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posted by janrinok on Wednesday May 06 2015, @06:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

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 The still-unpublished paper, entitled Online Course-taking and Student Outcomes in California Community Colleges, was presented on April 18, 2015, at the American Educational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.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:04AM

    by anubi (2828) on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:04AM (#179787) Journal

    I would like to pick a bone with this statement and give the Community College system some fodder to fight back with...

    [...]Community colleges [educate 45 percent of the nation's undergraduates] and [that sector] is under fire for low graduation rates.

    I have taken more hours of courses at my local community college than I did at University.

    I was not after a degree at all... I wanted knowledge. I wanted to re-take all that stuff that did not go in straight at University, things that I was not required to take, and things that had significantly changed.

    I did EE in University, however I went back to my CC to take all the math again - I mean ALL of it. Especially everything I could find on statistics and numerical techniques, which was not required for my Uni degree. I also took everything I could find in CompSci, refrigeration, auto mechanics, business, even stuff like counseling and teaching, to try to round myself out. All in all, I have taken about four times the credit hours required for a degree in any of it. I have an excellent transcript - but its only the stuff I wanted this time. The main thing I wanted to do was be in contact with the professors at the CC, many of whom had very advanced degrees, and I could discuss things with them - things that I could discuss with very, very, very few people.

    When one has been on the job a few years, he becomes painfully aware of where the holes in his education are. I can usually find specialized stuff on the web. My problem was more foundational in nature, like a lack of being able to program in object oriented languages, such as C++. When I went EE back in the 60's, I learned FORTRAN and COBOL, not C, C++, Perl, CGI, and stuff like computer security, data structures, file structures, etc. I also wanted to study more on refrigeration and auto mechanics because I wanted to not only be able to diagnose my own car, but also be able to repurpose the automotive and refrigeration technologies for other things I work on.

    The thermodynamics courses I took at University gave me quite precise methods of calculating heat transfer, however the trade courses I took at CC gave me a lot clearer insight on how to design things that could be made with today's off-the-shelf parts. Same with my designing in sensors developed for the automobile and farming industry into my robotic stuff. Off-the-shelf car parts are one helluva lot cheaper than a specially fabricated gidget - and often much better made too.

    I am not through yet. I still want to take courses in machining and welding.

    A *lot* of us go back to our Community Colleges - not for a degree - but for wisdom and a forum for knowledge exchange.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday May 07 2015, @11:01AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday May 07 2015, @11:01AM (#179843) Homepage Journal

    "Community Colleges ... [are] under fire for low graduation rates"

    Great, so we want them to drop their standards and pass people who don't learn the material? Because that's what you'll get, if you pressure them to raise their graduation rates. Scratch the surface here, and you find that the community colleges are being pressured to educate increasing numbers of people who lack basic foundational knowledge, and in many cases never learned how to learn, because they are "graduates" of a failed educational system. How about we applaud the low graduation rates as a sign that they haven't compromised on quality?

    Anyhow, online courses are a fad that keeps coming back and just won't die. I had the, um, privilege of taking an "online course" back in the late 1970s (via video conferencing): very modern, and absolutely useless. The technology has changed, the problems haven. The thing is: people who are able to learn on their own can do so from a book, from a website, or from an online course - where the information flow is all one-way, and the student brings their own motivation.

    Most people, however, need interaction. They need to be able to ask questions (or the teacher needs to recognize that befuddled look) and get individual help with the concepts.. It's also a lot more motivating to sit in a classroom with other students and a (good) instructor. Sitting in front of your computer, it's all too easy to switch over to Facebook, or Twitter, or SoylentNews...

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2015, @04:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2015, @04:50PM (#179979)

      Relax. The point is that many students of community colleges don't want nor need to get a degree from them. Most go for transfer credits. Some simply to learn. Others for enrichment. None of those groups, even with 4.0 in every class will be considered 'graduated' if they never bother to get a degree.