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Originally posted by: Show me the way to go home
" Next thing you know they will be demanding to have the University of Poplaville."

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I thought there was already a publicly-supported institution of higher education in Poplaville.

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Originally posted by: Fight the Powers That Be!
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Figure this into ratiocinations about the fate and relationship of USM and USM-Gulf USM-Gulf Park would gradually transform into a facsimilie of a small liberal arts college: a writing across the curriculum curriculum; an interdisciplinary emphasis on critical literacy instruction; a commitment to having genuine scholars teach introductory courses; a plan to enhance collegiality, student mentoring and campus life through interdepartmental cooperation on a small campus. Several talented and promising professors were specfically hired to help implement this vision, if I may call it that. Guess who the second one was. Diane Stevenson! . . . . And it was not considered pie-in-the-sky by the Pedagogy Section of the MLA when it accepted Dr. Stevenson's paper on the Gulf Coast writing initiative for presentation at this year's convention in Philadelphia.  
No, in those situations and contexts, the Gulf Park interdisciplinary initiative -a humanties-centric program for USM on the Coast--was considered eminently realistic, and achievable, not to mention innovative and creative.
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This makes the push toward on-line classes all the more disheartening. This looks like a great idea that is being tossed. Shelboo and co. don't know what a university is, so they sure as heck don't know what a liberal arts college is. They don't even really recognize the need for liberal arts at USM, I can't imagine them even comprehending this on plan on the coast, much less supporting it. (Idots!) And for the record, I can't imagine that Diane Stevenson said anything in her class that I didn't say several times over in mine last year. Does anyone know if she's job hunting? Does anyone know if she's suing?

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Originally posted by: foot soldier
"I can't imagine that Diane Stevenson said anything in her class that I didn't say several times over in mine last year."

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I'm with you foot soldier. My guess is that many USM faculty members have, in one way or the other, discussed on-line instruction in their classes. I can think of quite a few ways it could (and should) be a legitimate topic. I am a university teacher/researcher in a subject matter discipline. University teachers/researchers are the ones who can best speak to teaching methods in college classes. I really don't care how favorably a college administration views on-line instruction. I view it as an abomination. If I want to say that in the classroom, I will say it. [I may have actually said it already, but I can't recall details].

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Originally posted by: stinky cheese man
"I'm a bit stunned about the comments about on-line courses. Horace Fleming and Myron Henry were advocates of on-line courses, even in the humanities. During their leadership english got grant money to put ENG 203 (World Literature), a course in the general education curriculum, online. If I'm not mistaken most technical writing courses in english are currently listed as online. Other departments offer online courses as well. i'm not saying i'm fond of them, but let's be realistic about who endorsed (and endorses) them and what departments are using them for instruction. "

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I'll play the devil's advocate. There are many Tier-1 universities offering on-line undergraduate and graduate courses in the liberal arts, as well as non-lab science and engineering courses.  This is not a new idea. I'm pretty well attuned to the goings on at my alma maters, Texas A&M, Colorado, and the U. of Texas Southwestern Medical School, all of which offer a broad array of courses via the internet. In my neighborhood Texas, Texas A&M, Colorado, and the U. of Houston all offer internet based masters programs in several different fields, with periodic weekend "meetings" supplementing their on-line courses. While you may find internet  courses  philosophically offensive and inferior in quality to traditional teaching,  they certainly aren't Shelby's brainchild.  If anything, USM is probably  behind the curve in developing its internet offerings.

As others have already pointed out, such courses provide opportunities otherwise unavailable to students who live in remote locations, including active duty military personnel all over the globe.  I don't suggest that internet courses can or should replace traditional modes of instruction, but they are a valuable adjunct to traditional instruction for those lacking other options. I should add that the institutions I've mentioned do not offer on-line degrees at any level, only on-line credit courses that may be applied toward a degree.  And, Southwestern doesn't even field a football team.

AE

 

The strong sentiments being voiced against on-line courses have as more to do with the manner in which they are being planned than with their content and conduct.

Suffice it to say that nobody has consulted the Coast faculty about how to properly accommodate 3,800 on-line students. Nor have any of the other appropriate faculty governance bodies been much involved in this, Academic Council for instance, as one might expect given proposals for such sweeping change as Grime outlined.

Until SJT learns the basics of shared governance, in other words, he's going to keep stirring up a hornet's nest, and rightly so.

Oh, and the English Department's on-line offering of 203? I could have this slightly wrong, but I think that was funded by a grant that paid for the lion's share of instructional costs for those courses if, and only if, all 203's were online. The chair of the English Dept. jumped on this, and with very little input from the department faculty, because it was a way to meet the demand for instruction in English w/out exceeding the Department's meagre budget. The shift to online in English, thus, was driven by budget constraints and marked by certain lapses in the protocols of shared governance.

Sounds familiar, eh?

 

Responding in part to AE & in part to Curmudgeon...

One of the major (as in perhaps the major) issues related to rolling out online classes that have any semblance of credibility is getting faculty appropriately trained to use the technology appropriately. Prospective online teachers need to learn the basics of whatever platform (Blackboard, WebCT, Desire2Learn, etc) is to be implemented and they need to learn how to present content effectively online. Online instructors must be committed to checking email, messages, etc., more often than might be necessary in an "ordinary" office environment & this may mean that the instructors need laptops, remote access privileges, etc., when they are "on the road". At the very least, online instructors must be on the priority list for high-end office PCs & support equipment like scanners, digital samplers, etc.

At least at the outset, online instructors should be given some special remuneration for all this professional development. And it is unreasonable for the institution to require instructors to teach online (as part of their regular load?) without providing the hardware & software support I've mentioned above.

The degree to which an online program can aspire to "quality" is directly related to the investments the institution makes in hardware, software & meaningful professional development for faculty.

There will also be expenses incurred in identifying the best faculty to do the job. As Stephen Judd pointed out in another thread, not all professors do well in large classes. Similarly, not all professors can do well in an online environment. Interestingly, some who don't do well in a traditional classroom may do very well online. It's a matter of intelligently selecting the folks who have the skills & personalities that match the task.

Getting books for online students can also be a challenge. Is the USM bookstore already geared up to be a mail order operation? (I know it's B&N, but my experience is that B&N online isn't always a reliable source of books during the "heat" of registration.) Chalk up some additional expense & aggravation in this category, too.

Curmudgeon brought up the issue of test integrity. Of course, proponents of online classes will argue that you really don't have any assurance that the person sitting in a traditional classroom is really the person the instructor thinks is taking the class, but that's a pretty far-fetched rationalization. A common solution is to require students to take exams in a proctored testing center. This means an additional expense for the institution, since if the overall online program actually flies, there will be a need for dedicated testing centers with good equipment, trained personnel, etc. While my own online students have utilized public libraries & military education centers for proctored testing in "extreme situations," it is incumbent on the institution to provide support for testing.

The summary of all that I've said here is "It ain't cheap to set up a half-way decent online instructional program." It's not going to be a big income generator unless the institution decides to tack on a tuition surcharge.

With declining state appropriations, simply gunning for 20,000 students is only going to get USM a bigger slice of a smaller pie.

Once again, I'll say that USM still doesn't have the foggiest idea what to do with Gulf Park.

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Originally posted by: ram
"As a non-academic, I am curious how courses that require extensive lab and library work are taught on-line.  Wouldn't "distance learners" without access to a research library or lab facilities suffer?"

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Courses with heavy lab or clinical components are really not suitable for online -- at least the labs aren't. This is particularly the case when the focus of the lab is on technique. These classes may be better candidates for hybrid technology, if we assume that something has to be offered online, which of course is an invalid assumption.

OTOH, libraries have been at the forefront making their resources available online. A good example (with a ton of links) is at Mississippi Electronic Libraries Online. Recently, I caught my daughter (a h.s. senior) pulling full-text journal articles from the UMC library. I started to imagine huge credit card charges & started to freak until she pulled out her Ole Miss student ID (from Summer College) & informed me that "my PIN works at the Med Center, too"... She went on to tell me that she did a lot of her research in the Ole Miss library using online terminals.

There's no problem requiring an online student to make a real-space/real-time trip to a physical library, either. (As I mentioned earlier, public libraries have been very helpful to me serving as proctored testing sites for my own online students.)

Invictus brought out two really important points regarding online courses. Faculty need training in order to learn how to effectively teach. I am not talking about learning WebCT, but how to use this completely alien (to most of us anyway) medium to teach. But just as important, faculty need decent computers to do online teaching. Nearly three weeks ago, iTech came into my office and mistakenly touched my office desktop computer. It was one of those brand new IBMs. They broke it and I STILL do not have a computer in my office! My computer was so new that I hadn't backed up anything, including exams, spreadsheets where I keep grades, powerpoint classroom presentations, and all my research. The fact is that there really is no money in the hands of people who should have access to it to replace or fix computers like mine. I understand that there is at least one other faculty in my building (LAB) with no computer, and several with very broken ones that barely work and many many others with real pieces of junk that someone once called computers. This push for online courses is a ridiculous one given that the university can't seem to afford to keep up the computers we have and replace the ones that are broken. I was told yesterday that I may very well not have a replacement this semester. Online indeed. I wonder what I might be expected to do today if I were teaching any online courses now with no computer?

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Originally posted by: Amy Young
"Invictus brought out two really important points regarding online courses. Faculty need training in order to learn how to effectively teach. I am not talking about learning WebCT, but how to use this completely alien (to most of us anyway) medium to teach. But just as important, faculty need decent computers to do online teaching. Nearly three weeks ago, iTech came into my office and mistakenly touched my office desktop computer. It was one of those brand new IBMs. They broke it and I STILL do not have a computer in my office! My computer was so new that I hadn't backed up anything, including exams, spreadsheets where I keep grades, powerpoint classroom presentations, and all my research. The fact is that there really is no money in the hands of people who should have access to it to replace or fix computers like mine. I understand that there is at least one other faculty in my building (LAB) with no computer, and several with very broken ones that barely work and many many others with real pieces of junk that someone once called computers. This push for online courses is a ridiculous one given that the university can't seem to afford to keep up the computers we have and replace the ones that are broken. I was told yesterday that I may very well not have a replacement this semester. Online indeed. I wonder what I might be expected to do today if I were teaching any online courses now with no computer?"

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Why am I not surprised that Amy Young's computer got broke?

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Originally posted by: OLDIEGOLDIE
"on-line courses . . . "from anywhere to anywhere". . . the only tasks . . . would be to collect the fees and send out grade reports. The faculty need not be part of that "university" . . .  Could this be a glimpse into the future?"

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It's difficult to determine whether you are serious or say this in jest. I do hope you are saying it in jest.  Having the USM name attached to such an operation, even if the on-campus faculty were not involved in any way, would ruin what is left of USM's reputation. If USM were to adopt the model described in your posting, it would be more feasible to simply "hire" or "contract" an already existing on-line operation to take care of all of those "anywhere to anywhere" details but issue the diploma under the name UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI. Students would not even know where their instructor resided. All they would know is if they submitted an on-line application, paid their fees, did what the computer asked them to do, they would received a beautiful USM diploma suitable for framing - even more beautiful than the ones Invictus prepares each Sunday. Could this be a glimpse into the future? If USM did this, I would most definitely take all reference to USM off my resume.

I was browsing through the hard copy of the USM Schedule of Classes a couple weeks ago.  I was amazed at the number of courses that listed the Chair of Economic Development as the instructor. I didn't count but I feel confident that there were at least 8 classes scheduled in the Fall of 2004 - all with TBA meeting times and dates.  Are these the kinds of courses to which the above posters are referring?  Are these courses approved?  Are they making?  Are they being subcontracted to nameless, faceless on-line profs?  They looked like business courses if I remember correctly.

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Originally posted by: Interloper
"Does your Academic Council have any role in course approval? Or is that body just a figurehead? The buck should stop there. They do maintain academic integrity, don't they?"

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Yes. Courses must go through and be approved by academic council before they can be listed.

It is just possible that the courses PUSM was seeing are courses that might not, for one reason or another, be assigned either an instructor or a time. This could happen for a variety of reasons. The lead time on listing instructors in the schedule guide is pretty long -- it is possible that the department simply did not know at the publishing deadline who was teaching the courses or where they would be taught. This is expecially true if the courses are usually taught by graduate students or might be taught by new faculty not yet known when the schedule was created.

 It is usual, in my experience, to list STAFF as the instructor of record, but I can also see a Chair using himself/herself as the placeholder.  Without knowing more specifically about these courses, it doesn't really seem menacing to me.