Re: Distance Learning and Copyright

Several of my friends have reported having to drop courses because they could not understand their TAs' English. These were students at regular state schools, on campus, etc. With email communication, at least, there is no accent as a barrier to understanding.

Another set of friends, at Harvard, report that they completely didn't follow parts of a certain professor's lecture. This was a fairly regular occurence -- about once a week, one would say to another, "Did you understand when Professor X was talking about Y?", and the other would reply, "No. He went over the math too fast." But had they been able to rewind, they might have had a better chance at it.

Different people have different learning styles. Some find it hard to absorb written information; others prefer the written word to the spoken. If a student has a hard time processing spoken language, the ability to rewind can make learning much easier.

Face-to-face contact is nice, I agree. But it would be unfair to look only at the drawbacks of distance learning, while ignoring its advantages.

On Thu, 2003-01-02 at 12:45, Michael Landau wrote:
>
> In the age of euphemisms in which the garbageman is a "sanitation engineer"
> and a sales clerk is a "customer service inventory expert" could distance
> learning be the new name for "correspondence school?"
>
> Nothing beats face to face contact, especially at a time when people spend
> very little time actually interacting with people in person and nearly all
> of their time in front of computer screens, on cell phones, and in their
> cars.
>
> The technology to allow students to take courses away from school has been
> around for a long time. Why is it that, in the past, very few institutions
> gave their students a pile of videotapes to be watched at home in place of a
> course, with instructions to call or write to the professor with querstions?
> Why, because part of the learning experience is direct communication IN
> PERSON.
>
> The distance learning movement arose at a time when the Internet was viewed
> as something that would forever change every aspect of every person's life.
>
> With the collapse of almost everything except for Amazon, eBay, and some
> informational sites, itr should now be realized that the Internet is not
> the best thing since sliced bread. It is great for some shopping. It is
> great for quickly ontaining information, but it is not a substitute for
> most activities, including university education.
>
> HAPPY NEW YEAR !
>
>
> Michael Landau
> Profesor of Law
> Georgia State University
> Atlanta, GA 30303

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