Post by ShivaTD on Sept 2, 2013 1:57:54 GMT
I've been a college trained online course developer and when I look at formal education today, and the amount of money we spend on it, I question why we can't provide most of our education online.
Virtually nothing changes in K-12 education over the years and even many college courses remain virtually unchanged over time. Any changes are typically minor updates. With computer technology today we can actually provide far superior delivery of education which accommodates the different learning styles that people have. We can use multiple routes of delivering the information to the student.
For example some people are very good at learning from written text and we could teach about the American Civil War just like it's typically been "delivered" to students in a text version. Others are not so good at learning from reading text and we could use the History Channel's Civil War series so that the student could watch a documentary that covers the same information.
Yes, it does cost money to develop online course instruction that could be anywhere from 40 to 200 hours of course development for every hour of "delivery" of the course instruction but that is not a lot considering millions of people are learning the same thing. We could even spend 1000 hours for every hour of course delivery and still be billions of dollars ahead. Whatever the time required in the end we could have easily maintainable courses that can be updated if/as required over time.
Basically we can take perhaps 90% of education out of "brick and mortar" delivery and provide it at virtually no cost to the student once developed.
There are only two problems with the proposition. First of all is that online delivery removes the social interactions that brick and mortar education provides. Next is the fact that it also eliminates the "baby-sitting" function of schools for children. Those are not insurmountable obstacles IMHO and, if nothing else, this could be applied to college education where we're already seeing over-priced online college courses being offered today.
Virtually nothing changes in K-12 education over the years and even many college courses remain virtually unchanged over time. Any changes are typically minor updates. With computer technology today we can actually provide far superior delivery of education which accommodates the different learning styles that people have. We can use multiple routes of delivering the information to the student.
For example some people are very good at learning from written text and we could teach about the American Civil War just like it's typically been "delivered" to students in a text version. Others are not so good at learning from reading text and we could use the History Channel's Civil War series so that the student could watch a documentary that covers the same information.
Yes, it does cost money to develop online course instruction that could be anywhere from 40 to 200 hours of course development for every hour of "delivery" of the course instruction but that is not a lot considering millions of people are learning the same thing. We could even spend 1000 hours for every hour of course delivery and still be billions of dollars ahead. Whatever the time required in the end we could have easily maintainable courses that can be updated if/as required over time.
Basically we can take perhaps 90% of education out of "brick and mortar" delivery and provide it at virtually no cost to the student once developed.
There are only two problems with the proposition. First of all is that online delivery removes the social interactions that brick and mortar education provides. Next is the fact that it also eliminates the "baby-sitting" function of schools for children. Those are not insurmountable obstacles IMHO and, if nothing else, this could be applied to college education where we're already seeing over-priced online college courses being offered today.
