Mr. Tabor , the only reports I have seen that say distance education is not superior to fixed facility talking head institutions, is the studies commissioned by the talking head institution and funded by the department of education?
I studied instructional video amd multimedia design and
I also studied biological and physical learning pathways
I have studied the genetics of learning
I also studied interactive computer assisted instruction
I also studied cirriculum design
and I was lucky enough to be apply some of these these studies with teams
of people to assemble some of the best courses ever put together. I
believe I was a part of the first ( or a very early) distance learning
course in America in 1958. It was
taught by Dr. Harvey E. White, from the university of Cal. I was a high
school sophmore and I went to class in my father's living room in
my pajamas at 4 am every weekday, 3000 miles away from the source of the
course.
Since that time I have had several college courses in physics, and believe me, to this date not one college course taken in a traditional classroom enclosed within the bindings of its four walls, with a live physics teacher could even get close to the quality of Dr. White's course. (The lectures were fairly standard with a textbook, because many of the tools of knowledge were not then developed, the wonder of the course was the quality of the laboratory and the design of the experiments). I challenge the statement you made in this email as being without foundation and in need of considerable rethought.
my experience has shown that distance learning when it is not confounded by an attempt to make it conform to the silliness of the program accreditation, bureaucracy of education as directed by the cirrculum design of habit, and when it is accompanied by modern learning tools, far outperforms physical school fixed facility talking head instruction. That kind of instruction is as backward to learning as drawing water from a well with a string attached to a bucket.
If the objectives are well stated and clearly articulated, and if access to all of the materials is made available, and if the technology of open system interactive instructional design is made available, no fixed based school can do the job of distance learning. Not one, anywhere in the world can compete with the instructional delivery or the content. Furthermore, no fixed based walled in old line traditional school can possibly have the mix of students crossing all walks of life and nations of the world that the fixed based schools themselves claim is important to quality education. Student interaction is a part of the distance learning experience.
Moreover, I believe you will learn if you dig in, that when several professors, with years of experience get together and create a high budget instructional program, not only do they learn their own materials better, they also discover why students have trouble learning their materials, and as a result they make anticipative accommodations for those learning difficulties. Further, a few times it has been shown that two or three courses could be learned better condensed into one course done right.
The traditional walled in university as an instructional source is as outdated as the buggy works factory. In fact, most of the univerisities have recognized this and have moved to getting government grants and creating patents and copyrights to retain their power and supplement their tutitions.
For years, I have said the following words:
Education is a bureaucracy, learning is a biological activity.
Human learning is limited only by the laws and rules narrow thinking men and women dream up as necessary or important for learners to follow. No where on earth, can one find more restrictions on learning and blinders on thought than in the halls of congress or the classrooms of accredited institutions.
What I think you will find is that distance learning will bring the best content to the forefront and learners, not necessarily traditional students, interested in learning will ignore both the instructor and the institution. The day of NPO education is fast approaching a close, and the challenge will be to keep the content of knowledge, information and technology in the public domain.
Institutions should get out of the instruction business and limit their activities to credentials for canidates who qualify. Leave the instruction to the experts (few of whom can be found in the universities) and the learning to students ( few of whom can be found in the universities).
What is happening is free universities are springing up everywhere and like open source linux, students and instructors are providing course materials, content, instructionals, tutorials and the like. Soon the collections will far outweigh the value of a traditional university and the quality of the student and the value of the education will be much much superior, easier to acquire, and vastly more encompassing than can be experienced in the traditional campus.
The only thing keeping the traditional university in place is the laws
which direct funding and dictate accreditation, but when the open source
studies
and graduates out perform tradition and entrenched bureaucracies it will
change and change is on its way.
The people of the world are seeking and finding ways around the bureaucracies which lawmakers have built for the benefit of the constitutents of its lobbists, but what congress cannot limit, no matter the begging of the lobbists representing the non human entities, is man's ability to learn or his ability to engineer ways to enhance that learning ability.
Martin Luther a few years ago, nailed to a church door, the beginning of a revolution which has only just begun its journey to improve the lot of the common man. Separation of the bureaucracy of education and the dictatorial authorities of the past from access to learning needs has taken a while. Getting ungated, universal access to knowledge for all citizens has been a prequisite, but is now moving at a pace which will soon overcome the lawmaker's ability to squelch it no matter how many DMCA's they dream up.
sterling
On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Keith Tabor wrote:
> I was just going to say that most prestigious
> universities are going to find distance learning a
> lose-lose situation. Any researcher in education can
> tell you that online ed is less efficient.
> Furthermore, large universities going into distance ed
> are only going to lend credibility to the mail-in
> universities that have the stronghold on distance ed
> at this point. I think the technology salesmen have
> scared the universities into thinking they have to
> provide distance-ed. If the US post office had
> employed the same sales techniques before the internet
> boom it would have saved me several years of studying.
>
> But that all seems so moot in view of our "rights".
>
> Keith
>
> --- sstouden[_at_]thelinks.com wrote:
> > Sterling again.
> > I have been on the internet since 1988. In 1992
> > I opened an internet
> > service company (ISP) because to me, for the first
> > time, I had been
> > handed a master pass key which would entitle me to
> > hearthe voices of the
> > world and to the experience the knowlege and wisdom
> > which the state locks
> > up in its university departments and government
> > secrets departments.
> >
> > On the net were course in nuclear physics, math,
> > chemistry, law, and
> > pictures of experiments being done as well as
> > descriptions of how they
> > worked. I have a degree or two in science, but I
> > learned more and saw
> > more on the net during the years 1992 to 1996 than I
> > learned or even
> > thought possible in 6 years of college courses and
> > laboratory courses at
> > a you can learn if you pay school.
> >
> > finally, I did not have to pay $80 to one of the
> > book publishers to be
> > able to learn about the new stuff on the Elementary
> > particles only to
> > discover it was already two years old. One the net,
> > then, I could
> > keep as up to date as if I were an employee at a
> > government lab or an
> > instructor in one the fortunate facilities to have
> > the equipment to be
> > able to do the work. But then along came the
> > copyright and patent
> > attorneys, the lobbiest, and the freedom squelching
> > congress writing laws
> > that this or that on the net were against this or
> > that law or this or that
> > rule or whatever.
> >
> > Next came the lawsuits, first it was antisex,
> > then antispan, then it
> > was the big guys realizing that the domain names
> > little people had were
> > names the wanted so they turned to government and
> > out of that amount many
> > other things sprang ICANN. Holy gumolly, we went
> > from a free get your
> > domain name on a system that was free widely open
> > and an information
> > freeques paradise to a highly controlled, regulated
> > envinroment where
> > every damn non human in the world claimed the right
> > to prevent every
> > human from doing anything on the net unless the
> > human was first authorzied
> > by the government, allowed by law, and willing to
> > pay by the bit.
> >
> > I want to the lawmakers to hear this, I want them
> > to understand, our
> > laws need the approval of the people, this is one
> > person who does not give
> > his approval to any law that attempts to capture,
> > privatize, or regulate
> > the flow of creativity, orginality, Knowledge,
> > information and
> > technology.
> > I want naspter back, and I want all of the people
> > that had anything to do
> > with stopping them to be made to chew brown dead
> > grass for eternity. i
> > want the open university, open all the way to the
> > laboratory and the class
> > room, without gating or anything. It is an
> > opportunty for a college
> > professor to become an international star, to
> > transition a large
> > portion of our society from entertainment to
> > learning. Instead of the
> > story of three dumb bears inbetween ads from
> > artichoks to condoms, we have
> > the uninterrupted story of the force carriers and
> > the star of the show,
> > Dr. Bold, PHD, MD, LLB, ABA, BAF,FAD {basically a
> > genius}and winner of 50
> > novel prizes, creator of the lighter than air
> > machine, creator of the roof
> > top power generator that heats, cools and lights
> > ones house, and the set
> > will be his classroom and time is class time, or we
> > have at
> > http://www.somthing Dr. Notsobold, who will in this
> > hour demostrate just
> > how easy it is to clone a gene.
> >
> >
> > Humans are demanding this freedom on the net. It
> > will make the past time
> > of many Americans be to study a course(or selected
> > parts thereof) that
> > reside on a server in the laboratory of Dr. whomever
> > at say the University
> > of best knowledge. The class notes, the recorded
> > lecture, laboratory
> > demonstrations, practice aids and tutorials should
> > all be open to all,
> > whether or not one is a paid or matriculated
> > student. These courses were
> > created with government funds, at a state supported
> > school, that means
> > they are public.
> >
> > I believe the next big war in the world is going
> > to be the people
> > (human people) against the non humans and it will be
> > for access to
> > information and the removal of laws that allow
> > anyone to capture a human
> > mind product and make money from it or to use it as
> > a source of power.
> > Information is created by humans, it is a part of
> > humanity, and it is the
> > right of humans, wherever in the world they are, to
> > have free ungated
> > access to any knowledge, information or technology
> > that other humans in
> > the same world have created. Moreover, that
> > knowledge to be useful must be
> > all knowledge created up to and including the
> > present moment.
> >
> > These non humans have caused government to sequester
> > for them the products
> > of the human mind and to package them into little
> > human mind
> > packets. As an added bonus, these non humans have
> > extracted from a
> > government (billed as here to serve humanity), a
> > licence to market as a
> > monopoly, that government granted human mind
> > product, and not only that,
> > the same government has promised as a part of its
> > gift to the non human to
> > also direct all of the forces of government against
> > any human who would
> > deny the non human his government guarranteed
> > profit. government would
> > enforce the captured, encapsulated, privatized,
> > monopolized human mind
> > product against the seeming triteness of user
> > humanity.
> >
> > If ever there was a place where the words of
> > patrick Henry had
> > meaning it is here on the net "Give me liberty or
> > give me death". freedom
> > begins at the boundaries of ones imagination and
> > expands according to the
> > ones access to knowledge, information and
> > technology. It is a right of
> > every human in the world, to expand those boundaries
> > without limitation
> > and it is the duty of every lawmaker to respect
> > those rights.
> > sterling
> >
> > On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, Nepkie, Janet wrote:
> >
> > > Sterling,
> > > Your listing of many concerns of academic authors,
> > including the thought that the "wisdom of the past
> > will disappear" upon their demise, is understandable
> > and laudable. Your recent posting seemed critical
> > of Mr. Hoffman's lack of discussion of such issues.
> > Let me reassure you, however, that Mr. Hoffman's
> > site and timely articles offer valuable information
> > on how to gain important protection for that same
> > wisdom of the past. It seems to me that academic
> > authors have a responsibility to understand how to
> > retain control of their authorship, since this is
> > the only way they can be sure that such material
> > will remain freely available to students and society
> > (if that is the academic author's goal). The Hoffman
> > site has been most useful to me in this endeavor.
> > I'd be interested to hear from Sterling and others
> > on the list regarding academic authors' ownership
> > of their writings.
> > > Thanks
> > > Janet Nepkie
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: sstouden[_at_]thelinks.com
> > [mailto:sstouden[_at_]thelinks.com]
> > > Sent: Mon 12/23/2002 4:53 AM
> > > To: Multiple recipients of list
> > > Cc:
> > > Subject: Re: Distance Learning and Copyright
> > >
> >
> === message truncated ===
>
>
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Received on Wed Jan 01 2003 - 16:50:47 GMT
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