4 ms·

This article feels intellectually lazy. This passage particularly bothered me: "A five-year study, issued in 2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in Washingt

by qeorge 14y ago

This article feels intellectually lazy. This passage particularly bothered me: "A five-year study, issued in 2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in Washington State community and technical colleges. It found that those who took higher proportions of online courses were less likely to earn degrees or transfer to four-year colleges. The reasons for such failures are well known. Many students, for example, show up at college (or junior college) unprepared to learn, unable to manage time and having failed to master basics like math and English. " (emphasis added) How is that conclusion supported by the facts in the article? Its also possible that those taking online courses are also the ones with the least time for school in general. But who knows! Similarly, if I found that students attending class at night performed worse than those attending during the day, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that learning is harder at night. correlation != causation and all that.

niggler 14y ago
I think the editorial doesn't make clear exactly what "online courses" mean. There are two ways to interpret the phrase: 1) Normal high school students go to community and technical colleges and possibly take online classes. In that case, you are correct 2) In washington state, you can actually take online classes in high school and even k-8 (k12.com) and my understanding is that there have been studies on k12 students and their performance in community and technical colleges as a function of whether they went to a physical or virtual elementary and high school. I am guessing they are referring to the latter (where other studies -- take a quick gander at google -- do draw the conclusions that the article refers to as "well known") Unfortunately I couldn't find the study that the article is explicitly referencing.
dfxm12 14y ago
This begs the question. IS there trouble with online learning or online students? Certainly there are factors that would cause someone to enroll in an online class outside of the fact that "it is online". Anecdotally, when I think back to my learning experience, I found that I had to be very self-motivated to learn in online classes and also take professors to task being available. This actually mirrored my experience with huge (100+ students) lecture hall style classes.
- philwelch 14y ago
  "This begs the question." No, it doesn't. http://begthequestion.info/ http://begthequestion.info/
  - gojomo 14y ago
    The peculiar meaning of that euphemism in logic and philosophy is going to lose out to the way laypeople understand those words. The fuddy-duddies should pick a new less-confusing phrase to mean "assumes the conclusion". Might I suggest, "assumes the conclusion"?
    - chc 14y ago
      I prefer "is circular thinking." Most people have no difficulty understanding the idea of circular reasoning even if they have no idea what it means to beg the question.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      Educated people saved the word "ironic" once. "Begs the question" isn't dead yet.
  - jacalata 14y ago
    Actually, it does. The article assumes that the reasons people did worse in these online courses is because of the set of students enrolling, when the question is 'does the set of students or the presentation of the course matter more'?
pseut 14y ago
It's not an article, it's an editorial. Which means it's both opinion and severely space constrained. I think it's fair to assume the opinion is based on more information than is presented, and they link to studies. I'm not claiming they're right, but "lazy" is ridiculous.
- spikels 14y ago
  Hard to prove they are lazy but they certainly put very little effort into actually understanding or explaining the current state of online eduction. Would it be lazy not to be familiar with articles on the subject published in your own paper? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-o...
  - pseut 14y ago
    Maybe I'm slow. Please point out the part of that article at odds with the opinion in the editorial? The only area of overlap I could see was this passage: > Some students are also ill prepared for the university-level work. And few stick with it. “Signing up for a class is a lightweight process,” says Dr. Ng. It might take just five minutes, assuming you spend two devising a stylish user name. Only 46,000 attempted the first assignment in Dr. Ng’s course on machine learning last fall. In the end, he says, 13,000 completed the class and earned a certificate — from him, not Stanford.
    - spikels 14y ago
      My point was that the nameless editorial writer did not seem to be familiar with the basics of the recent developments in online learning despite it being covered repeatedly in their own paper. For example the highly pertinent fact that they are much more cost effective (most MOOCs are free and teach vast numbers of students - 13,000 in a single class in your quote). Or how about the huge numbers of students with no access to university education for many reasons (can't afford, have to work, live far from any college, live in 3rd world, etc.) that can take classes online. Or the ability to replay or even slow down parts of the lecture that you don't understand immediately. Or the impracticality of short lectures in the traditional classes. Maybe the rhetoric of an editorial is disguising some deep understanding of the issue but what actually appears on the page is hardly convincing if not actually misleading to those not familiar with the subject. See the many other comments here. Not saying this will solve all out education problems but sure seems like one of the biggest advances in a long time. Can you think of anything else of comparable potential impact? Also low completion rates in MOOCs is a red herring. These are FREE class where you have to "enroll" to browse the material. It would be like counting everyone who read the course description, visited the class webpage or flipped thru the textbook in the bookstore as having enrolled in a traditional class. Not an apples to apples comparison. It is more likely that the opinion in this editorial reflects those of the vested interests of our current education system than clear thinking on this issue.

by qeorge 14y ago

niggler 14y ago

I think the editorial doesn't make clear exactly what "online courses" mean. There are two ways to interpret the phrase: 1) Normal high school students go to community and technical colleges and possibly take online classes. In that case, you are correct 2) In washington state, you can actually take online classes in high school and even k-8 (k12.com) and my understanding is that there have been studies on k12 students and their performance in community and technical colleges as a function of whether they went to a physical or virtual elementary and high school. I am guessing they are referring to the latter (where other studies -- take a quick gander at google -- do draw the conclusions that the article refers to as "well known") Unfortunately I couldn't find the study that the article is explicitly referencing.

dfxm12 14y ago

This begs the question. IS there trouble with online learning or online students? Certainly there are factors that would cause someone to enroll in an online class outside of the fact that "it is online". Anecdotally, when I think back to my learning experience, I found that I had to be very self-motivated to learn in online classes and also take professors to task being available. This actually mirrored my experience with huge (100+ students) lecture hall style classes.

philwelch 14y ago
"This begs the question." No, it doesn't. http://begthequestion.info/ http://begthequestion.info/
- gojomo 14y ago
  The peculiar meaning of that euphemism in logic and philosophy is going to lose out to the way laypeople understand those words. The fuddy-duddies should pick a new less-confusing phrase to mean "assumes the conclusion". Might I suggest, "assumes the conclusion"?
  - chc 14y ago
    I prefer "is circular thinking." Most people have no difficulty understanding the idea of circular reasoning even if they have no idea what it means to beg the question.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Educated people saved the word "ironic" once. "Begs the question" isn't dead yet.
- jacalata 14y ago
  Actually, it does. The article assumes that the reasons people did worse in these online courses is because of the set of students enrolling, when the question is 'does the set of students or the presentation of the course matter more'?

pseut 14y ago

It's not an article, it's an editorial. Which means it's both opinion and severely space constrained. I think it's fair to assume the opinion is based on more information than is presented, and they link to studies. I'm not claiming they're right, but "lazy" is ridiculous.

spikels 14y ago
Hard to prove they are lazy but they certainly put very little effort into actually understanding or explaining the current state of online eduction. Would it be lazy not to be familiar with articles on the subject published in your own paper? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-o...
- pseut 14y ago
  Maybe I'm slow. Please point out the part of that article at odds with the opinion in the editorial? The only area of overlap I could see was this passage: > Some students are also ill prepared for the university-level work. And few stick with it. “Signing up for a class is a lightweight process,” says Dr. Ng. It might take just five minutes, assuming you spend two devising a stylish user name. Only 46,000 attempted the first assignment in Dr. Ng’s course on machine learning last fall. In the end, he says, 13,000 completed the class and earned a certificate — from him, not Stanford.
  - spikels 14y ago
    My point was that the nameless editorial writer did not seem to be familiar with the basics of the recent developments in online learning despite it being covered repeatedly in their own paper. For example the highly pertinent fact that they are much more cost effective (most MOOCs are free and teach vast numbers of students - 13,000 in a single class in your quote). Or how about the huge numbers of students with no access to university education for many reasons (can't afford, have to work, live far from any college, live in 3rd world, etc.) that can take classes online. Or the ability to replay or even slow down parts of the lecture that you don't understand immediately. Or the impracticality of short lectures in the traditional classes. Maybe the rhetoric of an editorial is disguising some deep understanding of the issue but what actually appears on the page is hardly convincing if not actually misleading to those not familiar with the subject. See the many other comments here. Not saying this will solve all out education problems but sure seems like one of the biggest advances in a long time. Can you think of anything else of comparable potential impact? Also low completion rates in MOOCs is a red herring. These are FREE class where you have to "enroll" to browse the material. It would be like counting everyone who read the course description, visited the class webpage or flipped thru the textbook in the bookstore as having enrolled in a traditional class. Not an apples to apples comparison. It is more likely that the opinion in this editorial reflects those of the vested interests of our current education system than clear thinking on this issue.