A group of American researchers created a report on online learning environments and
barriers to their adoption. 25 senior administrators from U.S.
universities were interviewed on behalf of Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit
organization supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation.
Boom of online education within 3-5 years
Following massive innovation in ICT and social media, online
education has recently gained momentum. India, for instance, attempts to widen access
to universities by bringing classrooms online. Major companies like
Google and Apple have picked up on this trend too trying
to realize the financial potential of digital education. Meanwhile,
European stakeholders like Anka Mulder from
OpenCourseWare openly advocate this idea as a response to budget
cuts.
To realize the online education vision, the Ithaka report
emphasizes "1. the need for open, shared data on student learning
and performance that are created through Interactive learning
online (ILO); and 2. the need for investment in the creation of
sustainable and customizable platforms for delivering interactive
online learning instruction."
As of now, online education is a promising, but uncommon
phenomenon. "Full implementation of sophisticated ILO systems where
instruction is either exclusively or largely machine-guided remains
quite rare." The authors still predict that "a wide variety of such
systems, of varying quality and sophistication, will proliferate in
the next three to five years."
Better teaching motive only secondary
This may have significant consequences for higher education. "We
believe that [ILO] technology will bring about fundamental reform
in how teachers teach and learners learn in years to come. Whether
these reforms also significantly lower the cost of education
remains an open question."
Significant cost savings could be achieved by employing smart
online education instead of teaching inside classrooms and labs.
Yet, the authors question whether universities will be willing to
pass through these savings to the consumer of education: the
students. In the report it states that "Very few are using either
savings from online education or the net incremental revenue [from
teaching more students] to reduce the price of education to
students."
This financial motive behind online education becomes quite
apparent in the interviews the authors conducted. The aim to
improve study success is only secondary. "Aside from a few
institutions' references to improvements in retention or pass
rates, most interviewees did not explicitly mention a desire for
better learning outcomes as a main factor behind their decisions to
increase their online offerings."
Teachers struggle to make it their own
Obstacles to online education are mostly twofold. Firstly,
lecturers fear becoming superfluous as more and more education is
realized outside of the classroom. Secondly, intellectual property
rights were quoted by interviewees as prime worry. "Faculty are
extremely reluctant to teach courses that they do not 'own'. The
familiar textbook model in which faculty authors retain copyright
does not always translate well for online courses developed with
institutional support that may run into the hundreds of thousands
of dollars."
To really take off, digital learning environments needed greater
customization possibilities. Teachers have the desire to "brand
courses as their own… To date, no sustainable platform exists that
allows interested faculty either to create a fully interactive,
machine-guided learning environment or to customize a course that
has been created by someone else (and thus claim it as their own).
This is perhaps the largest obstacle to widespread adoption of
ILO-style courses."
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