It's a religious debate to a certain extent, except that there is considerable research and evidence to back up the arguments on both sides.
What I've been trying to say, really, is that online design education can work perfectly well, albeit a different flavour. To say it's impossible to teach design online is to place yourself in the same basket as people who said the retail experience online would never replace the physical experience. Amazon.com is different, usually better and occasionally worse that going into a book store. I like books (as you'll all know by now) and I love going into a bookstore, but there are also real advantages to browsing and shopping online, such as other people's opinions. Whilst online doesn't/can't/shouldn't set out to replace studio, studio isn't the only way to teach. You lose some things, but gain others. I've yet to hear a good argument and evidence to back up the claim that crits can't be done online because my experience is that they work very well indeed. My guess is that most people who dismiss online education haven't had any or a very good experience of it. There has been a lot of crap put out there %u2013 throwing a wiki online and telling the students to fill it isn't any kind of education much. But a well structured, aligned and properly managed online course can be excellent, just as a sloppily structure studio environment can be awful. The point about scaling and dollars is slightly misunderstood. Online teaching requires just as much, if not more, time and effort from the teachers and it costs the same to the institution. My point is about the longtail/niche aspect of that, which for bricks and mortar institutions is governed and limited by physical location and the numbers of interested students there. There has been an enormous loss of diversity in education because of this (and a Cambrian explosion of MBAs), which is a shame. I'd like to see institutions re-thinking what education is and how it is structured much more radically than they currently are. If and when Omnium runs another global project, I'd love to invite any interested folk on this list to take part as guests. One of the big advantages of online courses is the ability to tap into experts all over the world and the likes of Stefan Sagmeister and Steven Heller have been guests on our projects with great success (and thrilling for the students involved). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37349 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
