The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- October 29, 1998
Online Courses Reach Students
Beyond a University's Walls
By ROBERT CWIKLIK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
We've heard it all before: The Internet is going to revolutionize
education. Schools will become obsolete. Campuses will disappear.
All that may happen. Someday. But for now, online education is
primarily a way for universities to reach beyond their walls -- to
working people and others who can't come to class in person.
The appeal of such courses is obvious. But how do they work? And will
students really feel short-changed by them, as critics claim? To find
out, we sat in, figuratively, on Rena Down's screenwriting class at
New York's New School for Social Research -- in which students and
teachers interact almost exclusively through the printed word on the
university's Web site.
Ms. Down's 14 students this semester include a "stay-at-home mom" and
several working people. While a couple of them live in New York City,
most are from out of town -- way out -- logging on from such places as
Florida, rural Texas, North Carolina and even Hawaii. Ms. Down, who
has written several TV movies and worked as a producer for TV dramas,
benefits as well from the long-distance access, checking into class
from her home in Northampton, Mass.
Classless Society
New School's online program -- called Distance Instruction for Adult
Learning, or Dial (www.dialnsa.edu) -- offers more than 300 courses
over the academic year, and is designed to let students address almost
all their needs online, from registration to taking final exams.
Students fill out an online form to sign up for courses and submit a
credit-card number to pay fees -- $1,710 for the screenwriting class,
or $1,365 without course credits. Then students are assigned user
names and passwords that admit them to the main "campus" page, which
has links to their courses.
Each course also has a main page, which includes a link to an online
course guide. The guide for Ms. Down's class lists required books,
which can be ordered online at the Dial site, and films that students
must rent on video and watch at home. There's also a link to
"handouts" -- documents for the student to print out using a
typesetting program called Envoy, also provided on the site.
There are no "classes," in the sense that people get together at a
specific time and discuss assignments. Instead, Dial courses are
similar in design to online discussion groups. The teacher launches a
discussion -- or "item" in Dial parlance -- typically by posting a
lesson that includes a writing assignment. Over the ensuing hours and
days, students log on, read the lesson, complete the assignment and
post the results to the item, where they appear in order of
submission.
Generally, Ms. Down posts new assignments on Fridays. After students
post their completed work, she tries to respond to it as quickly as
possible with her comments. Students can also post comments on each
other's work.
Ms. Down then starts the ball rolling again with new lessons and
assignments, or a new item. As a final project, students must post a
detailed outline of an original screenplay.
The first assignment was to identify the protagonist, the plot and the
theme for the assigned movie, "Witness." The responses correctly
identified Harrison Ford's character as the protagonist, but one
student wondered whether there couldn't be a film made about the young
boy, Samuel, who is the witness of the title.
"It's unlikely that Samuel could be the protagonist of anything,
except in his fantasy life," Ms. Down replied. "The protagonist must
take action -- DO something to get what he wants. Samuel is too
young."
Typing Too Loud
Ms. Down's students appeared to find the setup relatively
straightforward. But when online-adjustment problems flared up, help
was quickly forthcoming. After one student posted a lengthy
introduction of herself WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS, another
student gently advised her that using all upper-case characters online
"is usually interpreted as 'yelling.' "
"Sorry for yelling," she replied, lowering the volume, "but I guess
it's from having 3 kids."
But Ms. Down finds that teaching loses something in the translation.
She says one of the things she misses most in the online format is the
ability to freeze the tape of a film to illustrate some concept --
say, the difference between a shot and a scene -- but she compensates
by asking students to perform the exercise at home. She also regrets
the absence of "body language to give me clues" about things students
are struggling with.
Some even more basic information gets lost. Ms. Down is so physically
isolated from her class, she isn't even sure of the gender of her two
Asian students, whose transliterated names would doubtless leave other
Westerners equally puzzled.
"I think one is female," she says.
Still, she says online hardly equates with out of touch. "There are
cues," such as the tone of a student's posting, she says. "You very
quickly see the ones who need a lot of attention."
In fact, online courses cater to students' idiosyncrasies to a degree
perhaps unmatched by any other format. "I can log on at any time of
day or night," says Wilhemina A. Paulin, via e-mail.
Ms. Paulin, a 47-year-old graduate student in New School's
media-studies department who is in her third semester on Dial and
attends the screenwriting class from her Philadelphia home, says, "I
can just roll out of bed and get on the computer with just a robe on."
'Pressurized' Semesters
Unfortunately, asynchronous lessons also tend to magnify a certain
well-known frailty of collegiate life: procrastination. Confronted
with so much freedom to schedule their visits to class and completion
of assignments, some students tend to do what comes naturally: put
things off until tomorrow, and tomorrow.
"It's a problem," says Stephen Anspacher, New School's director of
distance learning. At one time, he says, students were so slow to log
on to their classes, it was a challenge even getting the Dial semester
truly started.
But he says the school has since taken steps that have helped. For one
thing, he says Dial semesters have been "pressurized" -- shortened to
nine weeks, compared with 14 weeks for classroom courses, to instill a
sense of urgency about completing assignments.
In addition, "we stay after people," he says. If students aren't
posting assignments, "we call them up, we send them mail, telegrams."
While procrastination may be more of a nuisance for online classes, it
doesn't appear to be fatal. Mr. Anspacher says Dial's rate of
incompletes -- students failing to finish required work by semester's
end -- is lower than the rate for New School's on-campus classes. He
also says Dial registrants, compared with their in-house counterparts,
perform "as well, or better" in their courses.
As for those who say online classes short-change personal
relationships, Wendy Kinal, a 22-year-old screenwriting student, isn't
so sure. Ms. Kinal, who teaches children's theater in Tallahassee,
Fla., says via e-mail that online anonymity gives students "a security
blanket," freeing them to express things they might otherwise keep to
themselves. In another class, on depression, she says she was
astonished how much students opened up in their postings.
"I've learned more about my classmates than I think that I would have
face to face," she says.
_________________________________________________________________
Click Here to Learn
Where to go for some online classes and accreditation information.
Online Learning
* LifeLongLearning
Searchable guide to accredited distance-learning programs.
www.lifelonglearning.com
* California Virtual University
Clearinghouse for online courses available from 95 colleges and
universities in the state.
www.california.edu
* Western Governors University
Online courses from 25 institutions, primarily in Western states,
toward associate of arts and applied-sciences degrees.
www.wgu.edu
* Oxford University
The British institution plans to offer, starting next year, online
courses leading to graduate degrees in medicine and computer
sciences.
www.conted.ox.ac.uk
* Stanford Online
Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., now offers an online
program leading to a master's in electrical engineering.
stanford-online.stanford.edu
* University of Phoenix
For-profit university operated by Apollo Group Inc., of Phoenix,
that offers online degree programs, mainly in business-related
subjects.
www.uophx.edu/online
* Concord University School of Law
The first online law school is run for-profit by Washington Post
Co.'s Kaplan standardized-test coaching unit. Graduates can take
bar exam in California only, since the school isn't yet accredited
by state or national bar associations.
concord.kaplan.edu
Accreditation
* U.S. Department of Education
Site lists the 80 or so DOE-recognized accrediting agencies. If
your course is offered by an institution that's accredited by an
agency on this list or CHEA's (see below), that's considered a
basic assurance of quality. But accreditation by agencies not on
either list may be needed for programs leading to professional
licensure. Check state licensing authorities.
www.IFAP.ed.gov/csb_html/agency.htm
* Council for Higher Education Accreditation
Nonprofit group of colleges and universities. Site lists most
recognized accrediting agencies.
chea.org
* Distance Education and Training Council
Accrediting agency, recognized by DOE and CHEA, for online
programs.
www.detc.org
Copyright © 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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