Independent Study - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: May 31, 2006

Independent Study

Date: May 31, 2006

Souhern Belle wrote:

I have been told that the staff over independent study classes was informed yesterday not to accept any more applications for enrollment for independent study classes. Sounds like the university will no longer offer these classes. Could it be that someone is trying to move these classes to on-line? If so, this will affect some individuals ability to enroll in classes if they do not own or have access to a computer. Are we moving in the right direction???

no access to a computer? maybe we should have professors available to drive to everyone's house because they don't have access to a car? computer ownership now exceeds car ownership and unlike cars you can use them for free at the local library.

Date: May 31, 2006

Jettisoning correspondence courses is a step in the right direction. Historically, correspondence courses are low-quality. University of Phoenix may have a way to provide those types of courses online at low cost, but USM's niche is and has always been its ability to provide a quality in-person education at a competitive price. Once the Shelbster is gone, USM will return to offering quality courses on campus and limiting its online/correspondence offerings.

It's time we got back to our roots. There are plenty of opportunities for those who want to get an online degree or to take classes in absentia. What is rapidly disappearing from the landscape is the ability for serious students to take "real" (read: intellectually challenging) courses in a traditional format.

Date: May 31, 2006

Blatant Offender wrote:

It's time we got back to our roots. There are plenty of opportunities for those who want to get an online degree or to take classes in absentia. What is rapidly disappearing from the landscape is the ability for serious students to take "real" (read: intellectually challenging) courses in a traditional format.

I don't know if you're semi-trolling, B.O., but I agree -- and disagree -- with you on this point. The future of the traditional format is likely to be a hybrid format course. Having a bit of experience (approximately 15 years) in the traditional classroom & a bit of experience (approximately 5 years) in the virtual classroom, I recognize that there are major advantages to face-to-face instruction. At the same time, technology allows me to do things that I simply couldn't manage in a traditional paper-and-pencil world. For example, my traditional students completed practice sets & lab quizzes before taking major exams, while my online students have to score a specific minimum on practice sets & lab quizzes before they can even attempt the major exam. For the life of me, I can't figure out how I could manage that in a traditional environment. (Admittedly, the courses I taught/teach are more geared toward "objective" test items & I don't think online course management software is particularly advanced for classes that have significant writing components, e.g., English.)

All that said, the most difficult thing to establish "virtually" is a teacher-student relationship that can inspire on-the-cusp students to succeed. But then, I don't know if having TA's teach freshmen is exactly the route to that goal either.

I am curious about 2 things: (1) How many freshman sections are actually taught by tenured/tenure track faculty at USM excluding "instructors of record," & (2) how many tenured/tenure track faculty have obtained adequate training with a good online course management system?

Date: May 31, 2006

I understand the Independent Study Office budget is frozen. More dome money grabs?

How about we go all one way or all the other way. Some of each clearly does not work.

Date: May 31, 2006

I'm confused - I thought the dome had all the money already. All decisions are centrally managed, controlled, and budgeted.

Count

Date: May 31, 2006

I'm not surprised that IS might be given the axe. It never got the support it needed to be the high-quality program it could have been. (I used to be the manager after Sandy McGowan left.)
A few random comments:

- Correspondence courses are offered by many excellent universities. They are especially helpful to military abroad, prisoners, and those in rural communities, as well as to disabled persons. Not EVERYBODY has good computer access.

- A large and lucrative component of IS at both USM and Miss State is the high school program. That's the one which is more academically questionable than the university program, but was very large and popular.

- Some courses IS offered were excellent and demanding, such as Virginia Gregory's writing courses. Some were trash. Hmm, isn't that true on campus as well?

- IS included both online and print-based courses. Some courses were hybrids.

If USM is not going to fund, staff and support IS, then it's better to shut it down.

Date: May 31, 2006

Invictus wrote:

I am curious about 2 things: (1) How many freshman sections are actually taught by tenured/tenure track faculty at USM excluding "instructors of record," & (2) how many tenured/tenure track faculty have obtained adequate training with a good online course management system?

Well, when I was at USM, all our freshman sections were taught by professors, and not grad students or adjuncts. Of course, that didn't "count" for anything on annual departmental evaluations, so I'm one of many expatriates.

As for "on-line learning", in my days in Hattiesburg there was neither training nor institutionally-provided computer hardware. Faculty were "expected" to offer these courses, and the departmental budgets were supposed to pay for the equipment. This was in the days when "compressed video" courses were being transitioned into the online world of SFT and his administrators.

Date: May 31, 2006

Invictus wrote:

I don't know if you're semi-trolling, B.O., but I agree -- and disagree -- with you on this point. The future of the traditional format is likely to be a hybrid format course. Having a bit of experience (approximately 15 years) in the traditional classroom & a bit of experience (approximately 5 years) in the virtual classroom, I recognize that there are major advantages to face-to-face instruction. At the same time, technology allows me to do things that I simply couldn't manage in a traditional paper-and-pencil world. For example, my traditional students completed practice sets & lab quizzes before taking major exams, while my online students have to score a specific minimum on practice sets & lab quizzes before they can even attempt the major exam. For the life of me, I can't figure out how I could manage that in a traditional environment. (Admittedly, the courses I taught/teach are more geared toward "objective" test items & I don't think online course management software is particularly advanced for classes that have significant writing components, e.g., English.) All that said, the most difficult thing to establish "virtually" is a teacher-student relationship that can inspire on-the-cusp students to succeed.

The clever Invictus persona is most often cynically entertaining. This post is a nice reminder of the true educator behind the nom.

Date: May 31, 2006

LVN wrote:

If USM is not going to fund, staff and support IS, then it's better to shut it down.

The same is true for graduate programs the university is not willing to support. Doctoral programs require an ample allocation of graduate assistantships.

Date: May 31, 2006

I should have added that MSU and UM are probably rejoicing at the demise of USM's IS. Lots of dollars will now flow their way. MSU has the only other high school program.

Date: May 31, 2006

Invictus wrote:

I don't know if you're semi-trolling, B.O., but I agree -- and disagree -- with you on this point. The future of the traditional format is likely to be a hybrid format course. Having a bit of experience (approximately 15 years) in the traditional classroom & a bit of experience (approximately 5 years) in the virtual classroom, I recognize that there are major advantages to face-to-face instruction. At the same time, technology allows me to do things that I simply couldn't manage in a traditional paper-and-pencil world. For example, my traditional students completed practice sets & lab quizzes before taking major exams, while my online students have to score a specific minimum on practice sets & lab quizzes before they can even attempt the major exam. For the life of me, I can't figure out how I could manage that in a traditional environment. (Admittedly, the courses I taught/teach are more geared toward "objective" test items & I don't think online course management software is particularly advanced for classes that have significant writing components, e.g., English.)

All that said, the most difficult thing to establish "virtually" is a teacher-student relationship that can inspire on-the-cusp students to succeed. But then, I don't know if having TA's teach freshmen is exactly the route to that goal either.

I am curious about 2 things: (1) How many freshman sections are actually taught by tenured/tenure track faculty at USM excluding "instructors of record," & (2) how many tenured/tenure track faculty have obtained adequate training with a good online course management system?

I wasn't even semi-trolling -- I was being sincere.

First begin with the premise that a college education isn't for everyone. Not everyone should be allowed to enter USM, regardless of the amount of funding provided by the state or how much the student can pay in tuition. This premise will cause some heartburn, because there are far too many who parrot the "education is the way out of your situation" mantra without ever admitting that there's a big difference between "certification" and "education." "Certification" is what SFT and others aspire to bring to USM -- the idea that having a BS or a BA makes you a better-educated person; it doesn't. "Education" suffers when a minimal level of competence is not demanded by the institution. The effectiveness of the Corps of Instruction suffers when the Corps of Instruction cannot present certain topics (or even families of topics) because the student body has neither the willingness nor the ability to comprehend said topics. Such is currently the case at USM. I know innumerable instructors who have watered down their courses to the point that they are embarrassed to admit to colleagues at other institutions just how low-grade courses have become. I will freely admit that this is certainly not the experience of each and every instructor at USM, though I believe it fairly describes the changes in the student body over time.

Second, correspondence courses are historically and by reputation easy. There are no real time constraints, and often students may re-take exams until the course is successfully completed. Online courses are also problematic, since the instructor cannot secure online examinations without a network of proctoring stations that are geographically dispersed, and even then security cannot be 100%.

Third, there is a missing element that none of the "pro-onliners" wants to discuss, and that is the sacrifice of time to physically attend an in-person class that is not present in the online realm. Again, I expect to hear cries of "access" and "egalitarianism," but there is a cold fact to be faced: everything else equal, an individual who commits to an in-person course will learn more than a person who signs up for the same course online. An obvious example: a music student who studies with a professor versus studying the professor's presentation online. Another: a history class that is driven by class discussion -- how does one replicate that online? One does not.

Yet USM and other marginal universities seem hell-bent on trying to convince someone (themselves??) that the online route is equivalent to the in-person route. Almost all good students with whom I speak say that online courses at USM are a joke and that they learn little or nothing, which only hurts the student in the long run. Why are we allowing our profession to be bastardized and weakened to the point of ineffectiveness? I have yet to hear a defensible reason.

Online delivery may present some cool bells and whistles that make course management easier for the professor, but there is always the old-fashioned method -- give exams, fail those who do not perform, and let them re-take the course next semester. Allowing all of this flexibility further reinforces the concept that the world will gove you a do-over without consequence...a concept to which seemingly 100% of USM undergrads subscribe.

USM and its ilk want education to be cheap (that means low tuition/low cost/low instructor salary) and readily available (that means open enrollment and global availability via online). I am willing to advocate a 180 degree plan: raise tuition to a level that will provide competitive salaries to USM profs and that will fund quality education. Those who can pay will pay, and those who view college as a 4-year hiatus from the real world may rethink their plans. They can attend Phoenix Online while USM returns to a quality teaching environment. The IHL seemingly has a plan to demote USM in the pecking order, so they shouldn't stand in the way of tuition increases that would make my plan feasible. Surely our numbers would shrink, and we might even be able to reach a student body size that is appropriate for our decimated (yes, I know we have lost more than one-tenth of the faculty) faculty size.

There is an old saying that "A cobbler should stick to his last." USM is a cobbler that seems intent on being a "Jack of all trades, master of none."

Date: May 31, 2006

Blatant Offender wrote:

I wasn't even semi-trolling -- I was being sincere.
<SNIP>
This premise will cause some heartburn, because there are far too many who parrot the "education is the way out of your situation" mantra without ever admitting that there's a big difference between "certification" and "education." "Certification" is what SFT and others aspire to bring to USM -- the idea that having a BS or a BA makes you a better-educated person; it doesn't. "Education" suffers when a minimal level of competence is not demanded by the institution.

This is an excellent point. A lot of the loudest proponents of distance learning do seem to confuse "certification" & "education." We have no arguments here. In my mind, this confusion arises partly because some folks take the position not only that "college is for everyone" but that "online classes are for everyone." Again, based on my experience, online classes are most emphatically not for everyone. To cop a term from Malcolm Knowles, guru of adult education, a productive online learning experience is heavily "andragogical," i.e., self-directed, as opposed to "pedagogical," i.e., teacher-directed. And quite frankly, most collegiate undergraduates (and a significant number of graduated students) aren't committed enough to taking responsibility for their own learning to make a go of it.

Again, I expect to hear cries of "access" and "egalitarianism," but there is a cold fact to be faced: everything else equal, an individual who commits to an in-person course will learn more than a person who signs up for the same course online. An obvious example: a music student who studies with a professor versus studying the professor's presentation online. Another: a history class that is driven by class discussion -- how does one replicate that online? One does not.

Actually, I can think of a number of ways a discussion-driven history class could be replicated online with tools as simple as chats or message boards. (In fact, most chat tools have a very nice transcripting function that is utterly unavailable in real-time discussions.) This is, however, very time intensive for instructors.

There is a myth that online classes are easier for the teacher. That myth is just as widespread as the myth that online classes are easier for students. The stone truth is the good online instructors are likely to put in a lot more hours with their classes than those who teach traditionally. It is also my observation that some teachers who are utterly ineffective in traditional classrooms are very good online, many excellent "traditionalists" suck the proverbial hind teat online, and all other possible permutations.

Why are we allowing our profession to be bastardized and weakened to the point of ineffectiveness? I have yet to hear a defensible reason.

This is exactly the sort of question that serious teachers (traditional, online, mutants, whatever) need to be asking. I'll follow with a question: Is it distance learning per se that is weakening the teaching profession to the point of ineffectiveness, is it the state of current technology & tools, or is it something even more complicated? Could we be in that uneasy state that T.S. Kuhn called a paradigm shift? (Remember, paradigms don't shift because an administrator or theorist says it's time to shift. Paradigms don't shift because anybody consciously thinks, "It's time for a paradigm shift." Paradigms shift when there is no alternative but change, when the old system is challenged by a new one.)

But at the moment, the driving force for online instruction, to be truthful, is money. Students perceive it as an "easy" alternative, administrators are still operating with the misconception that distance learning can be done cheaper than traditional instruction, and there are lots of vendors eager to sell their products.

Online delivery may present some cool bells and whistles that make course management easier for the professor, but there is always the old-fashioned method -- give exams, fail those who do not perform, and let them re-take the course next semester. Allowing all of this flexibility further reinforces the concept that the world will gove you a do-over without consequence...a concept to which seemingly 100% of USM undergrads subscribe.

Those "cool bells and whistles" could make life easier for the traditional classroom teacher, which is why I originally suggested that hybrid classes are probably where the future of good instruction lies. I don't know about you, but I've always figured that if I didn't get a "real" pay raise but was able to do the same job (or even do it better) with less effort, I had achieved a "virtual" pay raise.

But I do recognize that the vast majority of postsecondary faculty have very, very little actual "education" (or "training," for that matter) in instructional methodologies, learning theory, or anything outside their specific discipline. Sadly, this includes those who teach "education." You go figure. But the teacher who sits down & thinks about how to improve the learning experiences that his/her students actually have is probably going to come butt up against "reality constraints" like the one I mentioned about requiring some mastery of content before students attempt the major exam.

I'd offer that the "just test 'em and flunk 'em" approach is closer to the "certification" philosophy than to "education." Not meaning to throw gasoline on a flame war, of course. YMMV.

I am willing to advocate a 180 degree plan: raise tuition to a level that will provide competitive salaries to USM profs and that will fund quality education. Those who can pay will pay, and those who view college as a 4-year hiatus from the real world may rethink their plans. They can attend Phoenix Online while USM returns to a quality teaching environment.

Well, you need to check the tuition/fees for UoP! USM could raise its tuition a lot before many students would regard Phoenix as a "cheap alternative."

(By the same token, you might want to see what Phoenix pays for adjunct faculty

)

There is an old saying that "A cobbler should stick to his last." USM is a cobbler that seems intent on being a "Jack of all trades, master of none."

You can say that again! This has been USM's biggest problem, IMO, for many years. It simply doesn't have a clear vision of what it is, how it fits in, and where it might need to go to truly serve the best interests of its constituents.

Date: May 31, 2006

Blatant Offender wrote:

Third, there is a missing element that none of the "pro-onliners" wants to discuss, and that is the sacrifice of time to physically attend an in-person class that is not present in the online realm.

I apologize for not including this in my longer response... You have really hit pretty close to the mark with this, BO. When we really talk about what a lot of us perceive as the deterioration & growing ineffectiveness of education in America today, are we really talking about the increasing attitude that college should be free of sacrifices?

Just food for thought. (And having skipping lunch, I'm about to start thinking of food!)

Date: May 31, 2006

Blatant Offender wrote:

USM is a cobbler that seems intent on being a "Jack of all trades, master of none."

I really don't think USM as an institution ever had the vision or the leadership to let a department develop to its maximum. Things are either "political" or "equal." It seems to strive to achieve mediocrity in most everything it does as an institution. Some departments have been on the verge of becoming national players - only to be struck down shortly out of the gate or before reaching the finish line.

Date: May 31, 2006

Not everyone should be allowed to enter USM. . .

Oh, B.O. I do so agree. Let's begin with barring the domed doors to Shelby, his daughter, and the cronies who were so weak to sell out to them.

Date: May 31, 2006

Emma wrote:

Not everyone should be allowed to enter USM. . . Oh, B.O. I do so agree. Let's begin with barring the domed doors to Shelby, his daughter, and the cronies who were so weak to sell out to them.

Good one, Emma. We would all vote for this.

As to the previous discussion - There is a large body of research (I know, USM doesn't care about that stuff) which indicates that certain types of material and certain types of students do quite well in an on-line learning environment. To continue to say "I think" and "it is well known" is not productive. Those studies indicate strongly that on-line isn't the answer to all the dept. chair's problems, but rather just another tool that should be used wisely. To offer courses on-line because we don't have enough faculty to cover programs, especially those offered on the coast and in HBG, is a travesty.

Date: May 31, 2006

The individual colleges and depts might elect to keep IS courses under alternative learning. The point is that USM doesn't need a high-overhead office dedicated only to IS. It is about academics being managed by academics.

As for the military, they are very much pro-online.

Date: May 31, 2006

Correct ISer wrote:

As for the military, they are very much pro-online.

Then let the military offer online courses. Let them foot the bill for a real salary, a real instructor, and real technology.

Until the military starts listening to how I think things should go with respect to national defense, I think I'll pretty much disregard how the military feels about online courses.

Date: May 31, 2006

astonished wrote:

As to the previous discussion - There is a large body of research (I know, USM doesn't care about that stuff) which indicates that certain types of material and certain types of students do quite well in an on-line learning environment. To continue to say "I think" and "it is well known" is not productive. Those studies indicate strongly that on-line isn't the answer to all the dept. chair's problems, but rather just another tool that should be used wisely.

Please explain how this adds anything to the discussion. To what research are you referring? Does that research address delivery of online courses in an underfunded environment?

Online courses are there for convenience -- so that people don't have to relocate to a college/university town to attend. Online courses are just another way to keep people from having to make choices. Instead of having to plan a life and career, you can have your life, your career, and a college education all at the same time! Don't worry about having to study. Remember, the professor works for you.

Date: May 31, 2006

Draft Dodger wrote:

astonished wrote:

Online courses are there for convenience -- so that people don't have to relocate to a college/university town to attend. Online courses are just another way to keep people from having to make choices. Instead of having to plan a life and career, you can have your life, your career, and a college education all at the same time! Don't worry about having to study. Remember, the professor works for you.

At USM I've been told that most of the students taking online courses are regular Hattiesburg or Gulf Park students.

Date: May 31, 2006

Draft Dodger wrote:

Then let the military offer online courses. Let them foot the bill for a real salary, a real instructor, and real technology.

Until the military starts listening to how I think things should go with respect to national defense, I think I'll pretty much disregard how the military feels about online courses.

Oh please. Do you want the military to teach English, history, sociology, etc? Or would you rather have some university educated folks in the military?