This is an interview with me from the MOOC Research Initiative conference in Arlington, TX last December for e-Literate TV:
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[…] done! You can discuss Jonathan’s comments here or over at his place, which is where I found the […]
Nice job Jonathan. The key takeaways I got from your interview; 1) it’s closed online classes with small numbers of students that can work in online education for undergraduate students, where for example, the professor can provide feedback to individual students, and 2) faculty requires support from the institution in the use of technology for face-to-face and online classes.
That’s absolutely right, Debbie. I do worry that feckless administrators will warp even these goals towards bad ends, but these goals can be achieved online if faculty have enough autonomy. One of my takeaways from that conference is that a lot of online education enthusiasts believe the exact same thing.
Well that is good news…Though I too am concerned with administrators that look to MOOCs, as an opportunity to save money and scale education. And though I believe online education can achieve some economies of scale via blended learning models for instance, that reduce classroom time and thus make better use of facilities, (which could work in the case of bottle neck classes in the UC and Cal systems for instance), it requires a considerable investment of resources by the institution [time, commitment and money] that appears to be beyond the scope of many institutions. The University of Central Florida has implemented this model quite successfully.
MOOCs are not the answer for undergraduate education, as many of us know. What is needed– small class sizes in both online and face-to-face spaces where students benefit from instruction and feedback from faculty. I think [hope] the message may be getting through.
Our students need more face-to-face, not less.
Enough with the machines.