Ipso Facto

I was saddened to learn of the death of Professor Thomas O’Connor, one of the great historians of Boston’s modern history. I took a class with Prof. O’Connor at the Harvard Extension School in 2005 — his last, as it turned out. On the final day of classes Dean Shinagel came into the lecture hall with a small marching band to present an award.

O’Connor absolutely deserved it. He was a marvelous instructor who had an innate grasp of the life of the city from Colonial times to the present, and really explained the commercial/political/social forces that shaped the modern city. He was a great storyteller, and brought Boston politics from the early 20th century to life with interesting anecdotes and asides. He was also a witness to many of the historical trends he discussed. He grew up in South Boston, and saw urban renewal, the bussing crisis, and the terms of many important mayors, including Mayor White and I believe Mayor Curley.

Worth sharing is this quote in the preface of The Hub:

“By eventually adapting to change and accommodating itself to modern ways — although at times grudgingly, often angrily, and almost always slowly — Boston has continued to be a live, functioning urban community that has not given into the nostalgic impulses that can so often turn a once-famous city into a lifeless historical shrine. …

The most serious challenge Boston faces in the future, however, is not longer confined to the construction of high-rise buildings, multilane highways, or extravagant commercial developments. The current challenge is the extent to which Boston will be able to retain its own distinctive identity as a city whose moral standards, civic virtues, and intellectual accomplishments once inspired a nation.”

(2001)

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a great two-part feature, “Did anyone ask the students?” It’s an absolutely relevant question that is missing in almost all discussions of the future of higher education (for evidence of this, look no further than last week’s Harvard’s edX announcement and related coverage, which featured lots of administrators and experts talking, but not a single student.)

Anyway, back to the Chron article. The writer, Jeff Selingo, went out and talked with hundreds of students at all kinds of colleges (SNHU, Georgetown, Arizona State, the University of Central Florida, Valencia College, Franklin & Marshall College) and asked them what they thought of the technological revolution that’s blossoming across higher education. He got some surprising answers, particularly concerning the value of online education. Although the students have grown up in an online, mobile world, and have these technologies deeply integrated into their lives, they see huge value in the face-to-face educational experience:

Face-to-face education matters even more now. Because these students see the world through screens (mobile, tablet, and laptop), I expected them to embrace the idea of online education. Just the opposite. They want to engage with a professor and with their classmates, they crave the serendipity of classroom discussions, and they want the discipline of going to class. Even the adult students I met preferred a physical classroom. Online “you’re pretty much paying to teach yourself,” a Valencia student told me. “It’s like text messages. There’s no tone of voice.”

That doesn’t mean these students like everything about traditional higher ed. They’re over the lecture, they like the idea of “flipping the classroom,” and they do seek out online resources to brush up on certain subjects. “A lot of professors are petrified by online classes,” one Georgetown student said. “They really want to improve the classroom experience.”

However, there is some sample bias here. The students Jeff talked with are already talking f2f classes. Talking to online students, some different perspectives come up. I have written extensively about online education at the Harvard Extension School. Some students lament the lack of contact and interaction with Harvard professors and their classmates. But others who put more of an emphasis on convenience, such as this ALM in IT student who didn’t see much value in attending Extension School classes in person:

The [Harvard Extension School] doesn’t offer an internet degree yet, to Kendra Kratkiewicz’s regret. This semester, she’s forced to make the long drive from Billerica to Cambridge as she toils toward her master’s degree. Nothing would please her more than a chance to complete her Harvard education without having to show up at Harvard.

The presidents of MIT and Harvard had a major announcement this morning regarding EdX, a non-profit venture to make certain Harvard and MIT courses freely available to anyone with an Internet connection. Unlike MIT’s decades-old OpenCourseWare initiative, which basically involved posting course curricula and problem sets online along with a few videos, edX goes much further. MITx and soon HarvardX has more video, structure, community, and even testing mechanisms to students can track their progress. EdX will be an independent umbrella organization to help run the two programs and share certain resources.

EdX is not really news for MIT. MITx was announced late last year, and made a huge impact. Hundreds of thousands of students have signed up to take MIT’s science and engineering classes. MIT even announced that people completing a set of courses would receive some sort of non-degree certification. MITx (and Khan Academy) made a lot of universities wake up to the possibilities of supplemental learning for society at large. Harvard was apparently starting to feel left behind; a source told the Boston Globe that Harvard felt “we didn’t want to look like we were playing catch-up.” Indeed, while MITx is already operational and serving its mission, HarvardX won’t offer any classes until later this year.

In addition, I noticed something peculiar about the HarvardX side of the venture. Harvard has been running Internet-based distance education continually since the 1990s through the Harvard Extension School. The announcement said that EdX would be separate from this and other existing distance education offerings through the Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School. In the press conference, Harvard’s provost briefly mentioned the expertise that the Extension School had developed, but it looks like there is no connection between edX and the Extension School.

Indeed, I am wondering if the free Harvard offerings from edX will compete with the Extension School’s own desire to get paying students to “sample” Harvard courses online. If casual students see that they can sample Harvard courses for free via edX, why should they pay thousands of dollars to take an Extension School class online? The Extension School can say that they offer credit for online courses. But to casual students paying $2000 or more for educational credit that will probably never be used, this doesn’t seem like a good value considering Harvard-branded knowledge can be obtained elsewhere for free.

You may also be interested in my earlier posts about distance education at Harvard and a review of The Gates Unbarred, the official history of the Extension School.

I just posted a comment on a Chronicle of Education column by Kevin Carey about an online education experiment at Stanford. The experiment, involving an AI class taught by computer scientist Sebastian Thrun, was an incredible success — more than 100,000 people took it. It’s also proof of the effectiveness of online education to spread knowledge to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend the class in person. I’ve been a big fan of Khan Academy for years, and fully support what MIT is doing with MITx.

But what I object to is when people falsely equate online and in-classroom education. As I have said repeatedly on this blog and elsewhere, the online experience is not the same. It may be more convenient, but it fails in several key respects. After Carey made the claim that the online students in the Stanford class “were experiencing exactly what the Stanford students were experiencing”, I responded with this comment:

No they weren’t.

They couldn’t raise their hands or participate in any spontaneous exchange of ideas with the instructor and each other.

They couldn’t approach the professor after class at the podium to ask follow-up questions.

They were watching the lecture on a small video screen. The in-class students were getting a full-resolution, high fidelity experience.

Did they have advantages over the in-class students? Certainly — being able to rewind the video or study from their comfort of your home is incredibly liberating. And many of those students were certainly more dedicated than the in-class students who fell asleep.

But the claim that the online experience is “exactly” the same is false. The idea that it’s “better” is also debatable, although that depends a lot on the values individuals assign to face-to-face educational interaction, convenience, and other factors.

What do you think?

For years, I’ve found the best way to illustrate what’s going on at the Harvard Extension School is to talk about the students and their experiences. Through interviews, personal blogs, emails, and message board postings I have been able to highlight both the good and the bad using voices that are totally authentic. For instance, several years ago I spotted this blog post by a student who had just finished the Harvard ALB program. He was ecstatic about his experience learning under some of Harvard’s renowned faculty:

Overall I feel that I received the best undergraduate education possible. It was a great honor to study and then be a TA under Tom Hayes and run the Physics 123 lab — I think it’s entirely possible that Tom is the best introductory circuit design teacher in the world, and I know I am in great company. It was also a great honor to study cyberlaw at the Berkman center of Harvard law — as an undergraduate, I was able to take more IP, patent, copyright and digital law classes than are available at most law schools, including Larry Lessig’s former class “The Technology and Politics of Control”. I also learned Spanish with Professora Zetterstrand, studied the history of Boston under Robert Allison, and of course studied number theory, probability, topology, calculus, linear algebra, group theory, graph theory, etc. under professors Martinez, Boller, Winters, Bamberg, Towne. Astronomy at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Physics in the science center… comparative religious ethics and modern/contemporary American fiction in Harvard Hall. Museum studies with Mary Malloy (and the future directors of a couple dozen museums in the museum studies program), game theory with Neugeboren (who himself studied under Schelling, whose son Robert is also a close personal friend), psychology under Fersch, and the history of electronic music with Marshall all were brilliant courses also. So many of these professors were the best at what they do — leaders in their fields, the ones who wrote the books. And even though this was a “night school” program, Harvard refused to lower the bar and never failed to challenge me; many of the professors talked about how the curriculum in the college vs. night school was exactly the same, and in a number of cases the student projects and work in the night school exceeded that produced by the day students.

It’s through other user stories that I’ve been able to understand the problems with distance education at the Harvard Extension School. A group of students commenting on their distance education experience lamented the lack of interaction with their professors, despite the Extension School’s promise of “Harvard faculty and rigorous academics.”

For my startup, I am now starting to illustrate some of the user stories that helped my co-founder and I understand the problems with classified marketplaces. The first post on our blog is titled Craigslist iPhone app, meet Donna, and discusses how a power user has struggled to overcome the limitations of the online marketplace with her “hacks” to make it easier. The stories are compelling; I will be highlighting more of them in the months to come as people start to use the app and tell us about their experiences.

Over the weekend, I took a look at Craigslist terms, which have recently been updated. I am not lawyer and surely missed many of the subtle legal distinctions in the new text, but there were some notable changes. They include:

Removal of specific prohibitions, in favor of broad prohibitions. For instance, pornography was described in detail in the old version, but in the new version it hardly warrants a mention. But there are new sections on posts by dealers, which were not clearly addressed before the February 14 update (Valentine’s Day — any significance?)

I will write an additional post about some changes to Section 4C of the terms, which deal with “flagging” — perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Craigslist for sellers. There is also room to talk about how overly restrictive the terms are, particularly considering the service was founded by Craig Newmark in the 1990s as an embodiment of the open spirit of the early Internet.

Imagine a university that has tens of thousands of students, yet few of them even know the name of the president of the institution. A university in which final exams apparently don’t need to be taken in person with a proctor present. A university in which faculty don’t get tenure, never hold full faculty meetings, and seldom know the senior administrators running the school. A university “whose leaders are more interested in making money and building an empire … than in educating students.”

I’m not talking about University of Phoenix or the other bad boys of the for-profit, online education world. This is University of Maryland University College, which, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, has seen high levels of leadership tumult over the past few years and recently saw its top administrator, President Susan C. Aldridge, being placed on indefinite leave. It’s not clear what prompted her removal, and faculty aren’t talking. But the structure of the school and its offerings are hardly typical of state-run colleges, as noted by the Chron:

University College has more than 100 worldwide locations, but online education is at the center of its operation. It claims to be the largest public university in the United States, with more than 90,000 students, many of them part time. Among them are students who work full-time jobs and have little emotional connection to the university, much less to its leadership.

Studying for an exam in the library at UMUC’s academic center in Largo on Tuesday, Ejike Michael looked perplexed when asked by a reporter what he made of Ms. Aldridge’s unexplained absence. Mr. Michael has spent a year at the college taking classes toward a master’s degree in information assurance, but he sheepishly conceded he had never even heard of Ms. Aldridge.

“I don’t care. I don’t know. You come here and do what you do,” said Mr. Michael, hunched over a giant tome, Network Security: The Complete Reference.

Mr. Michael says he is fascinated with his classes, which are offered at odd hours that cater to working adults like him.

UMUC, while state-run, shares some features of the flexible, online-heavy, and career-focused for-profit institutions that play such a prominent role in delivering education to adults.

The college exists “in this gray area between the two,” said Richard Garrett, an online-education expert who is managing director of the consultancy Eduventures. UMUC officials felt “more freedom than perhaps the average public institution has to embrace new delivery modes, new audiences,” he says, “but have equally felt that [they're] still part of a state institution.”

But some of the same qualities that help the institution compete in the adult market may also help explain the almost total silence surrounding Ms. Aldridge.

University College employs a largely adjunct faculty. Of nearly 2,000 instructors, 88 percent are part time, according to the Maryland Higher Education Commission. Multiyear contracts, which a handful of nonprofit colleges offer in lieu of tenure, are rarely offered at the university.

Because they don’t have tenure, UMUC faculty are afraid to speak out. But a small group of faculty based in Asia were brave enough to question the school’s policies and direction under Aldridge, reports the Washington Post:

The faculty faulted the Aldridge administration for alleged cuts that struck them as unfair, such as cancelling math, language and writing labs, requiring students in science labs to pay for “a nonexistent laboratory kit,” declining to pay instructors to teach tutorial labs, and refusing to compensate faculty for travel expenses and even for the cost of white-board markers.

“The administration is continually offloading institutional expenses onto faculty and students alike,” one respondent wrote.

The administration unilaterally reduced online classes to eight weeks, shorter than the average college semester, and did so “without discussion with the faculty,” Whealy wrote.

Aldridge “consistently and strenuously opposed” attempts by Asia instructors to form a faculty governance group, an indication, in their minds, that she was reluctant to involve faculty in decision-making.

Welcome to the 21st century college.

It’s so disappointing to hear about experiences like the one described below, but at the same time, I am not at all surprised. It’s the story of yet another earnest student signing up for distance education classes at the Harvard Extension School, hoping to get access to “Harvard faculty and rigorous academics” and “engaging online classes” (as the ad above describes) and instead being treated to this:

Last term was my first semester at HES and I was surprised at the lack of assignment and test feedback that I received in the courses.

In my first course, I didn’t receive a grade or comments back on a ten page essay that was worth 15% of my final grade or on my final exam that was worth 25% of my final grade.

In my second course, I never received any feedback or grade on a book review that was submitted in mid-November, on 50 page group project, or on the final exam. In the aggregate, these three items represented 55% of my final grade.

My third course consisted of a series of smaller assignments worth either 5% or 10% of my final grade each. The instructors provided grades and comments for most of these assignments, but at the end of the course, feedback and grades for the final couple of assignments wasn’t provided.

The responses to “DesertDog” are telling. “Unfortunately your experiences are not foreign to me,” said one person, who has been taking distance education courses for years at the Extension School. Another Extension School student said, “Last semester, I took a course and did not receive notification of any grades until the final grade was posted at the end of the semester. I got no feedback at all. It was quite frustrating,” A third online education student reported that “Some of my professors didn’t give me any feedback on my final projects and essays even when all the final grades were posted and even while I asked them several times.”

I’ve written about distance students being given a watered-down educational experience by the Harvard Extension School in the past (see “A sad day for the Harvard Extension School” to read yet another case). The usual responses? “You don’t know what you are talking about!” (even though I have taken distance education for credit) and “how dare you belittle distance education students!” (even though I am criticizing the Extension School and its policies, as opposed to students who try hard to get a good education).

Of course, not all distance education faculty are unresponsive. But regular reports like the ones above are a sign that many students feel misled about the Extension School’s promise of access to Harvard faculty and a true Harvard experience.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article on the rise of “badges”, a reward/accomplishment system that some online educational services like Khan Academy are using. Here’s the summary:

Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of “badges” to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain—intentionally so—to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom.

The article goes on to ask whether easy-to-understand badges that denote focused study or skills will undermine traditional diplomas, which offer very little insights into the specific skills or abilities that were attained.

In my opinion, this is unlikely, at least for some professions such as information technology. We’ve seen efforts like this in the past, such as certification programs based on in-class or online instructions. While certification exams are a prerequisite for certain occupations, they are sometimes seen as a poor indicator of how well someone will perform in real-world situations. Badges and certificates also suffer from short shelf-lives relative to the value of a diploma, which has brand power that can last decades.

It will be interesting to see how the badge system evolves, and whether it can gain strength through acceptance of widely followed standards or partnerships with testing organizations or government agencies.

There has been a huge buzz in the world of programming and online education over Stanford’s move to open up computer science lectures to the public. It’s an ambitious move that takes online learning beyond the model established by MIT OpenCourseWare — not only can members of the public have access to some of the highest-quality college-level instruction on the planet, but they are taking the same classes as Stanford students.

But not everyone is satisfied with the offerings. A Stanford student who tried one of the classes on machine learning says it was watered down and provided a poor substitute for in-person Stanford lectures. Here’s an excerpt:

… Since the video lectures were excellent in the class, I’ll start with the programming exercises. At the beginning, some of the programming assignments were challenging since I wasn’t used to matlab/octave programming or machine learning. However, the level of difficulty dropped off drastically as the quarter progressed. At its worst, I completed a few programming assignments without even knowing that the corresponding lectures had been released (I have never done machine learning in the past) …

… If these classes are going to be labeled as Stanford classes, then they should be taught as such. CS229a has by far been my easiest CS class (besides maybe the final project) I’ve taken at Stanford. Normally, I wouldn’t have had a problem with this, except now that Winter quarter registration has opened and I have found that half of my classes are now open to the public in the online format, I’m worried that the rest of the classes will follow this trend. If all of my classes suddenly become as easy 229a, I will be seriously disappointed. I came primarily to Stanford to learn and study – classes like CS229a don’t satiate that desire. Perhaps it’s a fluke and the other online classes will be much more difficult, but it is still worrisome. Stanford needs to keep rigor even in their online courses – it’s useless to lower the bar so low that it only takes a small step to get over. …

… Online lectures suck. Sure, they’re great for rainy days or people learning at a distance or people that don’t go to Stanford. However, these new classes are getting rid of in-person lectures completely. I met barely anyone in my CS229a class. Everything was done alone in my room, which is kind of crappy especially when there is such a nice campus right outside. If Stanford is going to offer these classes, then by all means offer them, but don’t make students take them as well. Have the professors teach as many students as they can in-person and the rest can watch online.”

(Be sure to read the reaction in the comments at the bottom of the post. There is more discussion of the class and Stanford’s online lectures on Hacker News)

The concern about content being watered down is also valid one — the school apparently put the interests of the public ahead of its own students, which understandably does not sit well with them. However, there are several ways to serve both populations without sacrificing the interests of either group, such as not watering down the content or keeping the two groups separate when it comes to designing for-credit content.

As for issues with the online format, this post should be a wake-up call for Stanford administrators and people who assume that online coursework can be substituted for an in-class learning experience. While there are benefits, there are many pitfalls. I’ve been a critic of online education for years, based on the developments I’ve seen at the Harvard Extension School as well as my own experience taking an online precalculus class for credit at UC Berkeley.

Opening up education to everyone via the models established by OpenCourseWare and Khan Academy lets learners get access to once-exclusive knowledge, and is an admirable goal. But when watered-down online coursework is offered as an equivalent of an in-class experience, or are offered for credit, that’s when the value proposition is thrown into sharp focus.