with about $22 million in financing, including $3.7 million in equity investment from Caltech and Penn, may currently have the edge. But no one is counting out edX, a joint venture of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Udacity, the company founded by Sebastian Thrun of Stanford, who taught the artificial intelligence course last year.
Each company offers online materials broken into manageable chunks, with short video segments, interactive quizzes and other activities — as well as online forums where students answer one another’s questions.
But even Mr. Thrun, a master of MOOCs, cautioned that for all their promise, the courses are still experimental. “I think we are rushing this a little bit,” he said. “I haven’t seen a single study showing that online learning is as good as other learning.”
Worldwide access is Coursera’s goal. “EPF Lausanne, which offers courses in French, opens up access for students in half of Africa,” Ms. Koller said. Each university designs and produces its own courses and decides whether to offer credit.
Coursera does not pay the universities, and the universities do not pay Coursera, but both incur substantial costs. Contracts provide that if a revenue stream emerges, the company and the universities will share it.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium-of-colleges-takes-online-education-to-new-level.html?ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Monday, July 30, 2012
Learning in Classrooms Versus Online
Learning in Classrooms Versus Online.
In “The Trouble With Online Education” (Op-Ed, July 20), Mark Edmundson captures the inadequacy of online courses from the teacher’s perspective, and I can corroborate from the student’s.
I was a math-obsessive in high school. To supplement my school’s curriculum, I turned to a Stanford program offering online courses to gifted youth. I started the program with enthusiasm, but I soon felt alone and unsupported. I had no one to impress or disappoint. I struggled to stay motivated. It was impersonal and transactional, and it nearly destroyed my obsession.
A face-to-face meeting in a classroom imposes accountability, inspires effort and promotes academic responsibility in subtle ways that we don’t fully appreciate. On a campus, students attend class and stay alert because they worry what the teacher will think if they don’t.
Once they’re in the classroom, the battle is mostly won. As in life, 80 percent of education is showing up, in person.
ADAM D. CHANDLER
Burlington, N.C., July 20, 2012
The writer is a Rhodes Scholar and 2011 graduate of Yale Law School.
To the Editor:
Learning online is, of course, not the same as learning face to face, and that is likely good news for anyone who can recall an hour lost listening to an interminable lecture in an overheated classroom.
Good courses, whether on campus or online, are engaging and foster active learning communities. In the best online courses, learners connect, collaborate, inspire, discover and create through myriad technologies.
Coursera, just one example of online learning opportunities, touts active learning as one of its pedagogical foundations. It’s too early to know if Coursera will be successful, but I’ve enrolled in two upcoming courses because amid this grand experiment, I might just find the pure intellectual joy that can be found in a vital learning community.
SARA HILL
Baltimore, July 20, 2012
The writer is an instructional designer for Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is offering courses through Coursera.
To the Editor:
I couldn’t agree more with “The Trouble With Online Education.” When I went to college, my parents agreed that I should stay in the dormitories, far away from home. The reasoning was that the college environment would be inspiring and focused and would enable me to get help from my peers (and instructors) whenever I needed it.
Many years later, as a professor, I have found that there is no better way to inspire and motivate my students than in the classroom. The multidimensional world of questions, extemporaneous answers, spur-of-the-moment thinking, blackboard problem-solving and shared excitement in learning about how the world works will never be replaced by the one-dimensional world of online learning.
MICHAEL PRAVICA
Las Vegas, July 20, 2012
The writer is an associate professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
To the Editor:
I have been teaching online since 1998, and my online courses look nothing like those Mark Edmundson describes. The online classes at my college involve an average of 25 students. The vast majority of my students contribute to discussions online, not just the few brave enough to speak up in a traditional class. The lack of spatial proximity gives more students the “courage” to engage me directly. As a result, I carry on numerous conversations with individual students via e-mail over the course of a semester.
Online courses offer students the ability to add courses when those at desired times are closed or to accommodate work schedules. They allow colleges to offer more needed sections of courses despite space limitations.
So please, let’s not evaluate all online education based on the example of those at a handful of large universities.
JANE ROSECRANS
Richmond, Va., July 23, 2012
The writer teaches English and religion at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College.
To the Editor:
Mark Edmundson is right to point out the pedagogical limitations of online education, particularly in the case of undergraduate students. Equally troubling, however, is the threat that elite, resource-rich consortiums pose to the hundreds of small, private colleges across the land.
Facing a host of challenges, ranging from tiny endowments to shrinking enrollments, such colleges and universities are the pride of their communities.
It would be a sad day if they are driven out of business by corporate titans in distant towers of privilege. Much as in the world of retail, students may have access to cheaper courses online, but neither the students nor our nation would ultimately be the richer for it.
ANOUAR MAJID
Portland, Me., July 20, 2012
The writer is associate provost for global initiatives at the University of New England in Maine.
To the Editor:
The trouble with a regular college education is that it costs too much. Students are saddled with debts they will spend half their lives repaying.
I agree, there is no substitute for the interactive classroom. However, until the issue of runaway costs for higher education is addressed, students from poor and middle-class families, intent on getting a college education, will increasingly gravitate to these free, accredited Internet courses.
JUDITH LEVIN
Manchester, N.H., July 20, 2012
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/opinion/learning-in-classrooms-versus-online.html?ref=educationandschools
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
In “The Trouble With Online Education” (Op-Ed, July 20), Mark Edmundson captures the inadequacy of online courses from the teacher’s perspective, and I can corroborate from the student’s.
I was a math-obsessive in high school. To supplement my school’s curriculum, I turned to a Stanford program offering online courses to gifted youth. I started the program with enthusiasm, but I soon felt alone and unsupported. I had no one to impress or disappoint. I struggled to stay motivated. It was impersonal and transactional, and it nearly destroyed my obsession.
A face-to-face meeting in a classroom imposes accountability, inspires effort and promotes academic responsibility in subtle ways that we don’t fully appreciate. On a campus, students attend class and stay alert because they worry what the teacher will think if they don’t.
Once they’re in the classroom, the battle is mostly won. As in life, 80 percent of education is showing up, in person.
ADAM D. CHANDLER
Burlington, N.C., July 20, 2012
The writer is a Rhodes Scholar and 2011 graduate of Yale Law School.
To the Editor:
Learning online is, of course, not the same as learning face to face, and that is likely good news for anyone who can recall an hour lost listening to an interminable lecture in an overheated classroom.
Good courses, whether on campus or online, are engaging and foster active learning communities. In the best online courses, learners connect, collaborate, inspire, discover and create through myriad technologies.
Coursera, just one example of online learning opportunities, touts active learning as one of its pedagogical foundations. It’s too early to know if Coursera will be successful, but I’ve enrolled in two upcoming courses because amid this grand experiment, I might just find the pure intellectual joy that can be found in a vital learning community.
SARA HILL
Baltimore, July 20, 2012
The writer is an instructional designer for Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is offering courses through Coursera.
To the Editor:
I couldn’t agree more with “The Trouble With Online Education.” When I went to college, my parents agreed that I should stay in the dormitories, far away from home. The reasoning was that the college environment would be inspiring and focused and would enable me to get help from my peers (and instructors) whenever I needed it.
Many years later, as a professor, I have found that there is no better way to inspire and motivate my students than in the classroom. The multidimensional world of questions, extemporaneous answers, spur-of-the-moment thinking, blackboard problem-solving and shared excitement in learning about how the world works will never be replaced by the one-dimensional world of online learning.
MICHAEL PRAVICA
Las Vegas, July 20, 2012
The writer is an associate professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
To the Editor:
I have been teaching online since 1998, and my online courses look nothing like those Mark Edmundson describes. The online classes at my college involve an average of 25 students. The vast majority of my students contribute to discussions online, not just the few brave enough to speak up in a traditional class. The lack of spatial proximity gives more students the “courage” to engage me directly. As a result, I carry on numerous conversations with individual students via e-mail over the course of a semester.
Online courses offer students the ability to add courses when those at desired times are closed or to accommodate work schedules. They allow colleges to offer more needed sections of courses despite space limitations.
So please, let’s not evaluate all online education based on the example of those at a handful of large universities.
JANE ROSECRANS
Richmond, Va., July 23, 2012
The writer teaches English and religion at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College.
To the Editor:
Mark Edmundson is right to point out the pedagogical limitations of online education, particularly in the case of undergraduate students. Equally troubling, however, is the threat that elite, resource-rich consortiums pose to the hundreds of small, private colleges across the land.
Facing a host of challenges, ranging from tiny endowments to shrinking enrollments, such colleges and universities are the pride of their communities.
It would be a sad day if they are driven out of business by corporate titans in distant towers of privilege. Much as in the world of retail, students may have access to cheaper courses online, but neither the students nor our nation would ultimately be the richer for it.
ANOUAR MAJID
Portland, Me., July 20, 2012
The writer is associate provost for global initiatives at the University of New England in Maine.
To the Editor:
The trouble with a regular college education is that it costs too much. Students are saddled with debts they will spend half their lives repaying.
I agree, there is no substitute for the interactive classroom. However, until the issue of runaway costs for higher education is addressed, students from poor and middle-class families, intent on getting a college education, will increasingly gravitate to these free, accredited Internet courses.
JUDITH LEVIN
Manchester, N.H., July 20, 2012
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/opinion/learning-in-classrooms-versus-online.html?ref=educationandschools
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Thursday, May 3, 2012
How the Internet Will Change How We Learn
How the Internet Will Change How We Learn.
In the 21st century, online learning will constitute 50% of all learning and education. The rapid rise of learning on the Internet will occur not because it is more convenient, cheaper, or faster, but because cognitive learning on the Internet is better than learning in-person. Of the growing number of experts seeing this development, Gerald Celente, author of the popular book Trends 2000, summarizes it most succinctly: “Interactive, on-line learning will revolutionize education. The education revolution will have as profound and as far-reaching an effect upon the world as the invention of printing. Not only will it affect where we learn; it also will influence how we learn and what we learn" (Celente, 1997, p. 249). Recent research reported in the Washington Post cites studies showing that online learning is equally as effective as learning in-person. And note that we state "cognitive learning," not all learning.
It is still very early in the development of online learning. But the outlines of the potential of online learning are already emerging. The best guide to the next century lies in history, and the in examples of technological transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The automobile and tractor were the driving forces for the Industrial Age. The tractor eventually was demonstrated to not only cover more acres than a horse drawn plow, but to plow deeper (read: better) and thus increase productivity .
Some sectors of society clung to the horse drawn vehicle, of course. The military still had a cavalry in 1939 to confront Hitler’s tanks before the obvious mismatch was addressed (Davis, 1993). The tractor changed education for the 20th century as well. Prior to the tractor and automobile, one room schoolhouses were placed every six miles so that a child would only have to walk at most three miles to school. The one room schoolhouse necessitated one teacher and multiple grade levels in one room. With the automobile, people moved into towns, and even rural residents could take buses to school, thus causing school consolidation and the eventual all-but-extinction of the one room schoolhouse. In the State of Washington, for example, between 1935 and 1939 almost 20% of rural one room schoolhouses were closed (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1945).
And when online learning is combined with a more interactive and facilitative in-person learning, it will easily out perform today’s outmoded one-size-fits-all traditional lecture delivery system. "Digital media and Internet communications will transform learning practices," notes Peter J. Denning of George Mason University in his How We Will Learn (1996, page 2).
Here are a few of the effects of online learning that will occur in just a few years:
* The average class size for an online course will be 1,000 participants;
* The average cost of an online course will plummet to below $100 a course;
* There will be hundreds of thousands of topics from which learners can choose.
But perhaps the most devastating and revolutionary change will be how the Internet will change how we learn. Because as we enter the Information Age, the era of lifelong learning, the era of online learning, distance has nothing to do with "distance education." By this I mean that even when the teacher is in close proximity to the learners, the quality of the cognitive learning and teaching will be higher when the cognitive part of the learning is conducted over the Internet. Keoko University in Japan, for example, is already establishing online learning for its on-campus students (Eisenstodt, 1997).
In this article I will outline what we already know and can forecast about how the Internet and online learning will change how we learn. We know, for example, that the economic force driving life in the 21st century will be the microchip and the Internet, just as the automobile was the economic force for change in the 20th century. And we know that business will need its workers to learn more, more quickly, and at a lower cost, to remain competitive. We will show that these market forces will create the need and desirability for online learning.
How We Learn Today
For most of history the standard educational setting has been an instructor (or teacher, leader, presenter, or speaker) standing in front of a group of people. This is the most common learning design in society, whether it be for college credit classes, noncredit courses, training in business and industry, high school instruction, or even a Sunday School class.
Basically, 90% of all education has been "information transfer," the process of transferring information and knowledge from the teacher’s head into the heads of the learners. To do that, teachers have had to talk most of the time. And right up until today that mode of delivery has been the most effective, most efficient, most desirable way to learn.
But as educators we know that the traditional lecture is not the only way to learn. We as learners learn in many different ways, at different times, and from a variety of sources (Knowles, 1973). We also know that learning is not purely a cognitive process, but that it also involves the emotions and even the spirit (Apps, 1991).
The Internet is destroying the traditional educational delivery system of an instructor speaking, lecturing or teaching in front of one or more learners.
The whole discipline of self-directed learning, variously called adult learning or adult education, has shown that the traditional delivery system is only one way to learn. The Internet represents the biggest technological aid helping people to learn in 500 years, according to many educators (Thieme, 1996).
What the Internet is doing is to explode the traditional method of teaching into two parts-- cognitive learning, which can be accomplished better with online learning; and affective learning, which can be accomplished better in a small group discussion setting.
Why cognitive learning can be done better on the Internet
Cognitive learning includes facts, data, knowledge, mental skills-- what you can test. And information transfer and cognitive learning can be achieved faster, cheaper and better online.
There are several ways that online learning can be better than classroom learning, such as:
* A learner can learn during her or his peak learning time. My peak learning time is from 10 am to noon. My step-son’s peak learning time is between midnight and 3 am. He recently signed up for an Internet course and is looking for a couple more, because as he put it, "I have a lot of free time between midnight and 3 am." With traditional in-person classes, only some learners will be involved during their peak learning time. The rest will not fully benefit.
* A learner can learn at her or his own speed. With traditional classes, a learner has one chance to hear a concept, technique or piece of knowledge. With online learning, a learner can replay a portion of audio, reread a unit, review a video, and retest him or herself.
* A learner can focus on specific content areas. With traditional classes, each content area is covered and given the relative amount of emphasis and time that the teacher deems appropriate. But in a ten unit course, a given learner will not need to focus on each unit equally. For each of us, there will be some units we know already and some where we have little knowledge. With online learning, we as learners can focus more time, attention and energy on those units, modules or sections of the course where we need the most help and learning.
* A learner can test himself daily. With online learning, a learner can take quizzes and tests easily, instantly receiving the results and finding out how well she or he is doing in a course.
* A learner can interact more with the teacher. Contrary to common opinion today, online learning is more personal and more interactive than traditional classroom courses. In an online course, the instructor only has to create the information transfer part of the course-- lectures, graphics, text, video-- once. Once the course units or modules have been developed, there is need only for revisions later on. The instructor is then free to interact with participants in the course.
Learners will acquire the data and facts faster using the Internet. Officials at University Online Publishing, which has been involved in online learning more than most organizations, say that a typical 16-week college course, for example, can be cut to 8 weeks because students learn more quickly online.
Finally, technology has consistently proven to drive down costs. Recent reports indicate that education costs are growing at over 5% for 1998, well above the 3% average for all other sectors of the economy. With education costs in the traditional system soaring, technological innovations promise the ability to deliver an education more cheaply.
Downward pressure is already being exerted on prices by online courses. Officials at Regents College in Albany, NY, which collects data on 8,000 distance learning courses, say that prices are dropping already. One community college in Arizona, for example, offers online courses at just $32/credit hour for in-state residents, and $67/credit hour for out-of-state learners.
More Interaction Occurs with Online Learning
The heart and soul of an online course will not be the lecture, the delivery, the audio or video. Rather, it will be the interaction between the participants and the teacher, as well as the interaction among the participants themselves. This daily interaction among participants, for example, will form what John Hagel, author of Net Gain (1997), calls a "Virtual Community."
The next time you are in a class, count the number of questions asked of the teacher during a one-hour time period. Because of the instructor’s need to convey information, the time able to be devoted to questions is very short. In an online course, everyone can ask questions, as many questions as each learner wants or needs.
There is more discussion. In an online course, there is more discussion. If there is a group discussion with thirty people and six to eight people make comments, that is a successful discussion that will take up almost a whole hour. And almost everyone in the group will agree it was a lively. Now if you go into an asynchronous discussion forum on the Internet, and thirty people are there, and six to eight are making comments, you will conclude that the discussion is lagging.
The same number of comments on the Internet do not appear to be as lively a discussion as when delivered in person because the capability and capacity of the Internet is that every person can make comments—at the same time. A transcript of a typical online discussion would take hours to give verbally. Online, we can participate in discussions easily, absorbing more information in a much shorter time and engaging in more interaction, not less.
How the Internet Will Change In-person Learning
Because the Internet can deliver information more quickly, at a lower cost, whenever a learner wants, as often as a learner wants, and with more interaction and dialogue, the Internet will replace the traditional in-person classroom delivery system as the dominant mode of delivery for education and delivery. But the Internet will not replace in-person learning.
While we will spend 50% of our time learning online, we will spend the other 50% of our time learning in person. But in-person learning will also be radically different from what is most common today.
There will be almost no need for the traditional lecture. However, there will be a tremendous need for teachers to become facilitators of learning, understanding how we learn, and able to work with learners as individuals. "The sage on the stage will become the guide on the side" has already been coined.
Though part of learning is centered around content, we as educators know that more of learning is dependent on the learner as an individual, a person. Learning is not just cognitive; it also involves the emotions and the spirit. It involves "unlearning." It involves what educator Jerold Apps calls "grieving the loss of old ideas."
The likely format for this kind of learning will be chairs in a circle, with a facilitator leading discussions, dialogues, role plays and more. And it is this kind of teaching and learning that we actually know very little about, because we as instructors have had so little time to engage in it.
The Internet certainly did not create facilitative learning. This kind of learning has been around for a long time and its value well established. But it’s use will grow exponentially because the Internet allows the cognitive information to be delivered faster, cheaper, better, thus allowing more time and resources to be devoted to facilitative in-person learning.
For now, the elementary school teacher comes closest to being the model for this new kind of in-person teaching. As a parent, I have experienced my son’s teachers being able to sit down and talk with me for thirty minutes or more about my son as a learner. Not about the class, not about content, but about my son’s learning. This is where the focus of in-person learning will be very shortly.
As online courses grow and change how we learn, some courses will involve almost all in-person learning and teaching. And some courses will involve almost all online learning. And probably the majority of courses will involve both online learning and in-person learning.
What an Online Course Will Look Like
A typical online course, or the online portion of course, will look like this.
* There will be hundreds of thousands of topics from which to choose. You will be able to take a course on "Mango trees," or "Adlai Stevenson (Democratic candidate for US President in 1952 and 1956)."
* Your online teacher will probably be the foremost authority and expert in the subject in the world.
* Because the foremost authority in the world is teaching the subject online, and because courses will be offered twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, there will be learners from all around the world.
* There will be an average of 1,000 learners in a course. This will occur for a number of reasons:
* There are one thousand people in the world who want to learn any given topic at any given time, even mango trees or Adlai Stevenson.
* Because people will want to learn from the foremost authority, there will be only 2-3 online courses for each topic.
* The cost of an online course will be extremely low, probably under $100, even for credit classes. This will occur because educational institutions can make more money on high volume and low prices than they can on low volume and high prices. It will occur also because the only way an educational institution can lose its market-share for a given course is because the course is priced higher than an alternative course.
The Forces Driving Online Learning
There are several forces that will turn this scenario for online learning into reality, and turn it into reality very quickly. They include:
Business. Business will be the biggest force. Business now understands that in order to remain competitive and profitable, it will need employees who are learning constantly. The only cost effective way for this to happen is with online learning.
So business will require its people to learn online, and it will look to recruit college graduates who can learn online. Colleges and universities will quickly adopt online learning because business will demand that capability from their graduates.
Youth. My children have never taken a computer course. And they never will. Because they are not just computer literate, they grew up in a digital culture. Young people want to learn online. They understand the future, because it is the world in which they must work and compete. Young students will choose online learning.
Competition. Just one college offering online courses at a low cost and recruiting high volume will force other educational institutions to do the same. In fact, many colleges are involved in online learning, and the cost of courses is declining steadily, according to an official at Regents College, which keeps a database of over 8,000 distance learning courses.
Conclusion
Online learning is rapidly becoming recognized as a valid learning delivery system. The number of part time students in higher education, to name just one educational system, now outnumbers full time students. The number of colleges offering online courses last year soared to over 1,000, and the number is growing. Online graduate programs and certificate programs have doubled over one year ago. Online learning has grown exponentially in the business sector, according to Elliot Masie of Saratoga Springs, NY, one of the foremost experts on online training in the workforce. Surveys by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) see online training replacing much of on-site training in the near future.
Online learning will do for society what the tractor did for food. A century ago food was expensive, in limited supply, and with very little variety. Today food is relatively cheap, in great supply in our society, and with tremendous variety. The Internet will do the same for education. More people will be able to learn more, for much less cost, and with a tremendous variety in choice of topics and subjects. It is something that societies of the past could only dream about. And it will come true for us in a very short time.
Read more at http://www.williamdraves.com/works/internet_change_report.htm
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
In the 21st century, online learning will constitute 50% of all learning and education. The rapid rise of learning on the Internet will occur not because it is more convenient, cheaper, or faster, but because cognitive learning on the Internet is better than learning in-person. Of the growing number of experts seeing this development, Gerald Celente, author of the popular book Trends 2000, summarizes it most succinctly: “Interactive, on-line learning will revolutionize education. The education revolution will have as profound and as far-reaching an effect upon the world as the invention of printing. Not only will it affect where we learn; it also will influence how we learn and what we learn" (Celente, 1997, p. 249). Recent research reported in the Washington Post cites studies showing that online learning is equally as effective as learning in-person. And note that we state "cognitive learning," not all learning.
It is still very early in the development of online learning. But the outlines of the potential of online learning are already emerging. The best guide to the next century lies in history, and the in examples of technological transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The automobile and tractor were the driving forces for the Industrial Age. The tractor eventually was demonstrated to not only cover more acres than a horse drawn plow, but to plow deeper (read: better) and thus increase productivity .
Some sectors of society clung to the horse drawn vehicle, of course. The military still had a cavalry in 1939 to confront Hitler’s tanks before the obvious mismatch was addressed (Davis, 1993). The tractor changed education for the 20th century as well. Prior to the tractor and automobile, one room schoolhouses were placed every six miles so that a child would only have to walk at most three miles to school. The one room schoolhouse necessitated one teacher and multiple grade levels in one room. With the automobile, people moved into towns, and even rural residents could take buses to school, thus causing school consolidation and the eventual all-but-extinction of the one room schoolhouse. In the State of Washington, for example, between 1935 and 1939 almost 20% of rural one room schoolhouses were closed (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1945).
And when online learning is combined with a more interactive and facilitative in-person learning, it will easily out perform today’s outmoded one-size-fits-all traditional lecture delivery system. "Digital media and Internet communications will transform learning practices," notes Peter J. Denning of George Mason University in his How We Will Learn (1996, page 2).
Here are a few of the effects of online learning that will occur in just a few years:
* The average class size for an online course will be 1,000 participants;
* The average cost of an online course will plummet to below $100 a course;
* There will be hundreds of thousands of topics from which learners can choose.
But perhaps the most devastating and revolutionary change will be how the Internet will change how we learn. Because as we enter the Information Age, the era of lifelong learning, the era of online learning, distance has nothing to do with "distance education." By this I mean that even when the teacher is in close proximity to the learners, the quality of the cognitive learning and teaching will be higher when the cognitive part of the learning is conducted over the Internet. Keoko University in Japan, for example, is already establishing online learning for its on-campus students (Eisenstodt, 1997).
In this article I will outline what we already know and can forecast about how the Internet and online learning will change how we learn. We know, for example, that the economic force driving life in the 21st century will be the microchip and the Internet, just as the automobile was the economic force for change in the 20th century. And we know that business will need its workers to learn more, more quickly, and at a lower cost, to remain competitive. We will show that these market forces will create the need and desirability for online learning.
How We Learn Today
For most of history the standard educational setting has been an instructor (or teacher, leader, presenter, or speaker) standing in front of a group of people. This is the most common learning design in society, whether it be for college credit classes, noncredit courses, training in business and industry, high school instruction, or even a Sunday School class.
Basically, 90% of all education has been "information transfer," the process of transferring information and knowledge from the teacher’s head into the heads of the learners. To do that, teachers have had to talk most of the time. And right up until today that mode of delivery has been the most effective, most efficient, most desirable way to learn.
But as educators we know that the traditional lecture is not the only way to learn. We as learners learn in many different ways, at different times, and from a variety of sources (Knowles, 1973). We also know that learning is not purely a cognitive process, but that it also involves the emotions and even the spirit (Apps, 1991).
The Internet is destroying the traditional educational delivery system of an instructor speaking, lecturing or teaching in front of one or more learners.
The whole discipline of self-directed learning, variously called adult learning or adult education, has shown that the traditional delivery system is only one way to learn. The Internet represents the biggest technological aid helping people to learn in 500 years, according to many educators (Thieme, 1996).
What the Internet is doing is to explode the traditional method of teaching into two parts-- cognitive learning, which can be accomplished better with online learning; and affective learning, which can be accomplished better in a small group discussion setting.
Why cognitive learning can be done better on the Internet
Cognitive learning includes facts, data, knowledge, mental skills-- what you can test. And information transfer and cognitive learning can be achieved faster, cheaper and better online.
There are several ways that online learning can be better than classroom learning, such as:
* A learner can learn during her or his peak learning time. My peak learning time is from 10 am to noon. My step-son’s peak learning time is between midnight and 3 am. He recently signed up for an Internet course and is looking for a couple more, because as he put it, "I have a lot of free time between midnight and 3 am." With traditional in-person classes, only some learners will be involved during their peak learning time. The rest will not fully benefit.
* A learner can learn at her or his own speed. With traditional classes, a learner has one chance to hear a concept, technique or piece of knowledge. With online learning, a learner can replay a portion of audio, reread a unit, review a video, and retest him or herself.
* A learner can focus on specific content areas. With traditional classes, each content area is covered and given the relative amount of emphasis and time that the teacher deems appropriate. But in a ten unit course, a given learner will not need to focus on each unit equally. For each of us, there will be some units we know already and some where we have little knowledge. With online learning, we as learners can focus more time, attention and energy on those units, modules or sections of the course where we need the most help and learning.
* A learner can test himself daily. With online learning, a learner can take quizzes and tests easily, instantly receiving the results and finding out how well she or he is doing in a course.
* A learner can interact more with the teacher. Contrary to common opinion today, online learning is more personal and more interactive than traditional classroom courses. In an online course, the instructor only has to create the information transfer part of the course-- lectures, graphics, text, video-- once. Once the course units or modules have been developed, there is need only for revisions later on. The instructor is then free to interact with participants in the course.
Learners will acquire the data and facts faster using the Internet. Officials at University Online Publishing, which has been involved in online learning more than most organizations, say that a typical 16-week college course, for example, can be cut to 8 weeks because students learn more quickly online.
Finally, technology has consistently proven to drive down costs. Recent reports indicate that education costs are growing at over 5% for 1998, well above the 3% average for all other sectors of the economy. With education costs in the traditional system soaring, technological innovations promise the ability to deliver an education more cheaply.
Downward pressure is already being exerted on prices by online courses. Officials at Regents College in Albany, NY, which collects data on 8,000 distance learning courses, say that prices are dropping already. One community college in Arizona, for example, offers online courses at just $32/credit hour for in-state residents, and $67/credit hour for out-of-state learners.
More Interaction Occurs with Online Learning
The heart and soul of an online course will not be the lecture, the delivery, the audio or video. Rather, it will be the interaction between the participants and the teacher, as well as the interaction among the participants themselves. This daily interaction among participants, for example, will form what John Hagel, author of Net Gain (1997), calls a "Virtual Community."
The next time you are in a class, count the number of questions asked of the teacher during a one-hour time period. Because of the instructor’s need to convey information, the time able to be devoted to questions is very short. In an online course, everyone can ask questions, as many questions as each learner wants or needs.
There is more discussion. In an online course, there is more discussion. If there is a group discussion with thirty people and six to eight people make comments, that is a successful discussion that will take up almost a whole hour. And almost everyone in the group will agree it was a lively. Now if you go into an asynchronous discussion forum on the Internet, and thirty people are there, and six to eight are making comments, you will conclude that the discussion is lagging.
The same number of comments on the Internet do not appear to be as lively a discussion as when delivered in person because the capability and capacity of the Internet is that every person can make comments—at the same time. A transcript of a typical online discussion would take hours to give verbally. Online, we can participate in discussions easily, absorbing more information in a much shorter time and engaging in more interaction, not less.
How the Internet Will Change In-person Learning
Because the Internet can deliver information more quickly, at a lower cost, whenever a learner wants, as often as a learner wants, and with more interaction and dialogue, the Internet will replace the traditional in-person classroom delivery system as the dominant mode of delivery for education and delivery. But the Internet will not replace in-person learning.
While we will spend 50% of our time learning online, we will spend the other 50% of our time learning in person. But in-person learning will also be radically different from what is most common today.
There will be almost no need for the traditional lecture. However, there will be a tremendous need for teachers to become facilitators of learning, understanding how we learn, and able to work with learners as individuals. "The sage on the stage will become the guide on the side" has already been coined.
Though part of learning is centered around content, we as educators know that more of learning is dependent on the learner as an individual, a person. Learning is not just cognitive; it also involves the emotions and the spirit. It involves "unlearning." It involves what educator Jerold Apps calls "grieving the loss of old ideas."
The likely format for this kind of learning will be chairs in a circle, with a facilitator leading discussions, dialogues, role plays and more. And it is this kind of teaching and learning that we actually know very little about, because we as instructors have had so little time to engage in it.
The Internet certainly did not create facilitative learning. This kind of learning has been around for a long time and its value well established. But it’s use will grow exponentially because the Internet allows the cognitive information to be delivered faster, cheaper, better, thus allowing more time and resources to be devoted to facilitative in-person learning.
For now, the elementary school teacher comes closest to being the model for this new kind of in-person teaching. As a parent, I have experienced my son’s teachers being able to sit down and talk with me for thirty minutes or more about my son as a learner. Not about the class, not about content, but about my son’s learning. This is where the focus of in-person learning will be very shortly.
As online courses grow and change how we learn, some courses will involve almost all in-person learning and teaching. And some courses will involve almost all online learning. And probably the majority of courses will involve both online learning and in-person learning.
What an Online Course Will Look Like
A typical online course, or the online portion of course, will look like this.
* There will be hundreds of thousands of topics from which to choose. You will be able to take a course on "Mango trees," or "Adlai Stevenson (Democratic candidate for US President in 1952 and 1956)."
* Your online teacher will probably be the foremost authority and expert in the subject in the world.
* Because the foremost authority in the world is teaching the subject online, and because courses will be offered twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, there will be learners from all around the world.
* There will be an average of 1,000 learners in a course. This will occur for a number of reasons:
* There are one thousand people in the world who want to learn any given topic at any given time, even mango trees or Adlai Stevenson.
* Because people will want to learn from the foremost authority, there will be only 2-3 online courses for each topic.
* The cost of an online course will be extremely low, probably under $100, even for credit classes. This will occur because educational institutions can make more money on high volume and low prices than they can on low volume and high prices. It will occur also because the only way an educational institution can lose its market-share for a given course is because the course is priced higher than an alternative course.
The Forces Driving Online Learning
There are several forces that will turn this scenario for online learning into reality, and turn it into reality very quickly. They include:
Business. Business will be the biggest force. Business now understands that in order to remain competitive and profitable, it will need employees who are learning constantly. The only cost effective way for this to happen is with online learning.
So business will require its people to learn online, and it will look to recruit college graduates who can learn online. Colleges and universities will quickly adopt online learning because business will demand that capability from their graduates.
Youth. My children have never taken a computer course. And they never will. Because they are not just computer literate, they grew up in a digital culture. Young people want to learn online. They understand the future, because it is the world in which they must work and compete. Young students will choose online learning.
Competition. Just one college offering online courses at a low cost and recruiting high volume will force other educational institutions to do the same. In fact, many colleges are involved in online learning, and the cost of courses is declining steadily, according to an official at Regents College, which keeps a database of over 8,000 distance learning courses.
Conclusion
Online learning is rapidly becoming recognized as a valid learning delivery system. The number of part time students in higher education, to name just one educational system, now outnumbers full time students. The number of colleges offering online courses last year soared to over 1,000, and the number is growing. Online graduate programs and certificate programs have doubled over one year ago. Online learning has grown exponentially in the business sector, according to Elliot Masie of Saratoga Springs, NY, one of the foremost experts on online training in the workforce. Surveys by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) see online training replacing much of on-site training in the near future.
Online learning will do for society what the tractor did for food. A century ago food was expensive, in limited supply, and with very little variety. Today food is relatively cheap, in great supply in our society, and with tremendous variety. The Internet will do the same for education. More people will be able to learn more, for much less cost, and with a tremendous variety in choice of topics and subjects. It is something that societies of the past could only dream about. And it will come true for us in a very short time.
Read more at http://www.williamdraves.com/works/internet_change_report.htm
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
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