JZEM@MARISTB.BITNET (William J. Joel) (03/01/88)
The recent message from Patt Haring, describing the Connect Ed program at the New School, developed into an interesting discussion in my Computers and Society class. Essentially, what kept coming up was that the students tried to evaluate this new form of education using a traditional model of college life. I would like to propose that this is a wrong approach, as programs such as Connect Ed foster a new, wider, model of what it means to "go to college" and that in fact, they may imply a separate model of college education. Any thoughts? William
jcw@wdl1.UUCP (John C Williams) (03/03/88)
William Joel, in a recent posting, said: > Electronic Collegs >JZEM@MARISTB.BITNET William J. Joel > ... Essentially, what kept coming up was that the students tried to > evaluate this new form of education using a traditional model of > college life. I think you're on to something here. People would be less likely to evaluate electronic colleges by inappropriate standards if they thought of them as "collegs". Seriously, I think your typo was felicitous. "Electronic college" is an unwieldy term, and "college" loses the distinction. John C. Williams
reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach) (03/06/88)
William J. Joel wrote: > The recent message from Patt Haring, describing the Connect Ed program > at the New School, developed into an interesting discussion in my > Computers and Society class. Essentially, what kept coming up was > that the students tried to evaluate this new form of education using > a traditional model of college life. In the current form of computerized conferencing systems, there may be a certain level of support for some of the features that such a system must provide to allow a university education to take place remotely. However, the functionality and capacity of these systems must expand greatly in order to realize this. I expand upon this below. > I would like to propose that this is a wrong approach, as programs > such as Connect Ed foster a new, wider, model of what it means to > "go to college" and that in fact, they may imply a separate model > of college education. Yup! Does this mean I can pursue my PhD at CMU, Stanford, or Berkeley, yet still work and reside in Florida :-) But seriously, although it may offer an opportunity to those who cannot have access to a university for various reasons, I doubt it will be a popular alternative to physically attending a university. That is, until certain functionality is provided to make accessing information as easy as walking into the university library, provide one to one access to people resources such as professors, administrators, advisors, etc...., and allow for discussion amongst students and professors on various topics. The Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) provides the platform for the virtual classroom. I have no personal experiences with how a class is conducted via this medium. I did take a graduate level course with Dr. Murray Turoff where we utilized EIES as our "laboratory" for his design of interactive systems. There are some introductory level courses offered by the Computer Science Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the Sociology Department of Upsala College on EIES. I don't know if this has been expanded or not. There are folks from NJIT on the net. Perhaps they may want to comment on this. However, to provide a medium that will serve the needs of a university student such a system must provide some form of a hypertext system type support for information retrievel, authoring of papers, and submission of work to instructors. Furthermore, a virtual classroom needs to be simulated via a conferencing system, not necessarily in real time, to provide a stimulating environment for discussion. And finally, don't forget that one part of university life is the friendships that are made and the extracuricular activities that one can participate in. Although, some people may be able to graduate without ever needing these things, most people do. In other words, we must take some of the concepts of computerized conferencing, hypertext, Project Athena, Andrew, etc..... and expand them beyond a single machine and/or geographical area. At the same time we must be able to expand the capabilities of such a system to the level that the remote student will not suffer due to lack of access to the same facilities that are available to the university student who is physically present at the campus. George W. Leach