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Scientists Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller taught several web-based courses at Stanford University last year and were awed to find that they'd touched the educations of at least one hundred thousand students. This is one of the main appeals of online courses. Our Integrating Technology course is example enough of that; where the in class course meets one day a week and tends to about thirty students, our online counterpart reaches one hundred and fifty. This is a huge jump. Ng and Koller found that many other professors were enthralled by the idea of impact so many students' lives all at once. Thus, they created their company, Coursera.
These classes operate as follows: professors partnered with Coursera create interactive lectures. I found their assessment strategy for humanities and social science classes, like English, very interesting. Typically, in those cases, essays are required, but rather than having professors grade over one hundred thousand of these essays (which would be impossible), students are paired with their peers and grade via an established rubric. This way, they are part of the teaching process as makeshift teachers themselves.
The biggest issue with classes offered in programs like Coursera is that they operate on an 'honor code' and are easily cheated. An example of this comes to mind, sadly. My brother's friend, when doing MyAccess assignments from home, had his own older brother write his essays for him, so they could get a 5/5, and his teacher was none-the-wiser. I do like, however, having students play a more hands on role in their education. When I teach, I will try letting my students grade each other's papers in at least a very basic sense. Teaching will actually teach them, in this case.
Sarin,
ReplyDeleteWhat you mentioned above about cheating is really heart breaking. Although technology has helped advance so much in education, there are a lot of issues with honor code systems. Cheating seems to get worse day by day because of the abundant access to technology. Cellphones, ipods, ipads. laptops, and cameras all become very tricky inside the classroom. How much is too much? Where do we draw the line? How we do ask students to respect the system rather than overthrow it?
I agree, Hitisha, cheating is a terrible tragedy, but it's unfortunately been around since the start of the educational system and will likely never be filtered out. I think something my HLTH professor told us, however, applies here: "There's always going to be cheating, but we can't let fear of cheating keep us from helping those who truly benefit from our resources." Of course, she was talking about Medicare and Medicaid, but I believe the same principles apply here. Being able to touch so many students' lives may outweigh some of them self-recriminating themselves and not getting as much out of it because of that. It's all up to the teacher. I, personally, prefer face to face instruction, but there is cheating in that, too.
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