I think that online/distance education is very useful because it allows for people who would not have the chance otherwise to get an education. But, I am afraid that the content and quality of the education may suffer. With distance education there is no place for classroom discussion between your peers and professor. A lot of material that I remember from past classes comes from classroom discussions that really drive the point the professor is trying to make into my mind.
While TOPIC/MOO is a form of bringing classroom discussion to distance education I don't think that it fully accomplishes its job. If I was in a distance education course and had to use MOO, I don't think that I would leave the class remembering anything because it was so fast paced. Anytime I did type something that I thought added to the conversation, I felt like it was lost in the mix of the comments from 30 other students...which is discouraging because I felt like what I typed didn't really matter. So I would have to say that the MOO was a confining classroom moment because the ideas that came across were less important than talking about food.
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Yeah, I agree. I think that some more research and development needs to be done on distance education before it can compete with the experience you get in an actual classroom. I think it's possible, definitely, but we're not there yet.
ReplyDeleteI took an online history class once and I can tell you, I learned absolutely nothing. Except how to better manipulate technology. I scanned all of my books and put them in Adobe so I could scan the text really fast for answers using the 'find' thing.