Traditional Classroom or Distance Learning
Black Nickel
help. I'm interested in opinions regarding what courses or topics are
best suited for online delivery as opposed to a more traditional
classroom environment? Also are there less appropriate courses for
online delivery? Based on your experience with online education, how do
you compare and/or contrast it to traditional classroom settings.
DanS
practicums would be poorly suited to online delivery, until bandwidth and
technology improve. I'm not holding my breath, but in my wildest dreams I
see virtual-reality chemistry labs being conducted over the Internet.
Virtual teaching practicums are also feasible, especially in
teacher-starved rural areas. I don't believe physical education classes
will ever take place on the web, but I could be wrong... The opportunities
are endless... :)
Black Nickel <black_...@basketballmail.com> wrote in article
<396C4DFC...@basketballmail.com>...
Mark Reno
Relational Database Management class online, and did well. However, I had
tinkered with programs such as MS Access for several years at the hobbyist
level, and still had an interest in it.
Conversely, I also concurrently took a C++ class (bad move on the concurrent
part as the RDBM class was a busy one) and did poorly, as I had no
experience in structured computer languages (although had fiddled with BASIC
years ago), and actually needed a tutor to complete the course. Not helping
matters was my thought that this was simply a credit class -- I had no
interest in a career writing C programs. While instructors were willing and
able to help in both courses (same source), the nature of email was less
than optimum at the question-and-answer level for someone struggling to meet
weekly deadlines.
So... IMHO online works well with something you have a good basic grasp of,
or background in, or truly interested in, while totally foreign courses may
well be better taken in a on-ground environment.
Rgds,
Mark
"Black Nickel" <black_...@basketballmail.com> wrote in message
news:396C4DFC...@basketballmail.com...
borc...@ltu.edu
there is "no significant difference" between the two modes. There are
lots of differences, however, due to other factors - instruction,
student readiness, etc.
As for programs that don't fit on-line - I don't believe you'll find an
accredited architecture program that is totally on-line. Nor will you
find APA accredited psychology doctorates. Engineering and "hard"
science programs are also few and far between - likely due to lab
requirements. ABA accredited law schools and accredited medical
schools don't go on-line either.
Thanks - Andy
In article <396C4DFC...@basketballmail.com>,
black_...@basketballmail.com wrote:
> I'm doing some research into online education and would value your
> help. I'm interested in opinions regarding what courses or topics are
> best suited for online delivery as opposed to a more traditional
> classroom environment? Also are there less appropriate courses for
> online delivery? Based on your experience with online education, how
do
> you compare and/or contrast it to traditional classroom settings.
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
armysoldier
even see how physical education classes could be done at a distance,
with some on-line components: The student conducts his or her
physical training (cross-country running, downhill skiing, body
building, etc.) and has it recorded and verified by someone who is in
sort of a "test proctor" role. The proctor could send the information,
via e-mail, to the distant instructor who evaluates or grades the
students performance or progress against the course objectives.
As for science, it is true that you don't see much on-line
education happening there. Bemidji State University (Bemidji, MN)
offers a distance physical science class called "Physical Science for
Non-Science Majors." Included with the course materials is a lab kit
which the student uses to conduct experiments at home. I am unaware of
how much of the course is delivered on-line. It should be possible for
the students to post the results of their experiments to the course's
web site, or e-mail them to their instructors. Kansas City Kansas
Community College offers an "Introductory Physics" class on-line. The
only "lab work" supposedly is done with a simulator on the web site.
Students can see how, for example, changing the speed, angle, or
whatever of two bowling balls coming at each other effects the
aftermath of their collision. Real lab work is not done in this
course. Students engage mostly in what is known as "computational"
physics: using mathematical equations to determine what should happen
in a given instance under certain circumstances. This course is
delivered entirely over the web, with the instructor periodically
posting questions on a bulletin board for the students to discuss. All
students are required to participate in the discussions. I plan on
taking this course this fall.
As for law school at a distance, I believe the California Bar is
experimenting with one or two distance universities that do have ABA
approved courses. Some of the first graduates at that program recently
took their bar exams, but I heard that the results were disappointing.
I don't believe any of them passed the bar. However, this does not
mean that law school at a distance is inherently not as effective as
traditional law school. Many graduates of traditional law schools also
fail at their first attempt to pass the bar. I don't know the
specifics about the delivery method used by those non-traditional
California law schools, but I would imagine that they have some
components that are delivered on-line; almost certainly students chat
on-line with each other and their instructors.
Business education, both at the undergraduate and graduate (MBA)
level seems to be widely available through on-line learning. Some well-
regarded schools offer business degrees on-line. At the graduate
level, it is hard to find a top-25 MBA program that offers on-line
degrees. There are, however, many on-line MBAs, as well as
undergraduate programs, that are accredited by AASCB-The International
Association of Management Education.
To be sure, there are some types of courses/degrees that are not
well-suited to on-line delivery. But as someone for whom classroom
attendance is not an option, I am very much in favor of colleges and
universities adapting their programs for delivery to distance learners,
whether on the web, on video tape, or in print.
Tracy <><
In article <8kk2vj$2su$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Ang Gilham
[Much good description snipped]
> Business education, both at the undergraduate and graduate (MBA)
> level seems to be widely available through on-line learning. Some well-
> regarded schools offer business degrees on-line. At the graduate
> level, it is hard to find a top-25 MBA program that offers on-line
> degrees. There are, however, many on-line MBAs, as well as
> undergraduate programs, that are accredited by AASCB-The International
> Association of Management Education.
Well, not quite. The Fuqua School at Duke, which comes in at #8 on the
latest USNews rankings for B-schools offers a fully online MBA. Just
be prepared to spit your coffee over the keyboard when you see the
price!
However, for most people near a decent sized metropolitan area, it's
still
a lot easier to find a highly ranked part-time MBA than it is to find a
really good DL MBA.
Ang
--
A. M. Gilham, CVs.ac.uk Site Manager and Developer
email: agi...@cvs.ac.uk || phone: +44 (0)1865 283503
Bill Dayson
> I'm interested in opinions regarding what
> courses or topics are best suited for online
> delivery as opposed to a more traditional
> classroom environment?
My suggestion is to observe on-campus university courses in action. Pay
particular attention to what the students and instructor are actually
*doing*.
Is the professor speaking and writing things on the board, with the
students passively taking notes? Is there a lot of classroom discussion
occurring in real-time? Are the students huddled in groups at lab
benches, trying desperately to get their experimental setups to work so
they can get some decent data?
Then look at the capabilities of your distance education medium. How
closely can your medium replicate that classroom or practical/lab/studio
experience at a distance?
My feeling is that distance education is very well suited for those
subjects in which you find people primarily exchanging *words*. Words
and text flow through telecommuncations just fine. That could include
subjects like history, English, philosophy, classics, etc. Those
traditional humanities that don't include a performing or studio
component.
Images can flow down the pipe as well, so art history might work pretty
well too. Music history and theory would probably work for similar
reasons.
Some of the social sciences would work, economics for example. But
distance education may be less well suited for a subject in which one
needs to form an intuitive link with another person. One of the biggest
criticisms of DL is its impersonal nature. Counseling might be hard to
implement for that reason. (I could be wrong though, since there seem to
be DL counseling programs.)
In the sciences mathematics would be a possibility. No hands-on labs
necessary, text based interaction. You would need some software enabling
you to transmit mathematical symbolism, but that shouldn't be too hard
to do. Computer science seems to be a natural. You already have your
laboratory instrument with you in the form of a connection to some
school network.
I think that distance education could work in some areas requiring lab
or practical experience, but it would be a lot harder to pull off. You
would need to more or less apprentice yourself to a local professional
in order to get the necessary practical supervision. I can imagine a
teacher training program for people in rural areas where one's classroom
work is on-line, and where classroom observations and student-teaching
are with a local school district able to provide appropriate
supervision.
Another thing to consider is demand for the course or major. There are a
lot of really obscure subjects of research out there, that are of
interest to only small communities of scholars. Few universites offer
courses in those things because there simply isn't the demand.
Well, it seems to me that this is a situation tailor made for distance
education. While any one university may not have the critical mass to
offer a course in an arcane subject, if you add together the demand all
over the world there very likely is. So rather than distance ed schools
creating hundreds of MBA programs and competing with a thousand
on-campus programs for that huge market, they could specialize in
offering unique subjects available nowhere else. I think that this could
be economically viable, but it probably is going to be difficult to sell
to a skeptical board of trustees who would rather pursue a proven market
than gamble on an innovation.
Thomas Nixon
> The overall message about on-line versus on-ground education is that
> there is "no significant difference" between the two modes. There are
> lots of differences, however, due to other factors - instruction,
> student readiness, etc.
>
> As for programs that don't fit on-line - I don't believe you'll find an
> accredited architecture program that is totally on-line. Nor will you
> find APA accredited psychology doctorates. Engineering and "hard"
> science programs are also few and far between - likely due to lab
> requirements. ABA accredited law schools and accredited medical
> schools don't go on-line either.
While not on-line, there is, the APA accredited Ph.D. in psychology offered at
Fielding Institute. They have a fairly minimal residency requirement.
Tom