Virtual artificial education?

What are the consequences of online courses?

Today’s New York Times contains a report on a new, free online course on artificial intelligence being offered by Stanford University.

A free online course at Stanford University on artificial intelligence, to be taught this fall by two leading experts from Silicon Valley, has attracted more than 58,000 students around the globe — a class nearly four times the size of Stanford’s entire student body.

I will admit, I’m of two minds about such courses.

On one hand, they allow many more students to have access to the ideas of the professors who offer such courses. It’s an interesting way of using the university, a physical place where scholars gather and work, to organize a virtual education, which reaches students far beyond the university itself.

On the other hand, the proliferation of online courses may pose a fundamental challenge both to the idea of the university and to the professoriat. One potential problem is that, as elite universities such as Stanford offer such large courses, smaller colleges and universities may simply be driven out of business—or they will begin to hire fewer professors and purchase courses for their students from the elite universities that are able to offer online courses.

Thus, another problem is that the position of full-time, tenure-track professors will be undermined. Bruce Rosenbloom calls it the “disaggregated professor”:

it is not merely assessment that is being removed from the exclusive realm of the professoriate, but other critical aspects of the role of the “traditional professor”. The University of Phoenix and other for-profit online institutions have employed a unique model whereby course creation and design is performed by a team of content experts, instructional technologists and media specialists. The rationale behind this model is that such a team is more likely to produce excellent courses since specialists cover only their area or expertise, whereas your average professor cannot be expected to be an expert designer and media producer.  It should be noted, that other models exist that enable faculty to still be at the center of course design. Such models include campus support from campus technologists and media specialists or another model whereby an educational publisher creates course modules and content. Regardless of the model, college professors are being challenge as never before in regards to creating and designing their courses.

Once courses are created, many institutions employee course instructors to teach pre-designed and packaged content.  So rather than having full-time faculty teach the course, the course would be “delivered” by contingent faculty. In this case, the online world is reflecting what is happening on college campuses throughout the U.S.; namely the rise of adjunct faculty to teach a significant part of the college curriculum. Adjunct faculty as a percentage of newly hired faculty has been increasing at a steady pace for several decades with an ever-increasing percentage of college courses being taught by adjuncts. . .

However, in the traditional model, even adjuncts are often given a significant role in regards to structuring their courses. This may change to in the “disaggregated model”  of the future to one wherein adjuncts become mere “course deliverers.”

Online courses that are designed and taught by a team of course producers and delivers may, in turn, change the content of courses. It’s one thing for a professor to organize a course for students on campus; it’s quite another thing when the university is aware that a course is being broadcast around the world, whether for free or a fee. Professors are mostly left alone when we teach courses to “our own” students. Courses designed by a team consisting of content experts, instructional technologists, and media technicians, overseen by university administrators, and viewed by thousands of students elsewhere open up the syllabus and lectures to many more eyes—including those of the wealthy individuals and corporations who finance the university.

The question is, is it the technology of online courses that raises questions or the way online courses are being organized to offer a virtual and artificial education by the new corporate university?