Keeping a distance from distance learning
Today's New York Times is just over the moon about the alleged success of online university lectures, whose popularity seems to be approaching the stratosphere previously reached only by folks selling dog food on the web. Sometime when it's not right before the holiday I'm going to post my own thoughts on this, but for now, some notes:
(1) A few emails to an MIT prof aren't all that significant a metric--as the ghost of DotComGuy said in Web of Dreams, "Post it and they will come." I'm curious as to why the article doesn't include such stats as number of downloads or--perhaps more significantly--the number of downloads outside the mit.edu domain and whether there's a scale-free drop beyond the most popular links. The same goes more generally for Apple's iTunesU.
(2) Speaking of iTunesU, a quick glance at the top downloads highlights an interesting trend: a number of 'em are from celebrity lecturers, such as Steve Jobs, David Lynch, Al Gore, Michael Dell and Dan Rather. Also right up there: a KQED radio show and a performance by the Duke Chapel Choir. All of which proves the success of professorial lectures, um, how exactly?
(3) The prof featured in the article spent "25 hours preparing each new lecture," and that's *with* the assistance of an MIT tech department to handle such things as lighting and professional-quality video. That's wonderful, but is it scalable?
(4) Remember, video killed the vaudeville star. Acts captured on film lost the market for real-world repetition over time and place--unless, y'know, they became ice capades or big budget musicals. It's great that folks can get these lectures on the web, but how will students in class three years from now feel about paying 35 grand a year for repeats of lectures that were online for free back when they were in high school?
I've been thinking about questions like this for a while now, which is one reason why last semester I decided to toss out all my old lecture notes. On which, more later . . .
LETTER TO THE EDITORS UPDATE:
The Times has a comment thread on this article that holds some items of interest.
Most of the comments are of the "learning is wonderful and I love this!" strand. They're nice words, but such well-meant comments are ultimately as useful for media strategy as eulogies are for understanding the dead--let's face it, people said lots of nice things about Mr. Wizard, but there's a reason you never saw him on prime time network TV.
What strikes me as on target: the comments about distinctions in the online vs. real-world media environments. More later on the theory; here are a few key observations from the thread:
(1) A few emails to an MIT prof aren't all that significant a metric--as the ghost of DotComGuy said in Web of Dreams, "Post it and they will come." I'm curious as to why the article doesn't include such stats as number of downloads or--perhaps more significantly--the number of downloads outside the mit.edu domain and whether there's a scale-free drop beyond the most popular links. The same goes more generally for Apple's iTunesU.
(2) Speaking of iTunesU, a quick glance at the top downloads highlights an interesting trend: a number of 'em are from celebrity lecturers, such as Steve Jobs, David Lynch, Al Gore, Michael Dell and Dan Rather. Also right up there: a KQED radio show and a performance by the Duke Chapel Choir. All of which proves the success of professorial lectures, um, how exactly?
(3) The prof featured in the article spent "25 hours preparing each new lecture," and that's *with* the assistance of an MIT tech department to handle such things as lighting and professional-quality video. That's wonderful, but is it scalable?
(4) Remember, video killed the vaudeville star. Acts captured on film lost the market for real-world repetition over time and place--unless, y'know, they became ice capades or big budget musicals. It's great that folks can get these lectures on the web, but how will students in class three years from now feel about paying 35 grand a year for repeats of lectures that were online for free back when they were in high school?
I've been thinking about questions like this for a while now, which is one reason why last semester I decided to toss out all my old lecture notes. On which, more later . . .
LETTER TO THE EDITORS UPDATE:
The Times has a comment thread on this article that holds some items of interest.
Most of the comments are of the "learning is wonderful and I love this!" strand. They're nice words, but such well-meant comments are ultimately as useful for media strategy as eulogies are for understanding the dead--let's face it, people said lots of nice things about Mr. Wizard, but there's a reason you never saw him on prime time network TV.
What strikes me as on target: the comments about distinctions in the online vs. real-world media environments. More later on the theory; here are a few key observations from the thread:
- On-line sources can carry much of the information load, the way assigned texts do/did but more pointedly selected and organized to meet the objective of the specific class, leaving actual class time free for the more more important exchange, (discussion/debate, etc.), between teacher and student and among students . . .
- The live interaction of students with professors in the classroom or laboratory is the learning in a course.
- As a physics major at MIT, I have to point out that Prof. Lewin's lectures are only enjoyed by non-physics-majors at the institute- we can't stand it. My god, the man spun a speaker in a GRADUATE LEVEL SEMINAR to show the doppler effect. Its nauseating.
Also, shame on you for comparing him to Feynman. Feynman is the physicist's physicist, who happened to be great at popularization but also at teaching upper-level physics (see the Feynman Lectures). Lewin is the non-physicist's window into the wonder of physics, maybe, but my god is it awful to take an upper-level class from him.
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