Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Online Colleges: A Lack of Innovation

David Diaz

In “Online Programs: Profits are There, Technological Innovation Is Not” by Marc Parry, online college programs are critiqued as being profit earning but not necessarily creative. Parry says that all online studies are either making money or breaking even. He also says that the pedagogical model, or the model used to teach students, hasn’t been changed over the last ten years. However, Parry does not give any reasons why these methods are not the best. In other words, what does an online program lack?

Parry presents many facts about the increasingly popular online college programs. He begins by saying that these programs revolve around text, making it no different than an ordinary class that is based upon a textbook. Next, Parry goes into the financial aspect of online colleges. He says that according to recent studies all for profit colleges have made profit, and nonprofit colleges have either broken even or made profit. Parry concludes by implying that the profit and incentive exist for online programs, but the innovation of the programs is lacking.

Traditionally school is based upon a teacher or lecturing a class on a specific topic from a textbook. Students may use the textbook as a reference for learning the material. Students’ performance is determined by a test. However, this proves to be an inefficient system, as students may not retain information past a test. Online colleges have a unique opportunity to create an extremely innovative and effective new way of teaching by means of modern technology. Some would argue that it is the responsibility of an online program to offer that type of innovation since it cannot offer a teacher or classmates. Although, most online colleges resort to giving students various texts and testing them as opposed to doing anything innovative. If anything online programs have devolved by removing the teacher and the class. The technology exists and the incentive for a strong online program exists, there is no reason for an online program to adapt a variation of a pedagogical model that has proven to be ineffective in the classroom when such an opportunity for innovation exists.

Parry presents various facts about the online college system. Most interestingly, Parry points out that all online programs studied have either made profit or broken even. Parry, however, does not go into detail about the lack of innovation in the pedagogical techniques used by online programs. Essentially online programs give students text and test them. This is a shame considering the opportunity that an online program has to invent new pedagogical methods by using the internet, video, pictures, computer programs, and any number of resources that a computer provides.

1 comment:

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