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10 Responses to “Here’s a Big Idea for Online Education:”

1. Matt says:
   July 7th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

   Genius. Incentivize teachers (those who don’t already) to actually care, and teach students to explore on their own. I think it’s the right philosophy for teaching, and the right business model for creating effective educators. Your presentation made me want to be a virtual teacher.

2. Adrian Dunston says:
   July 7th, 2009 at 3:21 pm

   Is this a proper summary?

   Online courses drastically reduce the organizational overhead encountered by classroom learning. It is now possible to break courses down into shorter units, 2 weeks instead of 18 weeks. Shorter units allow teachers to create more focussed lesson plans. Teachers will compete for students using their lesson plans and teaching services as a commodity. As commodities, these courses can be marketed to and analyzed by parents, students, and administrators for ease, interest, subject matter, and past performance.
   This benefits the students because they will have more choices in what they learn giving them more ownership and emotional involvement in their education which will in turn improve their ability to learn (because we learn better when we are emotionally engaged (see Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman)).
   It benefits teachers because they are given students that are more invested in the subject material, and they are given the opportunity to raise their income by attracting more students. It also allows teachers to generate income by acting as course designers for other teachers.

3. Adrian Dunston says:
   July 7th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

   It’s an interesting proposal, and a good presentation. I do have some questions.

   What about subjects that build on themselves? How would Calculus be taught in selectable two-week shells? Would it just be different veneers on the same material? “Introduction to Multivariate Equations with Dick and Jane” versus “The Cat in the Hat Swallows Multivariate Equations for Nickels”. I’m all for that.

   Doesn’t teacher investment in students drop off if the students are changed out every two weeks? Or does that already happen in online education?

   How do you make sure kids know about character, plot, and structure before you illustrate them with the “Darker Side of Dickens”?

   (A side note. I didn’t really like the sliderocket viewer. The lettering is crisp which is nice, but a straight up video would have worked out better for me.)

4. admin says:
   July 7th, 2009 at 7:25 pm

   Adrian,

   It’s a good summary, but the idea really is so big that it’s got to be explored carefully. For example, we wouldn’t be breaking courses down into two weeks; we would be giving students the choice of units within the context of a course like English IV. Students would choose to learn about what interests them.
   Teachers can’t necessarily use their skills as a commodity any more than a skydiving company can use its jumps as a commodity. Instead, like the skydivers, they would use the ratings of previous customers, the positive experiences of their students, as the commodity.
   The most important part of the approach is that teachers are motivated to improve and improve their curriculum because better ratings will inevitably translate to more students.
   Does that help?
   -Shu

5. admin says:
   July 7th, 2009 at 7:46 pm

   Adrian,

   Very good questions. I’ll handle them in bullets, but rather than closed answers, let’s consider these conversation points.
   -What about subjects that build on themselves? Would it just be different veneers on the same material? I think that’s one option, but in the spirit of competition, I think this is a question that would answer itself in time after following your initial approach.
   -Doesn’t teacher investment in students drop off if the students are changed out every two weeks? Or does that already happen in online education?
   Yikes! That’s a huge misconception that I should dispel right away. Teacher investment in personal relationships does not decrease with online education. If you consider how much social interaction is taking place digitally now among youngsters (and we innovators), you can see that there is plenty of opportunity to get to know students digitally. Also, in the presentation, I said that classes that don’t take teacher time aren’t necessarily bad. They aren’t bad so long as the teacher uses the extra time to improve student learning and not play video poker. I find that the more efficient my course is, the more time I have for student phone calls and more in-depth direct instruction on student assignments.
   Now, as to shorter units resulting in less teacher involvement… that’s a good point. I don’t think those relationships would be as strong. However, do you remember having a teacher you didn’t see eye-to-eye with in high school? Imagine if you could have been exposed to everyone in the department every year rather than just one teacher… I think that also has advantages. Do you remember having a teacher you really connected with? With this approach, you would have the opportunity to take that teacher’s courses more often… not just as one two-week unit. I see this as an improvement, because students are choosing both the teacher through ratings and the course through reviews.
   -How do you make sure kids know about character, plot, and structure before you illustrate them with the “Darker Side of Dickens”?
   That’s an excellent question, and I have a couple of responses. Your question holds one example, and I’m sure folks will come up with a thousand of examples like this one. One response is that our digital classes use pre-assessment quizzes and ‘adaptive releases’ that open certain folders containing information based on a student’s scores. Using this tool, we are actually able to individualize instruction so that kids aren’t wasting their time going over what they already know -we can meet them where they are. My second response here is more particular to your example. Education is changing Adrian. Information is so readily available students can get definitions faster than I can think to remember where I put my dictionary. Also, students can contact instructors via text, cell phone, facebook, email, twitter, etc… not only is the information accessible, but the instructors are too! In the case that students lack pre-knowledge, that’s when individualization of the education process comes into play. In the case of a curriculum that directly builds upon itself, I’d think that in the blurb ‘advertising’ the course, any necessary previous units mastered would be listed… also turning this into a mastery learning program!

   Sorry you didn’t like the sliderocket setup. I didn’t like the way the audio sounded, but that wasn’t the fault of sliderocket. I actually had some technical difficulty on Monday night and sent an email to technical support that night. By the next morning, they had the issue resolved. I highly recommend sliderocket because it’s free and editable in smaller chunks -a video might have been beyond my abilities. Maybe you would rather have just had the slides advance after the audio? I can change that, no sweat.

   -shu

6. Adrian Dunston says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 9:04 pm

   If you conduct phone calls with students in skype (and ask permission at the top of the call) toucan record the calls and post them for other students as an audio FAQ. I don’t know. Maybe.

7. admin says:
   July 8th, 2009 at 9:07 pm

   That is something I’m going to try next semester in conjunction with google voice. We also podcast.
   Shu

8. Kecia Waddell says:
   July 11th, 2009 at 12:37 am

   BRILLIANT! STUDENT-CENTERED indeed, but I could even get excited about an 2-week unit after 14 years of teaching. What a powerful idea! Virtual Public School, huh..? I’m going to have to look into it!

9. Daniel Christian says:
   July 13th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

   Thanks Mike for this posting. I just located your blog here and I subscribed to it. I have jotted some ideas down for those folks in higher ed as well. Perhaps you would like to see them:

   http://www.calvin.edu/~dsc8/walmartofeducation.htm
   and
   various other pages on my site at http://www.calvin.edu/~dsc8/

   Thanks,
   Daniel Christian
   Calvin College

10. b.hower says:
    September 13th, 2009 at 11:56 pm

    I can see some pluses, some minuses. For example, my nephews have informed me that they and their fellow college students pass along which courses (online or otherwise)are easiest, require the least amount of work, and grading is easiest–and these are the classes they sign up for. Once in awhile, they actually sign up for a class based on the fact that the professor is excellent–entertaining, knowledgeable, challenging. More often, however, if an elective choice, they choose a class that is both entertaining and offers some additional attraction–for example a class on sexuality or a class that has a lot of females in it. Not every teacher is entertaining, but many are knowledgeable and challenge students to think. There are those students who find this attractive–are they in the majority? My own child is in the public school Magnet system, precisely because of many interests he has the chance to pursue. However, I would prefer for him to also have a classical education because it does teach him to think and it levels the playing field in a variety of ways regarding his future. Having lived overseas, I also find it interesting to look at what countries like India and Korea and China are doing in their classrooms. I do like the idea of offering chunks of learning, whereby students choose the chunks that appeal to them and after completing so many chunks, they will have satisfied whatever the standard course of study requires, as well as met any additional goals and objectives their school requires. But I do not believe this is only possible with technology. Easier to accomplish and monitor,yes.

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