s/o college debt - college classes online

[MrsDL]

I think a traditional experience provides a component you can't get on-line. That said, a hybrid option is nice and has it's benefits - like going home for the summer even if you need/want to take a class or two. It cuts down on campus living expenses, plus maybe a student can finish up a little early.

[penguingrrl]

I think the idea could work well for certain disciplines but not at all for others. For a math or science course that is fact based and more about learning the material I think it would work well. For liberal arts or social sciences I can't see how it would work since the dialogue of the material in the classroom is really the bulk of the work. Yes, you need to have read the books and articles and you need to write your papers, but participating in classroom discussions is where you broaden your mind and push towards greater understanding of the material. Most of the time much of my writing came out of ideas expressed in class and that was where the bulk of my thinking happened. Had it just been online I don't think I would have gotten nearly the intellectual benefit I got in classroom discussions.

[Deleted]

i took a mix of online/self paced learning classes when I was in college and I graduated in 1996. I graduated in 3 years between my AP credits, taking self paced physical anthrolopogy and CLEP credits for fascinating subjects like US Gov't/Texas State History, English, Sociology and Psychology.

[marie427]

I wouldn't want to see the traditional undergraduate experience become all virtual but traditional universities offering graduate degrees and certificates online is not new and has worked quite well for several universities. I received my Master's from Rutgers University and except for one orientation visit to the campus, I completed the program entirely online and loved it. However, the way it was done for my degree would not have saved the university and students much money, as "classes" were still kept small and professors were directly engaged with students through the platform, so it wasn't just professors uploading videos and us watching or whatever. I'm skeptical that similar levels of learning can occur in the situations brought up in the OP with one professor and 40,000 students merely downloading his video.

[penguingrrl]

I will add that they need to find a good way around cheating. I went for an interview once with a professional psychologist in NYC who was hiring people to do her online degree. She suddenly needed credentials she had previously not needed and decided school wasn't worth her time, so each semester she hired someone to do the work for her. In a classroom based class it would be glaringly obvious that her writing did not match up with her speaking style and the analysis of the material did not match up (as a TA I caught several plagiarized papers because it was so glaringly different that the person's in-class persona). She also told me that she had straight As and did not intend for me to cost her a B. I ran screaming because it was so unethical.

[msmerymac]

I'm pro traditional-experience for undergrad - which involves being immersed in college culture and living on or near campus.

But for continuing programs, graduate programs, certificate programs, or a class you can't take at your home campus, this is awesome.

That said, I'm thinking of doing an online degree program (from a regular, private university), which is decidedly not free. Quite expensive.

[Deleted]

I'm finishing a masters that is 50% online. And no, its not as good when you take classes online, even at a great school. I would rather my kid go to a lower school but go to class than a better school and do it all online.

[emilyj]

I don't think online degrees are going to replace the traditional college experience. I think online courses have value, and I think they are a good supplement, but I think we are a long, long, long way off from an online degree completely replacing the traditional college experience.

Also, fwiw, an online class at my university is the same cost of taking it on-campus. So taking them at home over the summer will save room/board costs, but not tuition costs.

For this though, I'd like to offer my perspective as a professor:

Jul 18, 2012 10:40:45 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

For liberal arts or social sciences I can't see how it would work since the dialogue of the material in the classroom is really the bulk of the work. Yes, you need to have read the books and articles and you need to write your papers, but participating in classroom discussions is where you broaden your mind and push towards greater understanding of the material.

I teach in the social sciences, and there is one course I teach for the undergrads that I lead more seminar/discussion based style. To teach it in the classroom is fucking brutal. The kids do. not. talk. It's like pulling teeth (and it's not just me - the other professors/adjuncts in my department have the same complaint). The past two semesters I tried it online, and it was a totally different (and better) experience. I had online discussions, almost everyone participated, there were fantastic ideas that came out - I was shocked and pleased. I don't know what the difference was in this one instance, but for this one class? The online experience was the better way to go.

For other classes I teach, there's no way they could be taken online. Nor would I try. So it's really going to be individual to the class, but there are some social science/liberal arts classes that CAN work online.

As for cheating/plagiarism, I run all my student's papers through Turnitin.com. I've busted several on plagiarism that way. I think for an exam, it's harder, but I have no qualms about using something like Turnitin for papers and the like.

[penguingrrl]

Jul 18, 2012 14:04:32 GMT -5 emilyj said:

I don't think online degrees are going to replace the traditional college experience. I think online courses have value, and I think they are a good supplement, but I think we are a long, long, long way off from an online degree completely replacing the traditional college experience.

Also, fwiw, an online class at my university is the same cost of taking it on-campus. So taking them at home over the summer will save room/board costs, but not tuition costs.

For this though, I'd like to offer my perspective as a professor:

Jul 18, 2012 10:40:45 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

For liberal arts or social sciences I can't see how it would work since the dialogue of the material in the classroom is really the bulk of the work. Yes, you need to have read the books and articles and you need to write your papers, but participating in classroom discussions is where you broaden your mind and push towards greater understanding of the material.

I teach in the social sciences, and there is one course I teach for the undergrads that I lead more seminar/discussion based style. To teach it in the classroom is fucking brutal. The kids do. not. talk. It's like pulling teeth (and it's not just me - the other professors/adjuncts in my department have the same complaint). The past two semesters I tried it online, and it was a totally different (and better) experience. I had online discussions, almost everyone participated, there were fantastic ideas that came out - I was shocked and pleased. I don't know what the difference was in this one instance, but for this one class? The online experience was the better way to go.

For other classes I teach, there's no way they could be taken online. Nor would I try. So it's really going to be individual to the class, but there are some social science/liberal arts classes that CAN work online.

As for cheating/plagiarism, I run all my student's papers through Turnitin.com. I've busted several on plagiarism that way. I think for an exam, it's harder, but I have no qualms about using something like Turnitin for papers and the like.

That's very interesting to hear! My degree is in history with a minor in English and classroom participation seemed like the most important aspect of most of the classes, so it's fascinating to hear that some people participate better in an online version. Most of what I remember from undergrad was seminar-style so I just couldn't see that translating well to online, but it's good to hear.

How does turnitin work? I've heard of it but don't know it well. I could see it finding papers that are already "published' online easily, but what about students (like the woman I interviewed with) who are literally paying someone else to do their work? Would it be able to detect that? I mean, I guess you could pay someone else to go to your classes in your name starting on day 1 with the same results, but it seems easier to do with an online course.

[basilosaurus]

I've done quite a few online classes for pre-reqs for my nursing program. I'd already done the traditional 4 year, and my nursing school was all in person. I've done everything from math to a lab science to humanities, for both undergrad and grad classes.

My experience was varied. Some were super easy, and it would have been super easy to cheat. Others took a lot of time and work, and I got more out of them than any in person lecture. Those were the kind that required weekly discussions, more of a seminar feel. You can't cheat that (beyond hiring someone I guess). I think my biggest complaint was that people were practically illiterate. Made me look good in comparison, though.

All papers were submitted through turnitin, but not discussion posts.

I think where it is valuable is it allows people already working to slowly work toward a degree. I knew a ton of nurses doing online programs in to get their BSN or MSN. One of my preceptors would even have her discussion posts as topics of conversation for us students when we had downtime.

[basilosaurus]

penguin, turnitin compares your paper to others in its database which includes published and purchased papers (I think). It gives you a score like 10% of your paper matched. Of course that's going to happen with quotes and with chance. Some professors set a hard limit, others didn't have a stated limit, so I'm assuming they did it on case by case.

I think the best way to compare a good online class is to think of this board. We have discussions on here we never would in real life. Plus we can immediately go find a source to back up our statements. A few of my classes were like an sbp wall o' text version of this board. With the spelling and grammar of the bump.

[emilyj]

Jul 18, 2012 14:10:41 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

How does turnitin work? I've heard of it but don't know it well. I could see it finding papers that are already "published' online easily, but what about students (like the woman I interviewed with) who are literally paying someone else to do their work? Would it be able to detect that? I mean, I guess you could pay someone else to go to your classes in your name starting on day 1 with the same results, but it seems easier to do with an online course.

Turnitin scans published papers (and the web) to detect if you (the author) have straight ripped off anyone else's work. It will go through published papers, dissertations, websites - it's pretty cool. And like Sibil said, it will give you a score as to how much of the paper has matched - from 1% - 100%.

I personally have a 0 tolerance policy.

There is no way for me to detect who is actually writing the discussion posts though in the live chat/online discussions though. So if someone is paying someone else to participate for them, I can't detect that. At the undergrad level, I'm not all that worried about it. Basically, if someone is going to do that, then they're going to have to pay that person to take the entire class for them - and when they get to the next class, they are going to be absolutely screwed, since all the classes in our major build on each other.

[penguingrrl]

Interesting to hear! Turnitin sounds really cool! I was a TA in 2005-2006 and my university had nothing like that. We were just told to google sentences to see if anything came up.

Of course, at that school it was also a huge hassle for the professor to deal with plagiarism. The prof I TAed for talked about how she had so far put in 80+ hours proving a bought paper from the previous semester. It was insane and she said many in the department didn't bother, which is terrible. At my undergraduate institution if the prof suspected cheating it was turned over to an office that dealt with it and out of the prof's hands entirely.

Also good point about classes being built on each other, so the person will eventually be in serious trouble. I've always found the concept of online classes interesting and like some aspects and am unsure of others. I do think there's a lot of value to in person discussions as well though.

[basilosaurus]

Emily, I've definitely gotten over 0, and I swear I don't plagiarize, not even unintentionally. What about quotes? Then again, most of my online classes were a cakewalk, and papers were like 4 pages. I even had one professor mandate papers literally begin with "The purpose of this paper is to" which I didn't do on the 1st one, so I got a 99. I dumbed down my 2nd paper and got 100.

I have a hard time comparing the difficultly of the online classes, though, b/c my undergrad was freaking hard. I think the only way I can compare is that it was about the same difficulty as nursing school, sometimes harder, sometimes easier, and my classmates there who'd gone to Boulder or UNC seemed to think it was equally challenging to that experience.

[josieposy]

I'm doing about half of my undergrad classes online through a state university. It has been very working adult friendly, but for the seriously tough classes I still go to campus. How well it goes for me always depends on the instructor. Some of them are very uninvolved and just grade your stuff with little feedback.

[emilyj]

Sibil, I get over 0 too when I run my manuscripts through it. I think it's really hard to get a 0.

If they quote, cite, etc, then that's obviously different. I lay out my expectations for them pretty clearly, and tell them if they have questions on what they should cite/quote, to come to me.

It's when I find things directly ripped off from websites, or complete sentences ripped from papers with no quotes/cites or other attempts made to show that they have tried to paraphrase or give credit that my zero tolerance policy kicks in. One of my grad school professors gave me a general 'rule' to follow when deciding when to consider something plagiarized, so that's what I tell the kids I follow.

The two that I've busted and sent to academic dishonesty were two that ripped off entire paragraphs and sentences from websites. Blatant plagiarism.

[One Girl In All The World]

DH did much of his undergrad and all of his graduate certificate online. He actually did really well with that - he's not really a school type but that environment really clicked (so to speak) with him.

I actually work for an online university now and I think online programs can be really beneficial especially when dealing with non-traditional students (ie, older students who are working, have families, been out of school for a long time, etc).

[kadams767]

I think a mix of online and traditional format is fine, but I have trouble supporting a curriculum that is 100% online, at least at the undergraduate level. Perhaps if it is someone returning for a second degree, it would make sense also. But my (admittedly anecdotal) experiences with people who received online degrees and never set foot in a traditional campus environment have jaded me.

[julief]

I think online classes are good for students who are disciplined, focused, and self-motivated For most kids, though, the traditional format is much better. I prefer the traditional college experience but probably not if I had to go 80 or 90 grand into debt.

I feel like many students go to college not for the intellectual rigor or the learning, but to get laid and drunk. If I were a parent paying, I'd be a little skeptical about the "college experience" in that regard.

It's a catch-22 because I'm against debt, yet I wouldn't want to go to a crappy community college (not that all of them are) where it's basically remedial high school since it's open admission. If a teacher there is "teaching to the middle," that's not good..

I agree with the previous poster who said that online is ok for those beyond undergrad, but the traditional setup is better for undergrads.

[basilosaurus]

I'm lazy and undisciplined, and have actually found it's easier to stay on top of online classes. In a regular lecture I can just tune out and study later, like a few hours before an exam. Online I have to write something intelligent every week (in the good ones, that's always my caveat).

Maybe it helps that everything I've done online is on a quarter system? They're 7-9 week classes usually.

[ringstrue]

I work at an online school now and this is so interesting to see how many people use one!

Online schooling is a world unto itself and its hard to judge until you've been through it. You can bond pretty darn hard with your online classmates. I mean, what if we all were in online classes together? We just procrastinate together on these boards and we (can) form strong bonds - what if we actually worked on projects together??

It also usually uses a variety of technologies including things like skype and webinars where you can talk to each other (with your voice, not typing) so while still "virtual," its much more human than you might assume.

Depending on how things are setup, you may very well have classmates who are in your area, and you can get together to study or work on projects. The bonds are deeper in a way since you are both needing the others support and wanting to connect with another student.

[basilosaurus]

ringstrue has a point.

I was briefly enrolled in a graduate program when I moved to Japan, and one of my classmates lived in Tokyo. Now, it was a program mostly used by American military, and she was also a spouse, but still....

When I had to drive down to Tokyo to pick up my dog and husband, a 10 hour drive, she offered her place. We stayed in touch and would see each other (and crash at her place) every time I was down there. 5 years later with minimal contact we're still friends. H stayed with her and her husband last winter.

Like I said way above, I do find it somewhat similar to this board. I'd probably offer most people here a spot on my couch.

This is not to take away from the awesome friends I made in college. Those experiences, as shitty as college was for me, are invaluable. I just don't want to demonize online as easy or impersonal.

[giggity19]

I'm planning to take advantage of the shift to online courses. Our (large, public) university is currently offering $2500+ to faculty for developing online curriculum. I'm teaching a new interdisciplinary course this fall and will develop the online curriculum in the spring. Our department is currently evaluating all of our courses to determine what has online potential.

[wise_rita]

On what planet are online classes cheaper? Universities love them because they rake in cash with relatively little overhead (compared to on-campus classes).

I graduated undergrad in 2005. At the time online classes cost $200+ per credit, with virtually all courses being 3 credits. Talk about the merits of virtual vs. in-person learning all you want, but discussing it in the context of affordable education is waaaay off the mark.

[onomatopoeia]

Jul 19, 2012 4:48:54 GMT -5 wise_rita said:

On what planet are online classes cheaper? Universities love them because they rake in cash with relatively little overhead (compared to on-campus classes).

I graduated undergrad in 2005. At the time online classes cost $200+ per credit, with virtually all courses being 3 credits. Talk about the merits of virtual vs. in-person learning all you want, but discussing it in the context of affordable education is waaaay off the mark.

I disagree. I'm in a masters program which offers online classes, and while I agree they aren't cheaper per credit, the cost savings elsewhere can be substantial. Students can fit them into a work schedule more easily, save on gas and parking, save on babysitters, possibly finish school quicker, and even save on rent if it means they can live at home/get a cheaper apartment further from college.

On another note, I do feel that the "college experience" is important for students (especially for undergrad), and real class time is certainly key as well, at least for many subjects. However, the reality is that this is getting further and further out of reach for many people. I think that as technology improves (skype, etc), colleges have been and will be able to mimic this experience in a way that for many students currently unable to commit to a full-time, brick and mortar school, on-line courses will be a close second.

[heliocentric]

DH is currently taking online classes and I've been pleasantly surprised by the format of most. There is a lot of dicussion work required. In one class, students have to post answers to questions or ideas and other students have to comment on them, add to them, offer critiques, etc. just like in a classroom. It's also mandatory that all students respond.

For his final exams he's either gone to the campus to take them or taken them online with someone proctoring via webcam. I don't recall the details, but the proctor made him show a photo ID, verbally state that he was who he said he was, had DH show him around the room so he could check for cheating aids, etc. DH said it would've been harder to cheat this way than if he was in a classroom! (Not that DH wants to cheat.)

Anyway, despite my initial skepticism, I think there is value in online learning for many types of classes and students.

[EloiseWeenie]

I haven't read all of the responses, but sorry if all of this has been said.

When my kids are 18 and are going to college, I'd prefer for them to have the traditional experience. But, my kids may want to do the military route like my husband did. Online education is perfect for military and other non-trad students.

My husband got his MBA completely online from ECU (a real school). NC schools have great online options. My husband works full time, had a family, and the closest university is an hour away. He still had enough GI Bill left to get a master's, so an online degree was his best option.

I don't know about cheating, but all of his exams had to be proctored, so unless your are a brazen cheater, most wouldn't attempt it. My husband did like the anonymity in that he didn't feel bad about judging the lazies in group work (which there were many more peer evaluations than I had at college).