Notable developments in online learning
Posted by michael_horn | Under Online learning Thursday Jul 30, 2009There are some notable developments and reports out there currently on online learning that are worth highlighting briefly and providing the information so people can learn more about them. I’ll try to do one a week over the next few weeks.
First, a report from Project Tomorrow and Blackboard, Inc. says that there is a growing divide between the demand among students in 6th through 12th grades for online courses (40 percent have researched or demonstrated an interest in taking an online course it says) and the supply, as only 10 percent have taken an online course through their school.
There are of course vested interests behind this report, but nevertheless, it does call attention to some notable and believable observations including the variety of reasons for the gap between supply and demand (these match in many cases my own observations and research). This mismatch in particular stems from many policy barriers that still exist for schools to open up this option for students. Additionally, according to the report, 14 percent of schools said that one reason they don’t offer online courses for students is that they don’t have the expertise to create online courses. To me, with the number of high-quality online course offerings in existence and improving constantly, why a school would feel the need to reinvent the wheel and create something from scratch is mystifying. This one should not be a barrier, but that it is cited as one is revealing.
Interestingly, this lack of supply for students clashes with the report showing that districts overwhelmingly offer more opportunities for professional development online for teachers than for students—and a third of teachers say they’ve taken an online course, which is a 57-percent increase from 2007 (a positive development). There are some other interesting findings as well so it’s worth reading the whole report—and the comments at the bottom of the eSchool News article are also fascinating.
since teachers are taking their professional devt. courses online, they can appreciate the benefits/reasons why their students also want to do their classes online.
Video lectures can be slowed down with MySpeed or speeded up according to the student’s own speed in understanding the subject.
Students are not simple sponges, nor do they learn the same way. Online courses provide them the means to understand the subject on their own, without the teacher always leading them to the answer.
And yes, there are already online learning management systems that have been successful in other schools that can be use by the late adopters. Teachers should try new stuff that can help their kids learn better.
[...] more here: Notable developments in online learning | Clayton Christensen This entry is filed under Online Courses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the [...]
Clayton, you’ve nailed it again. The students at my school would love to take online courses. I have been trying to convince my administrators to add an online component to our school, but policy and tradition are blocking progress.
[...] Notable Developments in Online Learning– Michael Horn, Disrupting Class [...]
Yet as an educator I ask, is the heightened supply due to the quality of online learning, or the horrid learning conditions students currently must endure. To call streaming video education is another crime happening to learning.
James — If I understand your point correctly, it’s a good one. Let me try to restate — maybe the reason supply is not meeting the demand is because some of the online learning out there is of poor quality, correct? No question about it there are both good and bad online courses, and the bad ones give this all a bad name. There are also some great ones out there, however, that go way way beyond powerpoints and mere video streaming, and since those are available widely, I don’t think the existence of bad ones that unfortunately do get used would explain the mismatch by itself.
what i dont understand is why online courses are better integrated into people’s online life/experience. I don’t remember completing an online course because unless I’m present I’m not learning (honestly I’m not studious anyway - just like many young adults/school-leavers) so, i propose every online course should come complete with emailed appointments and tasks (that outlook and gmail/gcalender are fully compatible with and google will still send free sms reminders to your cell phone), the course should have a twitter, RSS and facebook presence and all students should be subscribed. skype logins and twitter accounts should be created for all students so they can engage online simultaneously/next time they login, but not have their out-of-class online presences affected if they so choose.
I’m guessing you meant — “what i dont understand is why online courses AREN’T better integrated into people’s online life/experience”? If so, I agree with you and your suggestions!
I have to wonder whether my specialty, science, has a larger gap than the average course.
Speaking of innovations, how about using prerecorded real experiments to help with the science lab part of courses? This technology is ten years old but only now beginning to be used in earnest by online providers.
California is now considering online textbooks, and they speak of the budget savings. If a textbook costs $120 and is used for six years, as many are, then the savings is $20 per child per year assuming the online textbooks are free.
The cost of showcase science labs in schools is much greater per child if you count all costs: construction, maintenance of special equipment, hazmat disposal, dangerous material storage, insurance premiums, breakage, capital equipment, consumables, equipment calibration, and extra teacher time spent in set up and clean up — and sometimes teacher aides for the labs. The overall costs can readily reach $100 per student. Yet appropriate technology can cut that cost. The prerecorded real experiments themselves can be obtained for about $5 per student per year. Small additional costs for very safe and inexpensive hands-on supplements might add $20 per student. Even if you assume that the per-student cost of $100 has been overestimated by a factor of two, you’ll still save $25 per student, more than the online textbooks.
That’s a huge savings, but it’s only the beginning. Factors other than money are important too. Because the entire operation is online, you can track student progress and success. Administrators can know which classes are where in the scope and sequence. They can also know which classes are doing better on built-in assessments. The assessment questions, both pre-lab and post-lab can be keyed to learning standards so that just-in-time remediation can be provided to students in need.
Because the experiments are real, students experience the real world and collect real data with all of the true science errors. They aren’t seeing data that comes from a programmer’s pencil. For these reasons and more, the prerecorded real experiment approach meets the definition and goals of “America’s Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science.”
Costs are increasing. Budgets are decreasing. International science scores are low in the U.S. Nearly all U.S. adults are science illiterate (80% or more). Time pressures to pass standardized tests take away lab time. Innovation is desperately required and required now.
Why not use this technology, available already for ten years, to improve science learning while cutting costs at the same time? It should be a no-brainer!
[...] Notable developments in online learning from Clayton Christensen [...]
[...] my last blog, one of the reasons schools cited that they did not offer online courses for their students is that [...]
I tried a simple research about how interested teachers and students with the new technology to support how they learn, such as computer, video, and the internet in the school where I was a teacher. I found that students are more adaptable with the changing of technology than teachers. One of the most important reasons is students have motivation to learn and get know about the new technology and they have support from their parent with enough money to acquire the new technology. In the other hand, most of the teachers busy with their daily activities in which they can earn enough money to support their family. They don’t have much time to learn about the technology and lack of access to the internet because they spent most of the time in the class for teaching and evaluate their students (Most of the schools in Indonesia contain 40 – 50 students and one teacher must teach at least 4 classes). In addition, teachers’ salary are far behind than the students’ parent earn to acquire the new technology. This case seems related to why “students demonstrated more interested in taking an online course” as the change on the process of education, but schools (teachers) seem like to find an excuse for what they don’t motivated to do. I believe, process of transformation in Indonesia education is ongoing and someday teacher will more adaptable with the disruptive of the new innovation, including the implementation of online courses and distance learning.
An interesting observation. I think it ties directly to something we see all the time. A critical observation about disruption is the “new organizational/business model” part of it. It’s hard to prioritize a disruptive innovation in an existing system because it just doesn’t make sense. It’s why you need a new system that is coupled with the enabling technology–and this is what brings about transformation. Employing online learning in Indonesia to address several of the limitations you reference seems like a great idea to get talented people to connect with the students.
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