EduGeek Journal

After reading all of these reports that study and compare online courses versus face-to-face course, I have to ask: why on Earth do we even need to know which one is better?  Why are so many people intent on setting up some battle royale where only one or the other can survive?

Online learning has its pros and cons, just like face-to-face learning does.  So, it is not suprising that some studies are finding that hybrid approaches work best.  That should not surprise anyone – you take the best of both worlds and the results are bound to be awesome.  Peanut butter and chocolate – need I say more?

We need to realize that sometimes the online option is chosen not because it is superior, but because it is most convenient.  People want a certain degree, for example, but it is not offered near them.  So the compromise to not getting the degree at all is to take it online.  Whether it is better than getting the degree face-to-face is irrelevant – it is the only option they have.  Or maybe even the person lives near a college with the degree, but has such a crazy work schedule that asynchronous learning is the only option.

Or it may even be that they can go get the face-to-face degree, but opt for the online one because some bad article some where convinced them that online learning is “better.”  They might be the type of person that doesn’t do so well online, and end up dropping out before completion.

All that these crazy studies are going to do is discourage people from getting a degree or training or education of some kind because they will be fearful of getting a lesser education.  We need to quit proving to people that one or the other is better and just present them with the facts and let them chose the option that best suits them.

Wow… why does that concept sound so… familiar… ? It is almost like…. some other industry out there uses it or something….

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Been out for a bit to help welcome a new EduGeek in the world.  I come back hoping to find a great new world of Ed Tech, grown and matured since I last left it.  Instead, I find the same silliness, like this article in the New York Times:

Second Thoughts on Online Education

You probably don’t even need to read it to know what happened.  A large university did a study where they compared the outcomes of a large lecture hall class to the outcomes from an “online” course with taped lectures.

Bad pedagogy vs. bad pedagogy – guess who won?  Oh, come on and say it with me – whining can help you feel better.  Ready?

Who won? No one.

Oh, the author talks about what the results possibly tell us, because certain groups (men, minorities, etc) performed worse in the online version than their counterparts in the face-to-face version.  Some crazy theories about why this is so are also posted: men like to procrastinate (and online videos help that), people that can’t speak English can’t pick up as well on non-verbal clues online, etc.

Could it possibly be that taped online lectures – no matter how well produced – are boring? No one likes to watch a talking head on a screen for hours.  Certain groups probably performed poorer just because they got bored faster.

Guess that brave new world of educational utopia is still down the road a bit….

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I am glad to see that I am not the only one feeling a bit… uneasy?… about how ed tech is going.  Brian Lamb and Jim Groom do a good job of articulating some of my concerns and growing fears in this article: Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle:

We dream of higher education that embraces its role as a guardian of knowledge, that energetically creates and zealously protects publicly-minded spaces promoting enlightenment and the exchange of ideas. We need green spaces for conviviality on the web.

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Created at Make Beliefs Comix

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You just can’t make this stuff up.  Here is the name of a recent article on The Chronicle:

College 2.0: Teachers Without Technology Strike Back

The first thing that any decent intro to educational technology course teaches you is that technology is not just a computer.  Chalk boards are technology.  Books are technology.  “Technology can refer to material objects of use to humanity.” This also includes over head projectors and calculators.

In fact, we have probably all read the quotes from people that were opposed to books way back in the day.  I even remember once reading a quote that talked about how writing on bark was better than chalkboards or something like that.

So how did the professor strike back at technology? But forcing students to use a blue book.  Which is technically also technology.  Confused? So are the students in these courses I would bet. The professor also used an overhead at some point I would be willing to bet, or at least turned on the air conditioning if it got hot.

Worst quote of the article?

“tech-based learning feels more like IKEA—a lower-price, build-it-yourself option.”

Sad. Really sad.  Just taking out technology and talking at students doesn’t make a class high quality.  In fact, I have been in many face-to-face courses that would be a K-mart Blue Light Special if this metaphor is continued.

“In that way, some professors see emphasizing the benefits of chalk-and-talk methods as defending their craft against pressures to cheapen it.”

That is great – I see great value in face-to-face learning.  Just don’t defend your side by cheapening technology-based learning.  Lower-price, do-it-yourself? Give me a break.

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Google has a fairly inconsistent record of development when it comes to innovative products.  Remember Lively? They pulled the plug on that fast – even though they probably had enough interest and users to keep it going.  Now it seems Wave is going the way of Lively.

Or something like that – the official announcement was a bit unclear, especially since some of the code has already been released open-source. The basic gist of it is that Wave will no longer be standalone… but somehow integrated into other products. And the website will go away by the end of the year. The main reason given was that “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked.”

That is probably going to be the closest Google will ever get to admitting failure.  It wasn’t that long ago that they were predicting the death of email, that email was obsolete, that Wave would forever change the way we communicate on the web, etc.  I like Google, but they aren’t exactly that great at eating humble pie.

The hard part for me and millions of others is that we still never figured out what exactly Google Wave is…

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Google Wave, but I did recognize that it was innovative. I know that I predicted that it wouldn’t make it, but I would have liked to have been wrong just to see where it could have gone.

I guess we will never know now.

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Created at Make Beliefs Comix

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Two new patent applications by Apple reveal the possibility that future iPhones will actually record “video or photos and use the information to render an object or location in 3D.” In other words, three-dimensional recording of places and objects. Once you can start recording places and objects on an Internet-enabled device, there will be virtually no barriers between the physical and virtual.  These recordings could be mashed together with digital information, and then ported out to any device – from the iPhone itself to a heads-up display on a car windshield or even to a special pair of virtual reality glasses.  Imagine what could happen if cars start coming equipped with this recording method?  Or think about what student reports on field trips would be like if they had this on an Internet-enabled device?

The possibilities are endless.  Neil Hughes of AppleInsider had this thought: “If enabled on millions of devices, this sort of 3D mapping could be uploaded over the Internet and then shared with other users, allowing a sort of “hive mind” functionality in generating comprehensive and up-to-date real-world renderings.”

So, will we go to the matrix, or will the matrix come to us?

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Click on the image to see the bigger version. Next week we meet Jim the EduPunk.

Created at Make Beliefs Comix

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I have been chewing over the brief article at The Chronicle about how a study found “No Link Between Social-Networking Sites and Academic Performance.”

Eszter Hargittai, associate professor of communication studies and sociology at Northwestern, suggests that the benefits of social-networking sites may cancel out the distractions they pose.

Here is a newsflash people: the benefits of reading can also cancel out the distractions it poses. Do you really think spending hours each day devouring the National Enquirer improves academic performance? Nope.  Spending time on a social network is about as broad a category as reading now – with good and bad examples of both existing out there.

Someday… just maybe academics will figure out it is not the tool itself that matters but how it is used.  Until then we will have to continue performing studies that tell us the obvious.

But I fully recommend that you bookmark the study – it will save you time and energy the next time you have to respond to “I heard that students are failing because of Facebook” for the millionth time.

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