Letter To The Coures Editors – Part I: In my travels and dealings, I have seen thousands of online courses. Some courses are brilliant, while others leave much to be desired. Unfortunately, there is still a significant number of what I call, “Text Under Glass” – essentially courses that are all reading with little to no interactive content. Likewise, there are courses where the instructor has no presence – no immediacy, no communication, no evaluation…no teaching! I have also seen courses that aren’t really courses – they are incomplete from the traditional concept of a course. So, for the next two blogs, I’d like to present my letters to course writers. These letters are meant to both motivate and call out. See what you think.
Dear course developer – typically at a private or for-profit school,
I saw another of your courses today. Yikes! I’m not completely sure I would consider a course at all, but accreditors don’t seem to know the difference, so I guess you’re covered. Why wasn’t it a course, you ask? Well, it consisted of about 3-4 pieces of content every week. The basic outline went something like this:
Content Item #1 – labeled Readings: Here you told your students what pages or chapters of the textbook to read.
Content Item #2 – Discussion: Here you had a discussion area with a pre-populated discussion topic for the “instructor” to facilitate.
Content Item #3 – Assignment: Here you asked the student to submit a 5 paragraph essay on most any topic. The creation of a product (I’m assuming) gave you the feeling that you were assessing a higher level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Content Item #4 – Quiz / Test: In the weeks that had tests (not all did), the questions were purely recall, suggesting that memorization of terms from the textbook was essential.
That’s it. Don’t get me wrong – your course has plenty of structure and instructional design. And standardized nomenclature is a very good thing for an online course. When students click on “Discussion” they know exactly what you mean. The stock photos and newspaper like pages were easy to read, especially since there really wasn’t anything more than directions item after item. As well, your outcomes and objectives were impeccable. They weren’t necessarily important or practical, but they were spot on in terms of what you presented. You obviously mapped program goals to learning outcomes to course objectives – this should make for a great report to show accreditation groups or internal reviewers. However, when it comes to differentiation (Educational Variance), curriculum integration, immediacy, and lots of other important, academic concepts, you’ve missed the boat.
You may have noticed that I put the word instructor in quotes above. I know that seems harsh, but essentially the course that I saw from you made the teacher an overpaid grader – s/he wasn’t teaching anyone anything. For example, if the instructor asked a poignant question in the thread, students had absolutely no reason to answer that question. The explicit grading rubric, in and of itself a great thing, was clear. As long as students responded to the pre-populated topic and X number of their peers, then the student would earn all points for the week’s discussion. So, perhaps you would allow the instructor of the course access to add in a few quiz questions so as to keep students accountable to the expert you’ve hired to teach. Nope. The instructor was not allowed to add any assessment to the course. Only the development team could do that. So I say again, your course had no need for an “instructor”. (Other than the fact that accreditation requires it I guess…)
But where was the rest of it? If a traditional course, requiring contact hours + homework asks 45 hours of a teacher / student’s in class plus 3-5 times that outside of class, how does this course work? If ALL content is coming from the textbook, isn’t the textbook the teacher? Is that really the best education our students can get? No practical, real world instruction from an expert – but just textual theory from a bunch of graduate students who work for a PhD? Don’t get me wrong – I AM a doctoral student and I work my tail off to gather research and assemble journal articles. But my ability to write a textbook today would come from the last 15 years of communication teaching AND experience – I would not have been effective at that during my Master’s program!
Perhaps there is a shortage of quality instructors? People who you don’t trust to teach effectively? Surely there are ways to police that though. I know how hard it is to keep tabs on adjunct faculty teaching in the face-to-face classroom – I managed over 50 at a time when I coordinated public speaking at MSCD. But online is a different story, isn’t it? You see every communication, every thread, every document, EVERYTHING! You should be able to tell if quality instruction is happening. So I’m guessing that’s not it.
Hmmm. I guess it comes down to creativity, teaching, and other academic principles. The lack of web 2.0 concepts, the surface development of learning community, and the trust of content over teaching suggests a business decision, not an educational one. I’m reminded of a keynote address I heard recently by Dr. Mark Milliron. He said that research shows the #1 influencer of student success is a teacher. He also noted that the next 5 educational elements that influence success, when totaled, don’t equal the percentage of relevance a teacher has. Not standardized outlines, not repetitive agendas, and definitely not content. (Libraries have been around centuries yet we still need teachers to effectively teach us how to classify, interpret, and apply it, no?)
So, my friends, I’m left wondering what to do next. I work with many of you – I KNOW many of you. Some of you are excellent people with (uninformed) hearts in the right place. (I also know some “educators” who really only care about the profit involved. I have no problem with you – everyone has to make money and furthering education in the process is fine by me – but this isn’t for you. You’ll likely see this as silly and altruistic. No worries – find another blog.) But how do I fix this? It IS fixable after all. Content doesn’t have to be boring. Learning doesn’t have to exclude practicality, originality, and context. Learning doesn’t have to happen in a vacuum. Rigor is okay when accompanied by scaffolding, core knowledge, and scholarship. I know it might weed out potential unmotivated customers, er…students, but that’s okay too. Not every class is for every student and school isn’t for every person at every stage of life. Life-long learning doesn’t have to be formal – informal and nonformal learning are at work too.
Well, I’ll keep on speaking. I’ll put out the word and see if any of it sticks. I’m cynical, but not without at least a small degree of hope. Things can be changed. There IS a happy medium between the course I described here and the course created by a faculty member who is either uninformed or lazy. And the person who figures that out…watch out. It will change education as we all know it.
Want to hear more about building a better course? Need some help finding a balance between standardization and effective teaching? Contact jborden@jeffpresents.com for more information!
