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Re: DRUCKER SAYS "UNIVERSITIES WON'T SURVIVE"
> Can it be that the video-conferencing courses satisfy one kind of
> learning -- they might be particularly well-suited to home-bound folks,
> or folks to who very far from a center of "higher education" -- and
> the actual classroom experience might satisfy another type of education
> that requires the sparks one gets from interaction with other human
beings?
I agree with this also, but there is a problem with mixing local and
distance students in a single class. For example, one of my classes at
the University of Virginia was also fed to an area college; they had audio
& video of the professor and the UVA students, while we had an audio feed
from them. It was often difficult to equally involve the distance
students because they were head but not seen. They were sometimes
uncomfortable jumping in on discussions (signals such as hand-raising &
eye contact did not apply, which caused problems for both sides). Also,
the teacher commented about the difficulty of working with these "unseen"
students. We clearly were in the best position by having the professor
on-site.
This model works for Internet distance education as well. There are
benefits of in-class discussion that are a disadvantage to distance
students. With this in mind, would there have to be 2 curriculums for
distance and local? Or what technologies would eliminate the barriers?
An interface where everyone can see every other student seems workable,
but not exactly practical...
Kim