A closer look at the research shows that it is not really just anything and everything about online learning that help us learn better, but specific concepts and ideas focused primarily on engagement, social presence, encouragement, and immediacy. What I don’t see in the research is any mention of long lecture capture videos, digitizing standardized tests and uploading them online, 500-slide death by PowerPoint modules, or any of the other standards that we typically see in online courses.

In other words, the bad, boring teaching concepts that have been bad, boring teaching concepts for centuries will continue to be bad, boring teaching concepts no matter how much technology we wrap around them. [ahem.... iBooks 2?]

So many times when I read about certain colleges putting “free courses” online I cringe – when all they are really doing is putting popular lecture captures online. I have tried to watch these free videos and no matter how well spoken or humorous the professor is, I just can’t sit there and watch to the end without my attention wandering.

What these recent studies don’t necessarily say directly – but they still possibly prove – is that our brains are happy when we are actively engaged in the learning process. Passively sitting there and staring at the screen for a long time? Not so much. I hate to admit it, but that is why I have never been able to get into the Khan Academy that much. If you love it – great. I just need more engagement and less “sit and stare.”

Many educators certainly seem to have an obsession for searching for “the next Google” or the next “Facebook for education” or the next big thing to change the face of education.  Some think that MOOCs will be that next big thing, others think they are going nowhere.

The problem is not the with MOOC, but with the question. We don’t need one specific thing to the be THE end-all big thing for education. We have suffered too long in systems that want to have one cookie-cutter answer for everything. Want to teach an online course? Into the LMS box you. Want to blog? The LMS box has that for you, too.

I am starting to talk to more and more students that never read the syllabus of their online course. They feel the courses are becoming too similar and predictable – so why bother re-reading a cookie-cutter syllabus? If students are getting so used to online courses that they are going on cruise mode to take them, then it is time to shake things up a bit.

For most of us, the importance of the MOOC format is not the idea itself, but the fact that it represents a different way of teaching a course or idea or skill. We don’t need it to become the next big thing – we need it to become one of many new formats that online courses can be taught in.

And we need many other formats out there to spring up and gain traction. We need to offer a greater variety of formats and options, just like you see in face-to-face courses. Do you teach Science labs with the lecture method? Do you sit Art students down in the self guided labs and hope they figure out how to create art? Face-to-face courses have different formats (even though some do need to break out of the one or two they are stuck in), so online courses need to follow suit…. maybe even blaze new trails.

So even if you can’t stand MOOCs, you should at least follow their development and support their existence, or else it will be back to the cookie cutter for us all.

“I have gotten to where I don’t need to read the syllabus anymore in online learning.  All the courses are the same”

I asked him if he was referring to the cycle of “read this, answer a discussion question, respond to other students, take a quiz, rinse, repeat.” He said that was exactly the case.

I see this a lot in online education, but to be fair it started in face-to-face courses.  So many classes you only had to find out what the dates of tests were and the rest was easy to figure out.  Some call it laziness, but it probably actually had a huge helping of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” throw in the mix.

Are discussion boards becoming the new scan-tron tests?  I realize that there is some active learning in having students answer discussion questions, but so many times the questions become so stale that what little “active” was in there gets washed away in staleness.

If you have an introductory online learning class (in other words – it is the first online course that students will take) – then I say give them something tried and true to help them get used to it.  To a degree.  For the rest of us – we need to infuse our online courses with personality and a little originality.  Try to think outside the box.  Try some new tools. or at least try to get your students to create assignments using tools they don’t normally use.

But above all, give them a reason to read the syllabus.  Oh – and then at least try to not put them to sleep while they are reading it.  Remember the K.I.S.S. method.

I have signed up for many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) recently – and never completed a single one.  That is my biggest confession. Most colleagues get pretty shocked to hear that – after all, Mr. EduGeek himself would seem to be the best person to figure out a MOOC and get the most out of it.  Maybe even become a rock star in one.

But the problem is, I just don’t have time to figure out how to use one.  Yes, I will spend forever trying to figure out how to customize a WordPress app, but I won’t take the time to figure out how to participate in a MOOC.

At first, I though it was just me.  But then I found out that the people teaching the courses I never touched had to create a four minute long video explaining how to have success in a MOOC.  That is probably the first bad sign right there.  If you have to take a mini-course on how to take your course, you are probably having to focus too much on the structure and not the learning.  Even in Blackborg, the focus on figuring out the course is knowing what links to click, not what to do with the links after you know what to click.

Dave Cormier (how created the video linked to above) gives five steps on how to have success in a MOOC.  Each one of the steps needs explanation, because they don’t necessarily make sense without the explanations.  See how complex this is getting?

Of course, I was also one of those people that avoided the massive “lecture hall” courses in college.  It was just too easy to get lost in the crowd, even if you tried not to.  Being a male educator in a room full of predominately females, I saw first hand how easy it is for the minority to get lost in the mix, even if they tried not to.  Online, it is usually the minority opinion that gets lost… which is what usually happens to me in MOOCs.  You see, just because you follow and comment on other people’s work, there is no guarantee that they will follow and comment on you, ESPECIALLY if they disagree with you.  They will possibly even get mad that you aren’t stroking their ego and just ignore you (just being brutally honest here – the web is a magnet of narcissism).

My biggest confession is that I don’t see the point of a MOOC if I already have a Personal Learning Network.  I honestly don’t see the need for any type of open course once you have a PLN and have figured out Google.  But that probably also has to do me starting to question the whole concept of “open.”  It seems that “open” is now becoming synonymous with “lack of accountability.”  But that is a topic for another blog post.

To me, the advantage of taking a course is that you get to interact with the instructor or some other type of subject matter expert – and they are the ones that help you focus on what you need to be learning.  The MOOC removes this value but leaves the time lines and due dates.  So in other words, you remove the actual value of being in a course but leave the annoying part.

I know, I know – you are supposed to network with other students and they will give you the feedback and information you need.  That is all great – if you connect with a good group of people.  There is no guarantee you will connect.  And even if you do – what if they just rubber stamp whatever you say because they fear conflict? What if they really have no idea what they are talking about but think they are an expert?  You could end the class with a bunch of new knowledge that is actually worthless because you hooked up with the wrong group.  I know that in some subjects there are no wrong answers so that is not always the case – but it is a danger.  One that is less likely to exist in a traditional course.

Obviously I am focusing on worst case scenarios.  I think that the fact that I am an instructional designer by trade now I know that it is possible to design a “traditional” course that dumps the bad parts typically associated with the “sage on the stage” mentality while still incorporating the good parts of a MOOC (all while also avoiding the pitfalls of a MOOC).  In other words, a course that connects with existing PLNs instead of creating news ones.  You only have so much time after all (another confession of mine – I don’t have time to keep up with the new PLNs formed in MOOCs). The only problem is that a course like this can really only exist in a traditional college course format and not in a MOOC format.  But a lot of that has to do with the “Massive” part.

I think I also just see the MOOC as the technology-driven, socially-networked version of the cattle-herd lecture hall courses so prevalent on college campuses today.   Herding 500 students in a course is still herding 500 students in a course, even if try to put a modern technology spin on it.  Some people think that is fine.  Personally, I like things smaller and more intimate.

Human beings need to be learners.  We need to constantly grow and expand or we just wither away.  Most teachers are learners, but some people just have to focus on the small number of bad ones that are withering away.

I also know from experience when you have a bad teacher that isn’t a learner, that aspect pretty much dominates the course. But as a teacher who is also a learner myself, I can attest that a majority of the time my students could care less that I am a learner. They would notice if i wasn’t, but since that is not the case they move on to other things that are more pressing in their minds.

What they need from me is to be present – to interact with them and be whatever they need me to be at that moment.  Yes, sometimes they need me to learn from them. That is part of the learning process – to discover something that the teacher didn’t know and share it with them. But they also need me to answer questions they don’t know – they still need the guru. They need me to give them feedback on ideas. They need me to provide tech support. They need me to offer career advice. They need a whole host of interaction with me that goes beyond learner but does not fit into the category of “teaching.” And even when they do need me to teach, I prefer to show them how to find the answers rather than just provide the answers themselves.  Usually, they like this, too.

The only word I can find for this is “interacter.”  Which is not even a real word outside of biology. But you can often interact with someone and not really bring about any real change or improvement. I think I like the word ‘catalyst’ the best – but people also probably have different takes on that word (some negative), so I have to explain what I mean.  Hence the term “interactive catalyst.”  Catalysts ultimately bring about change, and in education we can best do that by interacting and being what the students need us to be at any given point in the course.

Which, historically has always been the way you defined the word “teacher.”  But the word “teach” has gotten an unfair bad rap recently, so now we have to come up with new ways to say the same thing all over again. To me, “teacher is a learner” just doesn’t cut it.

Of course, I am not really trying to create a new theory here or give away ideas for yet another book on teaching – this is really just me finding a way to describe my objective as a teacher.

Clark Quinn has a great blog post about his experiences in this area, which also examines the difficulty in teaching others the difference between what has true quality and what is really just whitewashing a dead, boring lesson to make it look (as we say in Texas) purty.

Sometimes it feels like people think that a good online course only involves the following steps:

1. Take your lecture notes and edit them well to make them flow beautifully when read
2. Transfer these edited notes to html and break it all up into decent sized chunks
3. Slap on a discussion question and a multiple choice quiz at the end
4. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Never mind that all these skills (editing, copy/paste, chunking, pushing buttons on a website to create things) are all things that your average high school-er can do – this is now considered high level ed tech pedagogy, right?

Um… yeah….

I wish I was only describing some neophyte professor just creating their first online course, but sadly this list pretty much describes what I have seen labeled as “high quality” instructional design by many people with graduate degrees in this stuff.  I have even heard it labeled “active learning.” (!) (?)

I guess since the student does have to read and respond to discussion posts… that counts as active?  I guess as long as they don’t fall asleep….

Now, I realize that the format listed above can work in some situations, especially if a lot of thought is put in to it. But what usually happens is that it is treated like an online course design template used for every course with components rapidly plugged in. Which in some cases might not even be bad – just not the best option that exists out there.

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….

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.

“I don’t really care what technology wants. It’s up to people to develop technologies, see what affordances the technology has. Very often these affordances tap into our vulnerabilities. I would feel bereft if, because technology wants us to read short, simple stories, we bequeath to our children a world of short, simple stories. What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.”

In other words, Technology is not like dancing with the bear (the bear tells you when to stop or how to dance). Humans have learned how to train bears. We need to realize that we are in control of technology. We need to stop sitting around worshiping what technology tells us is happening, and start making things happen ourselves.  Too many adults sitting around drooling over youth that we are forgetting that we need to actual be adults. As Bono once said “Many people die at 17 and put the funeral off until they are 77.”

That sound you hear is the collective world of EduGeeks around the world firmly planting their palm to their fore head. Online lectures are ten times as boring as the face-to-face version, so no wonder they performed so bad.

(that last statement is based on the results of my scientific study of the volume of snores originating from a few online lecture video based courses I know of)

One of the authors even had this to say: “It’s limited evidence, but I think it’s the highest-quality evidence that’s available.”

Sorry, but it is not anywhere near as good as the other evidence out there.  The previous analysis of online learning by the U.S. Department of Education (that this article mentions) actually looked at many different actual forms of online learning. Not the wanna-be online learning beast called video lectures.

UPDATE: just as a note, The Chronicle did edit the original article and title to “more accurately characterize the research.”  The original title is in the link above. Also, the quote from the authors above was also removed, but it was originally there.