Online Education Is Lonely, Joyless, and One-Size-Fits-All, Says New York Times Columnist Who Has Apparently Never Been on the Internet
22nd July 2012
Katherine Mangu-Ward takes exception.
Actually, most traditional classrooms contain more monologue than dialogue already. (“Anyone? anyone?”). But dozens of for-profit companies (and nonprofits) are working right now to solve that problem by offering products that make it possible for teachers to get feedback from their students in real time. Weekly quizzes, midterms, or final papers are crude tools to gauge whether anyone in the room has any idea what the teacher is talking about. A bunch of kids sitting at computers can be tested twice a day, twice an hour, or twice a minute to make sure they are following the lesson. If they’re not, a human teacher can intervene—by chat, email, phone, or in person—or the program can just serve up pre-crafted remedial modules that have helped kids with similar problems in the past. Edmundson may be right that the very best, top of the line education experience should have a face-to-face component. But for an awful lot of students, an automated program may be able to offer more of a dialogue than in-person profs have the ability or inclination to do.
If this guy had a case, then movies would never have pushed out the live theater.