For some time now there's been an amazing wealth of college courses online such as Coursera, MIT Opencourseware etc. My question revolves around how to make college affordable to many more and having them end up with a degree that is respected in the work place or academia. One element would be to proctor exams at physical test locations that prove mastery of online presented content. Our local community college already uses this approach for the first two years worth of Mandarin Chinese. The students just visit the professor at the start of the year and come back in to take the tests. S1 made huge strides online through studying Mandarin with a teacher in southern China using iTalki. He skipped a full year of formal instruction by working with the tutor over a summer. And as I mentioned in another thread he also made enormous strides in math using a fully automated online system. Perhaps some other courses would benefit more from discussion groups and professor interaction. But I'm trying to be pragmatic about the costs of sharply expanding the population of students.
The main downside I would see of 80% online college experience would be the bonding with the peers. But what if instead of living with your peers in dorms you had a shared experience in a remote location - say Costa Rica or Tokyo - in the summer following high school graduation. You meet other students from all over the world and professors. Then when summer's over you go back home and start your online coursework. This would save a huge amount on housing, transportation etc. One professor could probably reach far more students than a physical classroom. At the end of the semester the student need to make their way to San Francisco, Boston or Dallas to take their exams in a controlled setting.
What would it take to have this approach be respected to the point of being perhaps even mainstream?
↧