Do Online Educational Badges Threaten Conventional Education Models? 294
An anonymous reader writes "Educational badges, which seem like a playful riff on Boy Scout skill patches, pose an existential crisis for colleges and universities. If students can collect credentials from MITx and Khan Academy and other free Web sites, why go to a campus?"
the problem is profit (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the idea of models for education that have been around for a long while apparently arent meeting the peoples needs.. the popularity of khan and mitx is just but one example...
the 'threat' of people learning more stuff only exists if your business relies on selling people an education..
for everyone else its good news!
Getting a degree (Score:4, Interesting)
The most important thing in getting a degree is getting that ticket punched. There are jobs that just won't even talk to a person that doesn't have a degree.
My degree is in music but in interviews I've never been asked what my degree was in. I've often been asked if I have a degree.
What's wrong with Boy Scout badges? (Score:2, Interesting)
Being an Eagle Scout got me my first few jobs. The First Aid and knot-tying skills I learned have continued to be useful throughout my adult life. Your "playfull riff" is offensive, sir anonymous reader.
Re:the problem is profit (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, not so much. Setting aside diploma mills like DeVry, University of Phoenix, etc, it is helpful to society to have professors in colleges who aren't just there to provide "here's the video for the lecture, here's the choose-a-guess test, here's your certificate" classes but instead provide actual interactive discussions, answer questions relevant to the topic at hand from a learned perspective, continue to do research in the subjects they are teaching, and continually update the curriculum thereby.
On the flipside, yes, there are certain areas of the economy where "college" has taken over the role previously taken by what were called "trade schools", and there's the inevitable degree-creep that's been caused by the brainless HR sector constantly requiring more and more of a checklist of "must have this, must have that" to apply for jobs that has come with the computerization era. The idea of "all jobs require a college degree", whereas 30 years ago it was a HS diploma, or the number of jobs now requiring a Master's rather than a mere Associate's or Bachelor's degree, all pushed even further by a complete refusal by companies to actually provide on-the-job training, instead insisting that all new hires should drop in like made-to-order cogs on day one.
Khan and MITx look a lot to me like the Idiocracy approach to "education" - one size fits all, just take your multiple-guess test and keep taking it till you get your cert.
Re:Not optimistic. (Score:5, Interesting)
I tentatively agree, but I think the entrance of "big-name" universities into this experiment potentially changes things, if they keep standards up. Anything with the name MIT or Stanford associated with it has some amount of built-in cachet. I think that even if it's not a regular degree, but Stanford-with-an-asterisk, employers, and especially smaller and less rigid employers like we often find in technology, will be willing to consider it if Stanford does a reasonable job with it.
I can especially imagine employers with specific needs taking it seriously, e.g. someone needing a data analyst may consider certification in 2 statistics and 2 machine-learning classes from Stanford good enough for the job.
Re:Not optimistic. (Score:5, Interesting)
In tech there seems to still be enough of a shortage of skilled people that people without degrees do get hired regularly, though not as easily as people with degrees. Silicon Valley startups seem to already consider "some cool projects on GitHub" to be the moral equivalent of a bachelor's degree...
If Khan or MITx were to install Slash (Score:2, Interesting)
it is helpful to society to have professors in colleges who [...] provide actual interactive discussions, answer questions relevant to the topic at hand from a learned perspective
Can't this be done online with software such as Slash or phpBB?
DeVry is a tech / trade school not a diploma mill (Score:4, Interesting)
And if any thing tech / IT needs trade like learning.
As in IT
CS is very top level and has a over load of theory.
Certs are vender based and some are ones that you can cram for and pass with no idea on how to do the real work.
Tech school and trades is the right fit with some real apprenticeships / interns (that are not office boys and ones the get paid and do real work with a learning part to it)
Re:If Khan or MITx were to install Slash (Score:2, Interesting)
it is helpful to society to have professors in colleges who [...] provide actual interactive discussions, answer questions relevant to the topic at hand from a learned perspective
Can't this be done online with software such as Slash or phpBB?
No. In-class discussions use peer pressure to weed out trolls. Moderation and reputation systems are not an effective substitute.
Re:Safe for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
short version for tl;dr:
- let's allow online universities
- so we have fewer lazy students at the universities
- students who actually come to study are served much better, and really have interaction with teachers, who suddenly have more time
Re:IT's time to rework colleges and universities (Score:4, Interesting)
Personalized AND video AND accredited (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the problem is profit (Score:4, Interesting)
Online education isn't the Idiocracy approach. Traditional eduction has become the Idiocracy education.
A major piece of this conversation that gets completely ignored is that there are different levels of education. Look at all of the comments in any thread concerning Khan Academy , and people start talking about how they don't want to be operated on by someone who got their medical degree online, or drive on a bridge by someone who got their engineering degree online. The conversation should start with "Does a 6 year old learn math better via Khan Academy or in a traditional 1st grade classroom?" This should then be asked for each year until you get to the end. I can tell you that my 7 year old child gets about the same amount of education from 6 hours of Khan Academy as traditional education would provide in 6 months.
Gamification Fanboyism (Score:4, Interesting)
Two weeks ago it was the iPad, today it's gamification. I wonder what it is going to be tomorrow?
Colleges and Universities have survived and adapted to the introduction of the Guttenberg press, the public library, the personal computer, and even the Internet, but now that the concept of gamification is around -- their days are numbered? This claim doesn't make a lot of sense.
This statement implies that (1) colleges and universities can not copy/adapt the practice themselves, (2) that the online concept of badges can not be cheated or gamed, (3) that the concept of gamification is going to be equally effective in all areas of education and on all web sites, and (4) that gamification is so freaking effective and disruptive -- it's probably even more disruptive than the printing press itself -- it's going to take over the World !!
To all of that, I say BS.
Colleges and universities are indeed in an existential crisis right now (which no doubt will shape them in different ways), but this was the case long before youtube or gamification even came along.
Re:Portfolios (Score:4, Interesting)
In the mid 90s I worked with several good friends on a research project investigating the sexually based dimorphism of the human corpus collosum. It not only looked at the dimorphism among a large Stanford based MRI baseline data set, but also looked at hundreds of people from around the world, who were gay, lesbian and transgendered to determine if preference and/or gender identity could be fully or partially explained by brain morphology (i.e. brain sexing.) The project was not affiliated with any school or industrial organization. It was a fascinating project.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)