Online Education

I am so overwhelmed this week.  My head is a jumble of thoughts and assignments and deadlines.  All interconnected, but the lines still need to be drawn out more clearly.  We start by asking what is the future of online education and whether schools should be required to offer online Education?

I personally attest to the positive impact online education has had on me.  I'm currently working toward an online Master degree with Central Michigan University - from my home location in southern California - at whatever time I can squeeze in between my responsibilities as a mom to three wonderful but extremely busy kids.  I'm loving the convenience of my schedule/studies and the anticipated completion - without compromising my family life.

I'm also concurrently enrolled in a MOOC with Professor Denise Comer from Duke University English Composition:  Achieving Expertise.  I'm using this class as a professional development course for myself as it covers the same topics that I teach.  Our textbook says we cannot be good writers if we are not good readers.  I don't think we can be good teachers if we are not good students either.  I'm studying with an exceptional instructor - who has more subject matter expertise and more teaching experience than I do.

I find the course content appealing and the writing prompts exceptionally clever.  When I signed up for the MOOC I knew I was not going to be able to finish the coursework, I was only interested in reading/viewing the instructional materials.  So far, I've learned a lot from Professor Denise and I'm enjoying and benefitting from the class.

The downside to MOOCs?  I found a nice reply from a past participant of the same course John Warner:  I'm Failing my MOOC.   He too is an instructor of English and enrolled in the class as a professional development course.  But he feel ill!  And although he agrees the content was at par if not superior to traditional classes, he writes "Without sufficient incentive to catch up in my MOOC, one hiccup was enough to put me off track."  He goes on to write, "At the same time, for me, it reinforces that the content by itself is a very limited part of what matters in terms of teaching and learning. This feeling is perhaps biased by my discipline (writing/literature) and relatively small courses (20 students max), but as good as Prof. Comer’s content is, and as engaging and nice as she appears to be on screen, she and I don’t have a relationship, and when it comes to learning, relationships matter."

Relationship or not...the fact that free, accessible, high quality content is out there for anyone's taking is - in my mind - true democratization of education.  Bring your own incentive!