re: Instructors in Online Courses: Too Much Power? Toto Pulls Back the Curtain.

michaelp — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:08:01 GMT

Hi Susan, I enjoyed this article!

One thing I see that leads to <em>Rigidities of the “shell”:</em>and <em>No Departmental Support:</em> is the lack of investment in the online campus.

What I mean is that many institutions will spend 10s-100s of millions tailoring a new building or campus to meet teaching/learning needs, while buying an off-the-shelf LMS and funding it at a minimum rate.

This I think leads to viewing IT resources as a scarcity, to be protected from students and faculty...the resources often are seen as a cost to be reduced rather than a service that can lead to increased student learning.

Since the resources are in artificially short supply, minimal services are provided, which leads to rigidity and limitations being the accepted norm.

A few folks (the Open University of the UK comes to mind:-) see their VLE as a real virtual campus worth spending reasonalbe amount to get right. UMass is close behind and I think UOP is going to start getting with it soon.

Of course these decisions aer not made at student, faculty, or even administrative staff levels, the decision that buildings are worth orders of magnitdues more than VLEs is made by Chancellor's and Legislators, and I'm afraid that until they hear it in DC, Albany, Sacremento, etc. we will be left here, fighting over a terabyte here and an OC3 there:-).

When someone gives me a few E25ks for foundation and $500,000 to spend on their VLE, I'll know it is at least as important to the institutional mission as our main parking lot. The main point is made by how ths sounds like unheard of funds for the people building your VLE, while they would cover only a few days work for the folks putting your new sidewalk...