http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/blogs/third-degree/out-of-the-clouds-20120709-21reb.html
Out of the clouds
July 9, 2012
That’s what Third Degree saw after reading Deakin University’s new strategic plan, LIVE the Future.
The plan is based around ‘‘cloud learning’’, the term embraced by Deakin for online study.
Third Degree has read many university strategic plans, but Deakin’s wins the prize for empty words.
Take the following: ‘‘Deakin University offers you a borderless and personalised relationship, creating the power and opportunities to live the future in a new world.’’
Once you cut through the marketing jargon, the strategy boils down to an increased emphasis on online education.
Deakin vice-chancellor Jane den Hollander justifies the move to the ‘‘digital frontier’’ this way.
‘‘Just in the past 12 months, some of the world’s most highly regarded educational institutions have embraced digital opportunities to offer course content online and have established new ventures to attract global learning communities,’’ she says.
Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are elite universities, and they do offer free online courses to anyone around the world. But they have been doing so for much longer than 12 months. And Stanford and MIT have not created online subjects as an alternative to face-to-face ones.
The universities have done this so people around the world can get a taste of the subjects at these top institutions.
Students doing the free courses do not get a Stanford or MIT degree. To do that, they must pass rigorous admissions tests and front up to the universities. They also have to pay fees.
MIT came up with the idea of offering subjects online in 1999 and started the free rollout in 2002. MIT OpenCourseWare began as a pilot program with 50 subjects.
Now, more than 2000 online subjects are offered free. MIT estimates that 100 million people have visited OpenCourseWare and the institution hopes that over the next decade it will reach a billion people through its free online offerings. The institution has also teamed up with Harvard to put free subjects online.
Why did MIT decide to do this?
It was partly to undercut low-rent institutions that were making students pay for online subjects. MIT wanted to come up with a new model for making subjects available online so anyone could access them.
Stanford University has similar goals. In 2008, the university launched Stanford Engineering Everywhere, which includes free video-based courses and materials.
Associate professor of computer science Andrew Ng summed up the reason for offering the engineering subjects. ‘‘Both in the United States and elsewhere, many people simply do not have access to a high-quality education,’’ he said.
‘‘By putting out this initial set of courses, we hope to teach some of the latest computing technologies to anyone who wants to learn it — for free.’’
In March, the university put up more free subjects online through start-up company Coursera, which was created by Professor Ng and a colleague. Stanford also pioneered iTunes U. After all, the university is situated in Silicon Valley.
One Deakin academic has got her students to take a free Stanford subject through Coursera as part of their Deakin studies. The university’s strategy encourages academics to look online for ‘‘excellent external resources available from around the world’’.
Do students want to pay HECS for Deakin subjects that incorporate free content from other universities?
Do students want to do a lot of their study online?
Stanford University is still debating the merits of online education for its own students. At its senate meeting in April (the minutes are available on Stanford’s website), Andrea Goldsmith, a professor of electrical engineering, said online courses may be perfect for some classes.
‘‘But I worry about this being the new model, in the same way that when PowerPoint came along people said all lectures should be in PowerPoint, and they shouldn’t,’’ she said. ‘‘What is this technology appropriate for? I think that’s an important question to ask.’’
The university’s provost, John Etchemendy, told the senate meeting that ‘‘on-campus students get lots of benefits over and above what the online students get’’.
On-campus students get real tests, for example, instead of automated ones online.
Last week, the director of the Centre for International Higher Education at Boston College, Philip G. Altbach, said it is ‘‘highly debatable’’ that the internet will change the nature of university education, despite people arguing that it will.
‘‘For the top-tier universities, their traditional missions and the campus-based undergraduate experience is unlikely to change much,’’ he writes.
‘‘Indeed, based on the increased competition for admission to top institutions and the willingness of the public to pay increasing tuition charges, it is clear that the demand for high-end traditional higher education remains quite strong.’’
Dr Altbach says research universities, in particular, will want to protect their brand from vocational online institutions.
‘‘How will the public see a prestigious university entering a market long dominated by the University of Phoenix and other providers concerned exclusively with earning money and providing highly targeted vocational certification?’’
coursera.org/ (Subjects from Stanford, Princeton, Michigan and Pennsylvania universities)
facultysenate.stanford.edu/2011_2012/minutes/04_19_12_SenD6619.pdf
(The minutes include a fascinating report and discussion on online education)
edxonline.org/ (Harvard and MIT venture)
