Christopher Smith wrote:
On Tue Mar 30, at TuesdayMar 30 9:30 PM, John Howell wrote:
And just this afternoon I learned from the prof. who's been teaching
Apprec for many years that he's using a totally on-line course. It's
from a company that handles everything on line, there's no textbook,
and the students just buy two (expensive!) CDs, register on line, and
everything including tests is there, not on my computer at all. As it
happens he's meeting with people from that company tomorrow, and I'm
going to talk with them.
I may not agree with the educational approach, the kinds of
assignments and tests they have, and so on (although I'm not
pre-judging them), but if it'll let me kick-start a new class instead
of forcing me to re-invent the wheel, I'll probably sign on. I can
always pull out at a later time.
My college is pushing the on-line thing very heavily, and I (and other
colleagues) are resisting.
On the plus side, you can put listening lists online (yay!) and
assignments, so the students have NO excuse for not knowing what to do.
Presently, we have to assign library listening, or we have one teacher
who (illegally) loads the students' iPods from his office computer with
the listening lists. Having all the listening from one source, with the
licenses paid, is a real advantage.
On the con side, students are trying to take advantage of online
materials being available to skip classes entirely. Some students have
insisted that our class notes be made available online, or given to them
electronically by email or in hard copy, as if it is their right (yes,
we had a student try to assert that) to read our own personal class
notes and thus make up for not coming to class. The times that teachers
are being asked to be online for chat discussions is prohibitively
time-intensive, and of course it is WAY slower to type than to speak. I
think music may be one of the last subjects that is taught more
effectively in person. This assertion makes me fairly unpopular among
the college administration.
Keep fighting the good fight, Christopher.
It's amazing but more and more so-called educational
professionals that are unfortunately in charge of higher
education (and all education in the U.S.) are equating
information with knowledge, and so they figure that if the
information is made available on-line, the knowledge will
obviously flow as well.
Nothing replaces face-to-face discussion and lecture, where
the student can actually ask questions and discuss things
with a real-live person.
Education is so much more than information hand-off but that
seems to be getting lost in the race to cram the most
information into the shortest amount of time.
Information is *not* knowledge!
--
David H. Bailey
[email protected]
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