Expanding borders of traditional education

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2014 (3968 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A crowdfunding project underway called An Hour of Code for Every Student has reached nearly $4 million in contributions. The driving concept is that “Every student, in every school, should have the opportunity to learn computer science.” Software engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs have teamed up to introduce millions of people to the basics of computer programming.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he believes “computer science, or at least basic programming, is going to be as important a skill as being able to do basic reading or writing.”

While coding may be the most obvious skill to learn online, there are many other attempts to experiment with the possibilities and limits of online skills training and education across all fields and disciplines.

Many universities offer online degree and certificate programs. But many other online learning opportunities are available for personal interest and development, not academic credit. In fact, so numerous are they it becomes difficult to choose.

For example, Apple’s iTunes U is advertised as the “world’s largest catalogue of free education content.” Students can “choose from more than 800,000 free lectures, videos, books and other resources on thousands of subjects from Algebra to Zoology” and “browse collections from education and cultural institutions in nearly 70 countries.”

Khan Academy, a not-for-profit organization, has “the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.”

EdX offers interactive classes, free to auditors, with a small fee for those who want a verified certificate of achievement. Or, there’s Udemy, branded as the “world’s online learning marketplace, where four million-plus students are taking courses in everything from programming to yoga to photography.”

Recently, I participated in online classes through LibertasU.com, an online platform for discussing great books.

Shortly before the class is scheduled to begin, students log in. Having selected an avatar, a student enters the virtual classroom. Ten to 15 students participate in the discussion of the assigned portion of a text. We read Dante’s Inferno and took turns reading selections of the text aloud. Occasionally. Prof. Robert Royal, who was teaching the class, read a passage to us in Italian. Sometimes, he was actually in Italy while he facilitated the class for us.

Students can raise a virtual hand to ask questions or share comments with the class. Once the student is acknowledged, he or she turns on his or her microphone. The students participating are different ages and come from different cities, professions and walks of life. To discuss classic texts together online requires effort and commitment in order to do it well, but it also affords flexibility and an opportunity the participants would not have otherwise experienced. The classes are given once a week for seven weeks, in one-hour and 50-minute periods.

Online classes have limits. At best they are a supplement and at worst a replacement of learning with others face to face.

With all these new means of learning available to us, it is worth asking: Does our technology itself stifle the attention, discipline, thoughtfulness and imagination required for liberal learning? Is the medium the message to the extent that our prejudices for utility, efficiency, convenience and entertainment are mainly wound up in our technological devices?

Not-for-credit online education results in learning for more than just credentials: learning for its own sake, learning for skills or enriched creativity or moral judgment, learning that is genuinely lifelong.

EdX founder Anant Agarwal calls online education the ultimate democratizer. It is certainly an affordable way to learn. Compared to a university campus with the costs of tuition, housing, administration, hard materials and parking, learning online is dramatically less expensive. Easy access available to anyone wherever they have an Internet connection allows for anyone to participate with professors to whom they might not ordinarily have access.

Reading Dante’s Divine Comedy by oneself can be daunting, so meeting, even virtually, with others to discuss these works is helpful and enjoyable.

Online education, far beyond learning how to write code, competes with and may even raise the standards of traditional education. One hopes online learning opportunities will retain the traits that make it a worthwhile supplement rather than a replacement of traditional classroom learning.

 

Amanda Achtman holds a degree in political science from the University of Calgary.