"Anybody for an Education Smoothie?" By Garrett Hawkins- Final

Anybody for an Education Smoothie?

If you are anything like me, you love smoothies! Picture a strawberry banana smoothie. You like bananas and you like strawberries, but when the tastes are combined into one drink it’s like heaven on earth! How is learning any different? In our modern day and age we have two major sources of learning: traditional Brick and Mortar education and Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCS). Both have pleasant parts but don’t you think that just like the smoothie they could be “sweeter” if they were blended together? Both MOOCs and traditional education have benefits that could further education and setbacks that could be eliminated if only they were combined.

 

Education Now: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 

Before we start talking about the future of education and where it is going, let’s talk about its history and where it has been. The earliest record of education comes from about 3000 B.C. in Ancient Egypt. Here the priests of the pharaoh would take young boys (starting at age 5) and put them into an education system with lessons based off of what profession they were wanted for. After they had finished basic schooling at about the age of 17, they would move on to college where they spent varying amounts of years depending on their “degree.”

Did you spot any similarities to today? The only differences that I could really spot was that they wore skirts and had school in a brick temple.  As you can see, “traditional” education has been around for a very long time and has produced all of the greatest minds that we know and respect. Recently however, there has been a new form of education making an impact.

What is this threat to our simple, normal lives you might ask? A Massively Open Online Course, aka MOOC, “is a model for delivering learning content online to any person who wants to take a course, with no limit on attendance.” It is a more convenient way for students to view lecture and work on and turn in assignments. It has also been called integrated learning, which by the wonders of Wikipedia, has been defined as “a learning theory describing a movement toward integrated lessons helping students make connections across curricula.” In normal people terms, it’s an online class that utilizes sources such as different social media sites, YouTube, and other online sources to help further learning.

When you think about these two education behemoths you probably think that they have nothing in common and you might even feel like Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan did when he said “the difference between a real college course and a MOOC is like the difference between playing golf and watching golf. Both can be exciting and enjoyable. Both can be boring and frustrating. But they are not the same thing.” Both of these education systems have strengths that define them and weaknesses that decrease their effectiveness.

For traditional schooling, the problem centers around cost, time, and students reached. As you are aware, college tuition prices are soaring at unimaginable rates. According to the National Center for Education Statistics the cost of 1 year of tuition for a 4 year college rose 10,000 dollars between 2000 and 2010. According to American Student Assistance the average college debt that students have (including those still in school and out of school) is 2400 dollars. Our students are currently going to school for four or more years only to earn the money to pay for it for the next eight or more.

Now, as if the prices weren’t enough to make college life stressful, students also have to deal with the stress of having a limited class size. Colleges have made classes that are available to hundreds of students, but even so, there is always that person who can’t find a seat in that one class that he needs to be able to graduate and is thus forced to come back for another semester. What if there was a way to admit anyone in the school who wanted to take the class?

MOOCs offer solutions to all of these problems. In regards to cost, you only have to pay the teacher to record the lessons and create the assignments and tests and then publish it on the internet for the world to see. According to Stephen Haggard, a professor at the University of California, “A recent Chronicle of Higher Education survey found that professors typically spent 100 hours to develop a MOOC, and then eight to 10 hours a week while the courses were in session.” According to the Brigham Young University Accounting Department, college professors work an average of 52 hours a week.

 

To calculate some numbers we are going to assume that a typical college semester is sixteen weeks long. Now, with a typical professor working around 52 hours a week, he is working 832 hours a semester. With a professor who is teaching a MOOC, he is working 100 hours to develop a course and then an average of 9 hours a week. That means that in the course of a semester, he is working 244 hours. By using MOOCs, the school is saving the money that they would have used for the professor’s pay for 588 hours and that isn’t even factoring in that you wouldn’t have to have multiple professors for one subject. That’s a lot of money that could be used towards lowering tuition and just from converting one department to MOOCs.

 

MOOCs also have the added benefit of being able to enroll an unlimited amount of students. With this, classes that could normally only have 250 students and have multiple sections now could have one online class of unlimited size. It makes it easier for students because they don’t have to worry about getting into that high demand graduation required class.

 

However, just like traditional education, MOOCs have their limits. For one thing, MOOCs have very high dropout rates and statistically lower grades than traditional education. Why you might ask? Because students feel the freedom that they have to be able to take the class whenever they want and just end up forgetting about it. Also, the many distractions of the internet such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter tantalizingly are available to students and are a lot more appealing than a lecture.

 

MOOCs also lack the social environment that being enrolled at a traditional institution does. You miss out on the fun part of college! You don’t get to see other people in between classes. You don’t get to sit next to your friends in class. You most likely don’t get to party on campus on the weekend because you are going to school at home.

 

Another problem that MOOCs have is that they are not well suited to teach ever class. Could you imagine trying to do a drama or public speaking class online? It wouldn’t work out too well would it? The fact is that some classes just require an actual class environment to be effective. There have to be discussions to learn. There has to be a group to make it work. Can you picture trying to play in a band over Skype?

 

What Ever Shall We Do?

 

All of these points still leave the over-arching question of what is the best method of education. Well, if you hadn’t noticed, the weaknesses of traditional education correspond with the strengths of MOOCs and vise-versa. As was perfectly stated in the online article The Online Challenge to Higher Education, “These two potential revolutions—online education and in the science of learning—are on parallel but unconnected tracks heading toward a fundamentally different system of higher education. They need to be linked to optimize both.”

So what if we could create a method of education that combined the best of both of these methods? Is that even possible? It is actually the main purpose MOOCs were created. According to Anant Agarwal, the president of the popular MOOC site edX, MOOCs were never meant to replace higher education. She says “The public perception of MOOCs is that they are courses taken by millions of learners all over the world, but at edX, we’ve been saying all along that we want to take the learning in the large and apply it in the small, on campus.”

This form of learning is commonly called blended learning. Blended learning takes the best of both world by having “lectures” and “classes” posted online that students can view at their leisure. They then go to classes on campus where they do “homework” or “application work” under the supervision and assistance of TA’s or professors. Unlimited numbers of students are able to learn at their own pace online and then ask question and get help from real people in a smaller environment. Money is saved. Class size demands are met. Students still have a social life.

What about those classes that don’t work well with MOOCs, you might ask? Well, for starters, they can be offered at lower tuition costs to the students because other departments have been able to shift to the blended learning style of teaching. Class hours could also be reduced because time that it spent learning about different things that are needed for the class (such as projection and tone in drama and sentence structure and grammar in writing) could be taught online and then they could just go to class and apply it. Even for music classes there is software that allows the student to record a pre-assigned section of the piece and not accept it until it is correct.

You don’t have to take my word for it though. This style of learning has been applied in select classes all over the country and so far has only had good things said about it. One professor at the University of Virginia, Philip Zelikow, was required by his university to create a MOOC for his class, The Modern World. In the course of creating this course, he found “ways to use this [online course] to actually re-invent the ways I teach my ordinary class at the university and make it a better class than it used to be, to solve certain problems that are kind of structural problems in the way we teach our residential courses.” He restructured his normal classes to incorporate aspects of MOOCs to teach online but still have class experience and so far has only found success.

Another experience of success comes from Fred Martin, a professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Massachusetts.  After taking several MOOCs himself just to expand his horizons, Martin realized the potential that they have in the classroom. He had his students enroll in a MOOC on Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University. They would then meet once a week in relaxed meeting setting and were able to talk about what they had learned that week through the course and were able to ask Martin any question they had about what was taught. When talking about the effectiveness of the lectures, Martin says “In many ways, the carefully crafted online lectures, peppered with probing questions that are auto-graded for correctness and then explained further, are indeed an improvement over a conventional lecture.” He then went on to talk about how, since the material was already learned, the students were able to gain a deeper understanding of what they were learning. Overall, this course idea was supremely successful for him and his students.

So Now What?

 

Why don’t colleges just change to this class structure right now? Well, the problem is that colleges are really slow at changing their ways. They are afraid to change even if change means the best thing for their school and students. They have to go through LOTS of board meetings and LOTS of course meetings and LOTS of meetings that seem to have no actual purpose.

Well then how are things going to change? Let your schools know how YOU feel about YOUR education. Instead of letting them listen to board members who are only interested in their paycheck and the prestige of their name, make them listen to the poor, afflicted people whose lives are actually effected by the decrees that come off of their gold inlayed desks. Always use respect, but it’s ok to use power too.

Things are good as they are in the education world and would be good in the futuristic world of MOOCs, but contrary to the saying, the grass is not greener on one side or the other. It’s greener in the middle! We all need to take a stand together to make changes that will affect the rest of our lives for the better. We all need to take a stand to make changes that will affect the lives of our children and those who we love. Let your voice be heard with mine that change needs to occur. Together, we can make a difference!

Works Cited

Bonvillian, William B., and Susan R. Singer. "The Online Challenge to Higher Education." Issues In Science And Technology. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.

"Education in the Earliest Civilizations." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.

"Fast Facts." National Center for Education Statistics. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

Flicker, Allison. "Massive Open Online Classes Raise Questions about Future of Education." NBC News. N.p., 31 Jan. 2013. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.

Haggard, Stephen. "More Work Needed to Prove MOOCs a Must." The Australian. N.p., 25 Sept. 2013. Web.

"Integrated Learning." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 July 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.

"Life as a Professor." Brigham Young University Accounting. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.

Marcus, Jon. "Crazy about 'MOOCs': Are Online Courses the Future of Learning or Overhyped?" NBC News. N.p., 3 Oct. 2013. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.

Martin, Fred G. "Will Massive Open Oniline Courses Change How We Teach?" Communications of the ACM Aug. 2012: 26-28. Print.

"Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)." RSS Massive Open Online Course MOOC. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.

"Student Loan Debt Statistics." American Student Assistance. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. "What’s the Matter With MOOCs?" The Chronicle of Higher Education. N.p., 6 July 2012. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.