BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020 469
dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."
My Professor had a Similar Idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
I once had a profession with a similar idea. He thinks that you should go to the University, buy all the required textbooks, and show up 4 years later to get your degree. One student asked him, "How will they know if you really read the books?" The professor replied, "They don't care now."
Re:This seems likely. (Score:1, Interesting)
I would disagree with that and say that each generation is getting dumber, and as such less people go to college, let alone graduate public highschool.
The proof is in the trends. With each and every new trend that actively engages young minds to rot (read: pre-occupies critical thought with fruitless endeavours), such as your ipod, netbook, gameboy, etc etc etc... Anything that can deter you from using logic and reasoning while applying critical thought, can't be the future of our education. If anyone really thinks so, shoot me now. Please.
Re:Why Pay for a Degree (Score:5, Interesting)
A degree isn't everything. All it does is prove you took a certain number of units at some universityâ¦
You're absolutely correct. I couldn't agree with you more. However, it still doesn't change the fact that degrees are used to filter out applicants. If you're able to get the jobs and experience without a degree that look good on a resume then more power to you, but not having the degree will make that a harder task, as well as affect your pay scale.
Re:Sure it will. (Score:1, Interesting)
The paperless office isn't perfect, nor does it have to be. We are a law firm that has dramatically reduced our printing of paper. We basically said: What laws require us to keep paper? If a law didn't apply, we do not print it, we scan it or archive it.
A little story about University of Phoenix (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Classroom interaction is valuable (Score:5, Interesting)
I go to a small tech school, who's primary programs are IT and Medical Coding, and most all the labs are virtual. For the IT stuff they do have actual Cisco hardware to play with, but all the MS servers, etc were run on VM's and such, as well as most of the Cisco labs.
Anatomy and physics classes were done via simulations on the computers. This is fine for anything short of becoming an actual nurse or doctor, or physicist, none of which were even close to being thought about being offered by the school.
There are a very large number of programs that can be offered 100% remotely, without requiring physical labs or being physically in the room with the proffessor. I know a guy who got his advanced math degree over the internet, his class used collaberation software to hold classes and there was plenty of interaction. In fact, in that kind of environment people are a lot more likely to speak up than in a classroom with people watching.
I think it's foolish to think ALL degrees will be even possible online, let alone that they will replace brick-and-mortar schools. There are too many degrees that absolutely require a physical presence. However, there are a heck of a lot of degrees that really don't require a physical presence, and those may well be offered online-only at some point. I think 11 years is a little hopeful though.
Re:Sure it will. (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as I recall, my courses (over ten years ago now) were pretty much all canned scripts. Except for when the idjuts started asking inane questions, and then the professor would carefully answer while the rest of the class got bored.
Pros (from my recollection) would include:
Cons may include:
For those not fresh out of high-school, on-line learning (no interfering with your full-time job or whatever) is important. For those who are getting the education right after high school and before going into the job market, not so much, even if they may be the ones more comfortable with the technology.
Re:Why Pay for a Degree (Score:5, Interesting)
It also proves beyond a doubt that you could withstand an average length of association requiring the constant navigation of byzantine and plainly absurd, arbitrary and obstructing policies and procedures involving intensely egomaniacal petty infighting sadists and their droves of attendant sycophants competing for favor all the while being forced into insane and conflicting schedules designed explicitly to prevent you from accomplishing anything, yet degree in hand, you've proven that somehow you did and still had the composure to not get arrested at your commencement in a cathartic act of domestic terrorism.
Your average high-school dropout realizes this is insane and simply wanders off in frustration, but someone with a degree has been highly conditioned to see it as acceptable, normal human behavior...which, sadly, it is.
Re:Sure it will. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because I'm a scientist. Students need to spend time outside of lectures, in the labs. It's where they learn the point of all the stuff taught in lectures - it's where we teach the craft. I enjoy giving my students something to calculate, and then measure - I try to choose something that is really difficult to calculate accurately. Sometimes the 'edge effects' dominate, and it's just quicker/more reliable to measure. A good scientist will spot those, but it only comes with practice. Tracking down the causes of those 'edge effects' takes a lot of years experience. Something you really don't get over the internet.
Re:What you learn in class is less than half of it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sure it will. (Score:3, Interesting)
Online doesn't necessarily mean canned scripts where you click Next over and over. My wife finished her degree in a degree completion program through the University of Massachusetts. She had frequent teleconferencing sessions with her teacher and other students, and of course, tons of reading to do. She probably interacted more with her teachers in a year and a half through UMASS than I did in four years at the UW. More my own fault though.
Re:Classroom interaction is valuable (Score:4, Interesting)
How it went at Harvard (Score:3, Interesting)
Despite this, I took only 1 class online--for the other 13 classes I drove the 340 mile round trip to campus (a total of 60,000 miles for the degree). Why?
Because, first I wanted to participate. I had the opportunity to become a TA, work with the online crew, get to know professors. I also got a job offer as a programmer at a research lab in Cambridge which was cool.
Second, I flunked my online course--well, I got a C which doesn't get you grad credit at Harvard. That's because the streaming lectures were available 24/7. That means you can always catch it tomorrow. And pretty much anything that can be put off a day never gets done.
Here I was working to perfect online ciricula with some of the smartest people I've ever met. But I know now that an online course is not the same thing as a real class. Whether it is an useful alternative depends on the student, but they are very different activities.
Re:Sure it will. (Score:3, Interesting)
People keep citing technology as a reason that the classroom will be obsolete, and following the basic premise that you've laid out: the lecture is canned, I could watch a video and get the same result. (I'm not ignoring the rest of your points, but I do want to respond to that one.)
The current trend in educational technology is just the opposite - it's an attempt to make the dialog more symmetric (note: I did not say completely symmetric, and it should not be!) Student response systems (aka Clickers) allow instructors to get a more real-time feedback about how well a class has understood a topic, and allows us to adjust our delivery/explanation approach, and reallocate time from mastered to unmastered topics. Online homework systems help large classes still receive feedback regarding their progression through the topic, and 'shrink' the size of the class (my 140 person class gets interaction that feels more like a 40 person class).
That's not to say that we've reached a new steady state, and it's not an advocacy for large class sizes. However, I hope that these passing examples point out that when properly used, technology can help make the classroom more relevant than a video file. There will certainly be a growing-in period for the technologies and their uses to mature, and I do think we're in the early stages of that now, but I see a lot of faculty growing beyond 'PowerPointless' presentations and that's a good start!
Re:University of Mom's Basement (Score:3, Interesting)
Aren't your talents a bit wasted on application development though? I'm sure the money is good if you are top of the pile ... but still.
I don't think your story is all that encouraging for those who aren't prodigies. People aren't all as gifted as you ... some of us need the college diploma to get the foot in the door, because as an average joe we can't make up the black mark from the lack of it with hard work alone.
College isn't just for the lazy, but also for the mediocre ... and anyone who intends to get into research.
Re:Self-promotion vs. Reality (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't accept the argument that a degree in Psychology is necessary to predict the future of higher education in the U. S.. You are questioning the credentials of a person on the basis of your particular perspective. It sounded snippish to me...and snobbish. I question the validity of your suggestion that he visit a neuroscience lab. The future of higher education will not be found there either. Wiley actually has pretty good credentials to say what he said.
You're right, it sounded that way. I apologize. I didn't mean for it to. I'll take the -1 flamebait mod. I first attempted to correct inaccuracies. The article does state he's a professor of "psychology and instructional technology" which is misleading.
However, I maintain he should visit hands on labs to see the simultaneous learning of subject and process. We use such technology as gives radio astronomers thousands or millions of "channels", bioelectric monitoring sensitive to 10 to 20 nanovolts (up to 256 simultaneous channels), and so forth. The complexity of the technology combined with the experimental design makes for incredibly complex experimental set ups and attendant errors which must be rooted out and corrected. You can't foresee every such problem and so you can't simulate the experience. I don;t think he's been exposed to such a situation. He should be. If not neuroscience, pick another hard science that uses such complex designs and technology.