Online Educational degree and non-degree courses offering is one of the fastest growing trend around the world, specifically in the US. For example, you can check out some of the courses from the top Schools in the US here: University of California – Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University
But are the professors happy? Apparently no!
Since the largest university system in the world, the California State University system, announced a pilot for low-cost online lower-division courses, schools from all over the country have raced to replace physical college instruction at a crazy fast pace. In only a month’s time, the University of Wisconsin started offering a fully legitimate college degree without any class time required and scores of schools announced that they will be emulating CSU lower-division pilots in the near future.
But, this is mostly administration-driven. Professors, by and large, are freaking out. When the California state legislator proposed mandating that online courses be accepted, the faculty senate sent a strongly worded letter to lawmakers: ”There is no possibility that UC faculty will shirk its responsibility to our students by ceding authority over courses to any outside agency”
This latest survey from The Chronicle Of Education reveals how little confidence professors have in their own courses. “The deck was somewhat stacked with true believers,” writes Steve Kolowich of The Chronicle about the survey, which polled the 184 known professors who have taught a MOOC.
And, now the professors who have taught the courses themselves are suggesting that students who go through the online courses, should NOT get official college credit. That is the level of confidence they have in the courses being offered online.
72 percent of professors who have taught Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) don’t believe that students should get official college credit, even if they did well in the class. More importantly, these are the professors who voluntarily took time to teach online courses, which means the actual number of professors who discount the quality of MOOCs is probably much (much) higher.
Given the popularity of Khan Academy and the other organizations making inroads into informal online education, and the colleges beefing up their online offerings, it is indeed important that the quality of the education is maintained.
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