It seemed a bit ironic as I contemplated the existence of the content and the medium as I carried on an e-mail conversation with Martin Salazar, the former Optic reporter, now the education writer with the Albuquerque Journal.<\/p>\n
People have been e-mailing one another for years, so that fact in itself isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t unusual. The irony was that I was asking Salazar his opinion on an article he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d written this week on a topic I have trouble accepting: online college degrees.<\/p>\n
Salazar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s front-page article is about two Albuquerque residents, Jenna Harper and Yvette Sanchez, who recently earned online bachelor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s degrees from Western New Mexico University without ever setting foot on the Silver City campus.<\/p>\n
The irony is that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fully accept the notion that degrees should be awarded that way, but as I was quizzing Salazar, he pointed out that at that moment, he was in a hospital waiting room in Albuquerque waiting for his father to be seen by a doctor.<\/p>\n
Were it not for the Internet, Salazar said, he would have had to leave a message with the receptionist, who probably couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have gotten to it until a day later.<\/p>\n
Reading that Western, a college about the size of Highlands, has begun awarding baccalaureate degrees to those who performed their work entirely online, I was skeptical. Still am.<\/p>\n
Salazar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s copyrighted article describes how the miracle of cyberspace technology can virtually place remote students in virtual classrooms, on their way to virtual (er…) actual online degrees. Take, for example, students who live hundreds of miles from colleges and yet wish to pursue higher education. By paying the same tuition as resident students, they receive their instruction online and use their home computers to submit assignments, take quizzes, take part in “chat rooms” and take their final exams, by entering keystrokes.<\/p>\n
I marvel at the determination of the successful students, one who raised a family while hitting the computer keyboard and doing homework between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m.<\/p>\n
Getting a genuine college degree without ever leaving the privacy of the computer room sounds convenient, and as one state education official, Reed Dasenbrock, says, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a way of leveling the playing field by making it possible for people who live in Alma, Rodeo, Taiban, Weed or Mosquero, N.M., to save a bundle on gasoline.<\/p>\n
All of this makes sense: The technology is available and in use, to different degrees, at all New Mexico universities; and avoiding $4-a-gallon gas expenses help too.<\/p>\n
Distance education has been around for a while. As long ago as the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, I signed up for a course that offered one hour of college credit to those resilient enough to sit through some 16 hours of lectures on a public TV station in Chicago. We paid a then-whopping fee of $10 for the privilege of having a plug-in box installed in our homes. After each lecture, we toggled a switch \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to the left for “true,” to the right for “false.”<\/p>\n
That was all. The machine, high-tech for its day, recorded our answers and produced a grade for that assignment, which appeared for 10 seconds on our screen.<\/p>\n
Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s technology is far more sophisticated. Feedback goes through a computer and reaches a professor in a remote location. And while it is true that the technology exists to perform many interactions, the human element is still missing.<\/p>\n
The Internet offers great opportunities for students to do research. A link, for example, can lead directly to a needed body of research. A computer is capable of presenting course outlines, lesson plans, graphics and much more, almost like being in a regular classroom.<\/p>\n
Almost.<\/p>\n
I realize we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve moved considerably from the pre-Christian Athenian dialogues in which Plato and Socrates participated, although the concept of a professor, with all the answers, will always be with us.<\/p>\n
Computers tend to minimize instructors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 roles by shifting the emphasis from the source to the technology. With online courses, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the typical apple-polishing freshman who prolongs the class by asking the fount-of-wisdom professor, “Would you please reiterate our assignment and elaborate on the topic a bit more?” (Nerdy freshmen just like to try out a couple of new words).<\/p>\n
Many arguments in favor of granting online degrees hinge on technology that exists to make it possible and the convenience of staying at home and avoiding exorbitant gas prices.<\/p>\n
Yet, do these factors translate to making a series of online courses equal to a bachelor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s degree? Just as the GED means both General Educational Development and General Equivalency Diploma for high school, perhaps an online B.A. degree could called the Baccalaureate Equivalency Degree, or BED.<\/p>\n
But the B.A. degree is much more than a simple major or minor, a series of courses in one or two concentrations. In the liberal arts, regardless of their major or minor, people generally need to take courses in English, history, art, philosophy, music, speech, languages, chemistry, physics, math and possibly even P.E.<\/p>\n
Does the online degree, for example, give proof that the student can assemble electronic components or identify a symphony, or deliver a speech, or create and solve a mathematical equation, when the student\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s input was largely entering particular keyboard combinations?<\/p>\n
My days in the classroom ended around the time computers became necessities and distance education was merely a pipedream. My thrill came when a student \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in a face-to-face situation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d beamed with that “I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got it!” expression. Or else, I was able to read facial expressions that told me to slow down, or “reiterate” or “elaborate.”<\/p>\n
In what ways does online college-credit instruction allow for the professor to gauge the amount of information students are actually taking in? And how does online instruction measure spontaneity? Some extremely effective classes with real-live students require them to write creatively for 15 minutes on a topic that grabs them. How can an online course accommodate this kind of flexibility?<\/p>\n
Likely all my concerns about online instruction will abate in a few years when someone invents an online method so convincing that only experts will be able to discern whether the instruction is real and live, or bouncing off a satellite.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, if I register for a course at Highlands, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to choose one with a real-live prof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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