Online Learning Redux

by Dennis Green

Well, the University of California is considering building an online program leading to the Bachelor’s Degree, and the proposal is generating the same sort of resistance from University Professors that it does from public school K-12 teachers and advocates. UC would be the first top-tier research institution to offer a bachelor’s degree over the Internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus programs.

And the number of college students taking online courses nearly tripled between 2002 and 2008. Nearly 5 million students took at least one online course in 2008, up from 1.6 million in 2002.

Among the most successful universities to offer such programs is the University of Massachusetts, (“Umass-Online”), which includes graduate degrees, and took in $56 million last year, from 45,815 students. Cal State University East Bay, (formerly Cal State Hayward, where I taught Advertising for three years), also offers four online bachelor degrees, in businesses administration, human development, tourism and recreation.

But at UC, the proposal has some faculty knickers in a twist. Two of those twisted profs, Timothy Hampton and Garrison Sposito, write, in an op-ed piece to the San Francisco Chronicle, “UC must put emphasis on education, not brand,” the following claims, which are typical of the critics of online education:

“1) Online teaching cannot replace the classroom experience.” They talk about the “face-to-face dialogue” and how only the classroom “conversation” can be flexible enough to meet changing student needs. This from a University, Berkeley, where 47% of the undergraduate teaching is done by graduate students, and most of the rest in huge lecture halls where students are glued to their laptops while the prof drones on…

“2) UC serves California.” That is, such online offerings would attract some of those (gasp!) students in Kansas or Maine or even Texas! Note: the summer I taught P.R. at UC Berkeley Extension, most of my students were foreign exchange students, who paid enormous out-of-state fees, many that year from the former “East Germany” and Poland, to the great profit of the UC System, not me. So much for the Golden Bear!

“3) Teaching and research are one.” That is, putting “bits of teaching” online would sever the connection between teaching and research. Proponents of the new program counter that the real challenge is finding ways to present laboratory classes online that would in fact not only preserve, but strengthen that connection. Can it be?

One of my best friends, Dick Reichelderfer, with his PhD in Organimatallic Chemistry, found his true calling designing ways to carve silicon computer chips using plasma technology, and to demonstrate those techniques to his fellow scientists and researchers online. Dick told me that such presentations were more vivid and clear than any process demonstrated in a large lab to large groups of people.

So, if anything, I’m skeptical of the old “factory model” of classroom education, where one expert stands up in front of 30 (or 300) novices and imparts knowledge. I suspect that only a very few of those classroom teachers can even depart from the lecture format to stimulate a vigorous, free-for-all discussion, let alone the kind of one-on-one tutorial made possible online.

Online tutorials alone constitute a $3 billion industry, with more new and innovative companies coming online every year. If the University of California gets into the act, the whole field will explode. And some of the faculty members are dismayed…and rightly so. They see the same implications for the future that I saw crashing those big lectures at UC Berkeley with my girlfriend Chris in 1961, who was actually enrolled there, and years later in those classrooms at Wheeler Hall where I was teaching Extension.

Teachers are dispensable. Disposable. Replaceable. Not by a machine, but by a better teacher, whose presence can be shared effectively with a much wider and larger audience, that presence and exchange enhanced by online video, special effects, music, instant demonstrations from halfway ‘round the world, and even, yes, social networking.

Irresistible. Compelling. The future always is. And the future of education is here, in the digital world of CyberSpace. Rather than putting the emphasis on Employment, let’s put it where it belongs, on Education, no matter where we find it.

©2010 Dennis Green