It took a long time but I've come to the conclusion that I am a good candidate for online study. I like taking classes but my erratic work schedule always sabotages everything and I have a hard time finishing what I've started. So it seems like having some degree of flexibility in my class hours would be a great thing.
However, I am a bit skeptical. Online learning seems like it's halfway between real course study and self-study. What is this going to provide for me that a reading list alone will not?
I'm curious about everyone's opinions on this matter. Is an online course any better than self study? I am pretty motivated and will tear through a reading list, but I want to feel like I'm going to get something for my money. Is an online class just for students who can't motivate themselves? How is the quality of teaching here? Are there actual lectures? Or podcasts? Do the online courses get shunted to the side and filled with recycled material and ancient lecture notes? What is the quality of the students like? Lower or higher than physical in-class humans? Does the impersonal structure of the online class make the professor care less?
Please feel free to comment on your experiences teaching/taking online classes.
5 comments:
The online stuff, quite frankly, is a mixed bag. I've been engaged in it from its near inception back in the early 90s. Quite honestly, like everything to do with education, the motivation and involvement of the instructor seems to be key (although I don't want to put all the responsibility of failure or success on the head of the instructor.) Ultimately I think if you have an engaged instructor and your are an engaged student you will find success.
From the teaching side, online instruction can be very frustrating. It is difficult to gauge at times what is going on in a class or if student are in any way engaged. My most particular experience with all this is one-to-one response to students. Sometimes you get engaged in a great correspondence. Other times you expend efforts to hear nothing but silence come from the ether.
I would conclude that online study is different from self-study and (obviously) the traditional classroom. I wouldn't call it a hybrid, however. It is definitely something quite unique. I think it will ultimately fail using the current computer mediated communication devices, given that they are not too friendly to our traditional means of communication.
I don't like teaching on-line, because I like actually meeting with the students. That said, I think it can be a great experience. I think many students are more motivated, etc, on-line because if not, they fail, drop away. So the ones who succeed are better.
I think it depends on the teacher. S/he could give great feedback and it could all be worth it. I think that might be key.
If you are looking at MFAs, you might think about one where you exchange work (physically, not on-line) with a mentor. Warren Wilson, Vermont, etc. Choose one based on the teacher you get to work with. There is one in LA. Antioch?
I love online teaching, partly, I think, because it requires something different of me, has required me to think more creatively (or, at least, in a way that has _felt_ more creative to me), and I think the mediation of the technology can be constructive. I agree with theorris that if you're an engaged student, and the teacher is engaged, you can have a first rate experience--it is interactive and not just reading.
I also agree that it's a mixed bag--much like face-to-face instruction, realistically. I would definitely find out from others what the specific courses you plan to take were like from their experience, because a bad online class might feel worse than a bad face-to-face course.
I'm going to keep it simple. You wouldn't like online education. You will get nothing from online education that you can't get on your own. This is partly because of the nature of online education and this is partly because of the nature of your intelligence.
I notice too that at UCLA the online classes are 50% more expensive than the same person-to-person version.
Seems like a bit much.
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