Online Education

Katie at A Constrained Vision has been posting recently about the American university system becoming obsolete. The model she envisions is online education.

In general I agree that there are better ways of delivering educational content for many classes but I don't think a strictly online method will work. I have taken a number of online classes and in my experience they go in two directions. Either the work is so dumbed down that it is virtually meaningless or the tools don't match the learning objectives of the class. In either case it decreases the value of the learning experience.

As I said those are general impressions. Now I have also taken a classes that were excellently put together, specifically CSC142 C programming. In this case the instructor developed his own class materials, it was a tough class but every step of the way the instruction matched the objectives for a given unit. There is also a company called MindLenders which does an excellent job.

Now that I have completed by rambling here is the point of my post. I think Katie is wrong, the university is not obsolete. Students require guidance, and at this point online course do not adequately provide that guidance. I hope they will improve. Until they do I would like to see consortiums of universities which offer courses (online possibly or tele-courses) from popular professors at full credit, with support from the staff at the remote university. I think this would be a good compromise.