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The Hechinger Report
Students in a real-time virtual classroom run by the company 2U, which is part of the new Semester Online initiative.
The race to capture a potentially vast market for college courses provided online has taken another big step with the announcement Thursday by 10 top universities that they’ll offer such classes for college credit — something earlier collaborations have struggled to do.
Semester Online envisions not huge, 100,000-student online courses such as those already being offered by MIT and Stanford, but a return to traditional-sized college classes of 12 to 15 students with live student-professor interactions — just delivered online instead of in person. And rather than making the courses available for free to anyone, it will likely have admission standards and charge tuition, according to the university provosts who have helped set it up.
The concept creates a sudden and significant divide about how best to educate online, just as America’s top universities try to get in on an anticipated boom in online learning.
“The biggest selling point is that it isn’t really new,” says Rogan Kersh, provost of Wake Forest University, one of Semester Online’s member schools. “It still feels like an extension of what we do now — the traditional university course that we already know works well, as opposed to a Wild West [where] all bets are off [and it’s] every student for him- or herself.”
Courses will be taught by university faculty following the same curricula used in conventional courses and with conventional techniques such as class discussions, using technology that allows students and professors to see and talk with one another in real time. Students will be graded on their work by faculty and earn college credit if they get passing grades.
Other collaborations have promised to figure out a way to offer credit or other kinds of credentials for large-scale online courses, called massive open online courses, or MOOCs — something that would threaten what has until now been a tightly held monopoly among traditional universities.
EdX, launched by MIT and Harvard earlier this year, plans to use private companies that will charge a fee to test students at examination centers around the world. Coursera, which includes Princeton, Columbia and Stanford, has proposed letting students take assessments online — and monitoring them as they do so via webcam.
On Tuesday, the American Council on Education said it would review a small number of Coursera classes, and may recommend that universities provide credit for them. Even if it does, however, such a recommendation would not be binding.
Semester Online, on the other hand, planned “from the very beginning” to offer credit, says Ed Macias, provost of Washington University in St. Louis, another member school. “That’s built into our model.”
The initiative also includes Brandeis, Duke, Emory, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rochester, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt. More universities may be added by the time the first courses are offered next fall, organizers say.
Although they were reluctant to say their model is a repudiation of MOOCs, several provosts of these institutions described it as a logical evolution of online higher education.
The earliest online courses were provided “for credit by schools you [had] never heard of,” such as the now-ubiquitous University of Phoenix, says Jim Dean, dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Then the MOOCs were about courses from schools you’ve heard of, but not for credit. Now you’re seeing courses for credit by schools you’ve heard of.”
Kersh said the scale of the wholesale model is larger than many faculty are comfortable with, while Semester Online classes will be a manageable size.
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MOOCs “are sexy and exciting because they’re new and different, but as a teacher, I’ve taught classes, and, to me, large means 200, not two million,” Kersh said. “We want to deliver the kind of highest-quality educational experience that the United States has been the world leader in—and to abandon that for the sake of a massive global experience feels like something special has been lost.”
Still, a few universities are hedging their bets. Duke, Emory and Vanderbilt are members of both Semester Online and Coursera.
One thing the new collaboration has in common with earlier ones is that the details have yet to be fleshed out. The 10 universities will work with a for-profit company called 2U, which helps provide the infrastructure and support universities need to offer online courses. But the cost to students and the way that revenues will be split among participating schools, among other things, are still being negotiated, according to Macias.
“We thought it would be good to announce what we’re doing so people could hear about it,” he says.
A 2U spokesman, Chance Patterson, says tuition will likely be equal to what the universities charge for brick-and-mortar classes.
This story, "New online venture promises small classes and college credit," was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Leave a Comment:
Do they offer them at a discount? I doubt it. It is just another way to cut costs and increase profits.
Some schools are doing this already.
Oregon State offers bachelors and even masters degrees online.
Not only aren't they at a discount (at my university, at least) but students pay an extra fee on top of regular tuition to take online classes. Schools love online classes because the retention rate in them is terrible. Far more than in regular classes, students enroll, pay, and never log in. At my school, we're discouraged from dropping no-shows from our rosters (which would trigger refunds).
That sounds like my mortgage company! Pay on line for $5.00, and we encourage you to do so because it is easier for us!
I think they are counting on those people that pay and don't play, but at the tuition rates of today, how can anyone justify doing that?
Online classes? No thanks. I've been forced to take online courses b/c the college wasn't offering the class as a lecture. Online instructors neglect their responsibilities, which puts students at a disadvantage.
It's bad enough that instructors don't know how to use the technology in the physical classroom for lectures. It's even worse that many instructors aren't tech savvy, so they don't know how to even marginally utilize the online classroom features. They also tend to be slow to respond to emails from students and or questions about assignments posed in online classroom forums.
Then there's the students who act as if the online classroom is an extension of social media. Student also have to continually monitor their online classrooms to keep up with class. No one wants to be married to a pc.
That online classes have an additional fee of $200 to $250 per class makes the cost of college education that much more expensive. Matters are worse when students are forced to pay for e-books then instructors don't use the books, so students end up being ripped off.
What I don't understand is why they would be same price as a mortar/brick classroom. Once the instructor has filmed the bits for the class and the 'boards' or whatever are set up for communication, the hard part is done, isn't it? Unless they are talking about REAL time here, you can reuse the same footage for each class for the year (and possibly the next if the content doesn't change much). So why charge the same for an online v. actual classroom class?
I've taken classes online and like it; you don't have to relocate to attend. BUT, that said, you DO have to be a person that is attentive to deadlines and a self-starter to stick with it. This isn't a good for most Freshmen or most 'first-time' college students that have poor (or non-existent) study habits. You'll just waste your money that way.
Equity: wasn't my experience at all, but em.... just WHERE did you take those classes? The choice of university for taking them DOES make a difference.
Alex -
...
WRONG!!!!
Having been at MIT and seeing some of the "original" (Open Courseware), one gets very fast that a "virtual community" is not a "real" community, and that "asynchronous" interaction with faculty and other students is incredibly inefficient if not futile.
Maybe the University of Phoenix (a for-profit organization) have been able to "sell" this, and numerous others have copied this, but...
As the spouse of someone who is doing an "blended" doctorate, I have done endless hours of "tutoring" as this was a case of students' "blind leading the blind" as the the "faculty" were totally non-responsive.
These kinds of degrees are fiction, and the first hint of one immediately makes me suspect.
No doubt, I will be called an "elitist", but education is not a commodity, it is "enlightenment".
Your final sentence should have been cast in the past tense.
Here's a response from someone that has actually taken similar courses. I'm enrolled in the MBA@UNC program which is supported by 2U. I will say, the courses are challenging.
Asynchronous content is well produced and informative. The curriculum is carefully laid out and tailored to the online learning environment by the exact same faculty teaching on-campus. If coursework needs to be updated due to market and policy changes, the professors will refresh it. Each student is expected to watch (on average) two to three hours of asynchronous material, complete homework assignments and textbook readings prior to the synchronous sessions. If you come unprepared to class, your professors will know. 'Activity reports' let faculty know if students completed the asynchronous coursework.
Synchronous sessions are interactive and engaging. There are an average of 15 students per section, allowing for a more intimate learning experience. The sessions are live; you can see and hear the professor and all your classmates. Students that miss their live sessions face grade reduction (or failure). If students continually come to class unprepared, professors reserve the right to kick them out.
Coursework includes written homework assignments, quizzes, exams, live presentations, group projects, papers. Quizzes and exams must be recorded (on camera) using the learning platform to help eliminate cheating.
Professors are incredibly effective and do NOT neglect their responsibilities. They respond to inquiries within 24 hours, have scheduled office hours each week (or will make themselves available for students that cannot attend the scheduled office hours), and provide feedback on all assignments.
The LMS (learning management system) becomes a students' virtual campus. Students access their coursework, live sessions and group projects on the site. Also, social groups are available (or can easily be created) to provide additional social interaction.
Honestly, I could go on and on about the program. Let me add... the program incorporates in-person domestic and international immersions. The textbooks (used by both the students and faculty) are covered by the cost of tuition. UNC provided me with an iPad to be able to access the LMS and my eBooks on the road. Faculty provide the same level of expertise, engagement and availability to the online students. The same standards are held for both the on-campus and online students.
Well, welcome to 1997!! Maybe people at Duke, Vandy, et al. had never heard of the mid-sized regional public institution where we started offering online PROGRAMS in 1997. But what they are proposing is NOT new in the world of distance education. Just because they hadn't been doing it earlier doesn't make it innovative.
Welcome to 1997! Just because these schools weren't doing it doesn't make it innovative. (See comment above about Oregon State.) And the retention isn't always terrible. I've been working in online education for 15 years, and--done well (a big caveat)--it can be as successful as classroom instruction. Sometimes even better. This is not news, and even the MOOC story has precedents in the mad dot-com/dot-edu rush into cyberspace 10-12 years ago. And granting credit for prior learning goes back almost 40 years.
Thank you peggisu.... It's offensive how they have dismissed all of the great (well known) schools who have been offering and constantly improving online courses for many years. UMass, Penn State, UConn, the list goes on and on and on.... Small, for credit, well designed courses with engaged faculty are not new or exclusive to this consortium.
2u's primary platform for their live classes is Adobe Connect with students calling into a conference line. This also is not innovative.
and 15-20 students per course... Good luck earning a profit once the funding runs out!
Since there is less wear and tear on the school facilities there should be a discount for online classes. You can be sure they are going to use less than full professors to teach these classes and maximize the profit.
I sure hope there are some schools that will not jack up the prices for online classes, but really do not hold out any hope that this will be the case.
Just another rip-off of the consumer.
All they need are taped lectures and (hopefully) a stand-bye professor to help with questions.
I did my master's degree online. I spent the same in tuition but saved a fortune in parking fees, drive time and stress (driving to downtown Detroit is never fun). The biggest problem was soo many instructors don't know how to teach on this format. And while group projects are never fun, doing them online is even worse as you have to skype/email/google meeting whatever it takes to coordinate times as you can't meet before/after class. I got fairly lucky with all my groups and partners but not all my friends in the program were as lucky.
What I object to as a U.S. taxpayer is paying for grant support to some of these faculty who are developing courses they give away for free to kids in China, India, and Iran. That grant money should be going to benefit Americans first.
Where is U.S. industrial policy?? We should be exporting goods, not intellectual property.
I graduated in May from a state university. I had a lot of classroom hours but hadn't finished my degree. As an upper division student, online worked very well for me. I noticed that my classmates were also serious about learning the material. I think that the online format can work well for older students (upper division) and graduate studies. Nevertheless, the campus environment is best for younger students in their first years of college.
I also expressed myself in different ways than I did in the classroom. Online studies are here to stay. By the way, all my classes maxed out at 25 students!
It was just a matter of time before all schools started cashing in on the online student experience/student need. Online is the wave of the future, and I called it 3 or 4 years ago.
I'm about to complete an online masters. While the cost may not be substantially lower than what that school charges for in-state tuition, it is dramatically less than their out of state tuition, plus I didn't have to move, didn't have to quit my job, and can reasonably schedule my studies around the rest of my life. I'm not about to argue the cost because the convenience more than makes up for it.