“If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.” — Kurt Lewin
Many times over on the forum, we're asked to compare the different experiences of what it's like to take courses online from different schools. But usually there aren't a whole lot of differences. Most schools deliver courses using something called a "learning management system", or LMS, which basically means a web site that keeps track of who is enrolled in which courses, and provides a standard set of features to each course, things like a place to put documents like the course syllabus and other handouts, a way to link to external resources like audio files and videos, and a place to have bulletin board style class discussion where only those in the class can participate or see.
Most schools that offer distance learning these days do so through an LMS like this. A.T. Still University does, as did all of the other schools that I've attended online. There are a very few exceptions, schools that offer independent study or correspondence courses, but they typically are institutions that started that way before the rise of the popular Internet, and are simply still doing things the old way.
That's why I thought it was interesting to read recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education that Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey is adding something new. TESC serves a lot of American military personnel who are trying to earn a degree even while deployed overseas, and they found that their students weren't always able to keep up with their coursework not because of a lack of time, but because they did not have reliable Internet connectivity. TESC has responded to this by developing special courses that are sent to students on a flash drive, those little storage devices like the one shown here. The flash drive contains all the course materials, and also additional tools like media players, and even a free office suite, a set of tools called OpenOffice which is almost exactly like Microsoft Office except for being free.
The idea is that the student, armed solely with this flash drive, has everything he or she needs to learn what they need to know to pass the all-important final exam. The student doens't even need to have his or her own computer, since everything necessary is on the flash drive, the student can take the drive from one computer to the next, doing work whenever an opportunity arises.
At the end of the Chronicle article, I thought it was interesting that some commentators thought that this is a step backwards. They said that a course on a flash drive is no different then an old fashioned pre-Internet correspondence course. And to some extent that's true, but I don't see that as a bad thing. The lesson of the last few decades is that higher education has finally realized that different students have different levels of access when it comes to technology and time, and that as the education experts, we ought to be able to develop curricula that can help student learn what they need to know in many different circumstances, not just an old fashioned classroom. Now, some may ask, what about academic quality? But these
students must pass the same final exam that students preparing in other
ways must pass in order to get credit. The bottom line is whether or
not the student can demonstrate mastery of the material. If so, then
credit is given, no matter how the student learned that material. To me, that makes this high tech correspondence course a giant leap in the right direction, not the wrong one.
As a final thought, TESC was initially inspired to develop these courses because they wanted to find a better system for military personnel. As an educator with a special interest in the developing world, however, when I saw what they had done my first thought was that it would be very well suited for those parts of the world where people have access to computers and the Internet, but only intermittently, like through telecenters and cybercafes. American institutions aren't always very good at thinking internationally, especially when it comes to the developing world, but I hope TESC and schools like it are considering this gigantic opportunity.
Next up, meet Dr. Roxanne Shanté.