Academic Earth
(a) Cool
(b) The End of the University as We Know it?
via the Explainist: Academic Earth.
I've been telling my colleagues for years that we may be the last generation of actual professors/lecturers. When you think about it, why should you want to hear a live lecture by, say, me instead of watch a videotape by, say, Tom Hill or Paul Boghossian? Or, for that matter, why would you want to take your chances on one of my live lectures...a fair percentage of which are duds...instead of, say, watching a videotape of the best version of that lecture I ever gave?
My guess: it won't be long before things in academia go in the videotape direction. Heck, my students tell me that many of their classes already involve watching videos. Makes me wonder why I'm up there busting my butt every class instead of watching tv...
Now, all this is probably sub-optimal in many ways; however, given that classes are, in general, way too big, it may not be that bad. Or at least it may not be much worse than it already is. At my school, our average lower-division class size is 40 students. That's too big to really get to know most of the students, and big enough for many of them to take refuge in anonymity. And it's too big to make really good discussions the norm. So, given all that, why not go to the tape?
My prediction for many years has been that, not too far in the future, there'll be a few star professors who make video tapes, and everyone else will be a kind of glorified teaching assistant running discussion sections. Sounds like a potential step toward the end of Western civilization to me...but that doesn't mean I think it's a lot worse than the current system, if you get my drift.
Anyway, for this reason and despite increasingly lucrative inducements from my university, I've thus far refused to teach online courses. If Western civilization is going to collapse any faseter, I'd rather not have a hand in it.
(a) Cool
(b) The End of the University as We Know it?
via the Explainist: Academic Earth.
I've been telling my colleagues for years that we may be the last generation of actual professors/lecturers. When you think about it, why should you want to hear a live lecture by, say, me instead of watch a videotape by, say, Tom Hill or Paul Boghossian? Or, for that matter, why would you want to take your chances on one of my live lectures...a fair percentage of which are duds...instead of, say, watching a videotape of the best version of that lecture I ever gave?
My guess: it won't be long before things in academia go in the videotape direction. Heck, my students tell me that many of their classes already involve watching videos. Makes me wonder why I'm up there busting my butt every class instead of watching tv...
Now, all this is probably sub-optimal in many ways; however, given that classes are, in general, way too big, it may not be that bad. Or at least it may not be much worse than it already is. At my school, our average lower-division class size is 40 students. That's too big to really get to know most of the students, and big enough for many of them to take refuge in anonymity. And it's too big to make really good discussions the norm. So, given all that, why not go to the tape?
My prediction for many years has been that, not too far in the future, there'll be a few star professors who make video tapes, and everyone else will be a kind of glorified teaching assistant running discussion sections. Sounds like a potential step toward the end of Western civilization to me...but that doesn't mean I think it's a lot worse than the current system, if you get my drift.
Anyway, for this reason and despite increasingly lucrative inducements from my university, I've thus far refused to teach online courses. If Western civilization is going to collapse any faseter, I'd rather not have a hand in it.
posted by Winston Smith at
5:07 PM
4 Comments:
As a student, I always thought the real thing was better than any online alternative. Looking back, I realize that my position was informed considerably by the fact that I was, for the most part, an outgoing student who was rarely afraid to engage the professor and other students. But what about the students who are socially awkward, the ones who are smart enough yet too shy to engage in a class discussion? This is where online discussion forums could be really interesting and handy, especially when moderated by a credentialed professor. Blogging has made me realize that, more often than not, arguments tend to be more cogent when they aren't just blurted out. Sitting behind a computer gives the student a chance to really think about what she's going to say and, as importantly, gives them an avenue to join a discussion that they may not normally be inclined to. All of this is not to say that actual real-life discussions are not ideal. I just tend to think that online courses *done correctly* could become a valuable part of the university.
-tk
The structure is hardly interesting; it's just you tube for lectures. I doubt it's a threat to the university as such.
What's really astounding about this is how these top universities are willing to just let these lectures be given away for free. While the universities no doubt would like to pitch this an act of generosity, what it really proves is that education - in the sense of conveyance of knowledge - is not the product the universities sell, since otherwise they wouldn't give away that for which they normally charge $5,000 a course. Learning linear algebra from Gilbert Strang by video can be given away. What accounts for the exchange value of actually being in the course? The 3-D effect? Getting Strang to answer a question, assuming you ask one? The TA's grading? (Ho ho.) Or, is it that you can use the grade and credits you obtain by being in the course to get a degree from MIT, very few of which are given out, and those to people who are presumed to be very clever?
The universities giving away the lectures is astounding because it makes it obvious that the value of higher education - as a social institution - is in exclusivity.
Interesting point, A. One of those fruitful points that really made me think of things in a different way.
But what about this obvious response: in some sense what they're selling is a kind of certification--that is, a diploma. So the value isn't in the exclusivity per se any more than the value of any such certification lies in its exclusivity per se.
Tho I have to be honest that I'm not sure what it means to say that "the value of higher education...is in its exclusivity." But on a literal reading this is false, right? You couldn't just elect to give out the same number of degrees randomly and expect them to have the same effect.
So the knowledge is an integral component--what's valuable is knowledge + a kind of guarantee that it's actually possessed.
Good questions, Winston. Let me see what I can do...
First off, let me emphasize that I am talking about the market value of education, not the degree to which education as a social institution is good. Higher education, especially higher education from top schools, is very expensive, and people are willing to pay it despite this. Why?
You point out that the guaranteed conveance of knowledge is something without which the degree would not be valuable. I think that's right, but I still stand by my - admittedly vague - claim that the value of the degree is in scarcity.
Take gem diamonds as a paradigmatic case of things whose value is in their scarcity. Nonetheless, there are other properties that diamonds have, without which they would not be nearly so valuable. If diamonds were poisonous or smelled unbearably of cat poop, they would not be valuable, however scarce they were. However, this does not mean that not smelling of cat poop is what makes them valuable, and the proof of this is that cubic zirconia don't smell of cat poop but they're not valuable. The same can be pointed out for most of the properties of gem diamonds, by using something like a cubic zirconium which has nearly all the same relavant properties minus scarcity. So I don't think that a property's being necesary for something's having a given value makes it the driver of that value. It's something more like nesesity, plus joint sufficiency.
The free video lectures are the analogue to the cubic zirconium, things with - apparently - little market value that deliver most of the same features. Assuming one learns even 80% as well from the video of the lecture as from the lecture, one would expect the value of the video to be very high if the driver of the value of being in the course were getting knowledge. But it's not. My joke about the poor TA was a tacit admission that there are other features of the course that the video lacks beyond scarcity, but that it is unlikely these drive the value either. Scarcity is the best candidate, especially when you consider that the reason these universities likely film the lectures in the first place is for the benefit of their own students. (Notice that the back end of the web site is an existing MIT class materials program.) It's entirely likely that an MIT student can not go to linear algebra class, watch the lectures on video and get the homework online, then show up (in section with the TA) to take the exam. All that separates the student's expensive expirience from my cheap one, besides scarcity, is: 1) Agregate 3 hours of grading by someone being paid (maybe) $10k a year, and 2) the registrar's record keeping, which is no more complicated than a 1 cent credit card transaction.
The reason I was suprised that MIT et al. went along with this web site is that way it undermines the public reason their degrees are supposed to be valuable, which is the quality of knowledge conveyed. It's as though de Beers were responsible for giving away free, good imitation diamonds.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone with the requisite background knowledge were to start running discussion sections around these lectures, administering the tests, and making the results available. I'm sure the universities involved would yank the material or shut down the rogue TA in a flat second. Once you have knowledge convance and record keeping, you 90% of the way to issuing credentials, and I doubt these school's belief in the availability of knowledge extends that far.
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