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AlterNet reports
Online instruction at community colleges isn't working--yet policymakers are continuing to fund programs to expand online courses at these schools, which primarily serve low-income minority students, and community college administrators are planning to offer more and more of them.
The latest salvo comes from researchers at the University of California-Davis, who found that community college students throughout California were 11 percent less likely to finish and pass a course if they opted to take the online version instead of the traditional face-to-face version of the same class. The still-unpublished paper, entitled Online Course-taking and Student Outcomes in California Community Colleges, was presented on April 18, 2015, at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in Chicago.
[...]Community colleges [educate 45 percent of the nation's undergraduates] and [that sector] is under fire for low graduation rates.
[...]Despite the flexibility, it appears that many students find it hard to manage their time to complete the lectures and coursework throughout an entire semester.
[...]These are very different results from what researchers are finding for students at four-year colleges.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 06 2015, @06:28PM
"Flipped" is good.
Going to class to be lectured to is passive. Unengaging. But it's more engaging than doing the same thing through online. Because you can ask questions. Have discussions. Be pushed.
Flipped classrooms, where the most passive part of the class, listening to the lecture, is done online, and the most active part, doing homework, writing, etc, is done in class increases engagement when you most need it.
College, (community college included) more than any previous education, is about engagement with complex ideas. Trying to imagine learning as a resource to be consumed, as these legislators are doing, suggests they've never really learned anything. Being told what's true isn't good enough.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 06 2015, @06:44PM
I've done a fuckton of online classes, and I always assumed that they were for people who were more interested in jumping through the hoop and ticking off another requirement rather than actually giving a damn about retaining the material "learned." I actually took calc I online, and while I learned the concepts, I Mapled [wikipedia.org] away most of the tedium (which was informative in its own right, because I had to know the algorithms to write worksheets that solved the various problems).
Of course they almost always have a threaded discussion component which is worth peanuts compared to the assignments and exams to make it kinda sorta interactive.
Finally, and we all know this, college is for adults. Adults who have the discipline to roll out of bed when they have to, bathe when they have to, and do homework when they have to. If they lack the discipline to follow through with online classes, then they should show up to class physically. If they have the opportunity to do both but squander it, then they deserve to flip burgers for life. Classes are tedious and potentially frustrating but far less stressful than the average day in Somalia.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 06 2015, @06:45PM
In the old days, cause I'm old, believe it or not they used to assign readings and assume we actually read the book when they lectured. Like in the 80s and 90s.
The lectures were pretty much demonstrations. I remember not paying much attention in calculus because if you understood the chapter and did the assignment, there wasn't really any point in showing up for the lecture. And the TA led discussion sections were for people who couldn't figure out the book, then couldn't figure out the lecture, then finally could try a 3rd time with the non-english speaking TA. Thankfully multivariate calculus works just the same in Czechoslovakia as here in patriot-land. A couple times I did in fact get confused and require the services of the prof lecture and even the TA once. But most of the time it was like the description of going to work in "office space" just kinda space out and stare into space for an hour or two at a time.
A lot of my uni classes were like that. Everyone hated our quant chemical analysis prof because he was about 99 and sometimes hard to understand (although a really nice guy) and he didn't work out of a book because all the books sucked or so he more or less said. I had a RF network EE class like that too. Life's hard when you can't just learn out of a book and instead have to watch some dude scribble on a whiteboard for an hour at a time.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 06 2015, @07:00PM
If the texts were written well enough, then we wouldn't need professors to explain their contents to us. And there are plenty of texts that are written poorly and cryptically with inadequate demonstrations of how to solve problems, or they problems that are so radically different that what was demonstrated.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 07 2015, @12:44AM
The field progresses and make books obsolete. And American authors in too many cases gets paid by the line and cater to less engaged students and it shows.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday May 07 2015, @12:59AM
No, you're retarded. That kind of thing doesn't happen in Newton-tier maths. Chances are that it's the socially retarded academics proofing those ineffective books. The Folks who proof texts do so because they can't get jobs in the real world working with common sense.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:05AM
And a surprising number of those text books were written by the guy teaching the class, (or the guy to whom the teaching assistant reports).
Even in smaller universities, every professor seemed to have a book they wrote and which they coerce you into buying.
But at least you had SOMETHING in hand. Its a bitch trying to review an on-line lecture. I was all I could do listen the first time.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday May 07 2015, @03:42PM
I graduated from Penn State in 2012, and I never really saw any of that. There was one case where a prof had given his own book as an optional suggestion...and being an idiot freshman I bought it anyway. Otherwise what I kept hearing from my professors was: "I wanted to not have a single required textbook for this class and just use online resources, but the administrators demanded I assign one. It might make a nice reference, but you don't need to buy it, and if you already did you might want to go return it. I made sure there were a few copies available on reserve in the library too if you need them."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:54PM
Perhaps there has been some ethics changes over the years since I was in college.
The Publish or Perish mantra of the 60s and 70s allowed professors a unique opportunity to write text books, and double dip.
Then course committee of that department designate that book as the official textbook for the class. And of course, all the other instructors in the department got in line and scratched each other's backs, accepting each others books as the course requirement for each specific course.
You didn't even need to have some big publisher step up and promote the book. With three sections of BasketWeaving-101 being offered each semester, sales were pretty much assured.
Too many copies in the Used Book Exchange? Time for a second edition.
Bonus points if a course Workbook (consumable one time use with tear-out-and-hand-them-in quizzes) can accompany the Text Book.
It was a sweet racket. And as a teaching assistant at the time, I had to marvel at the sheer audacity of the scheme.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @06:49PM
Trying to imagine learning as a resource to be consumed, as these legislators are doing, suggests they've never really learned anything.
Imagine that.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:20PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:37PM
But if you combine real and imaginary learning, things get really complex!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:51PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves