Straight Talk: January 7, 2011

Straight Talk:  The StraighterLine e-Newsletter
Edited by Jeffrey Lee Simons

In this issue…

 

Best of The StraighterLine Blog

32 “Top Secret” Benefits of Studying Online
Barry Lenson offers up 32 benefits of online learning you may not have considered, from the personal (#2. Nobody will care if you’re having a bad hair day) to the practical (#25: If you don’t know a word, a concept, or anything else, you can look it up without embarrassment) to the humourous (#32: If you fall asleep in class, nobody will know). Read Full Post

5 College Myths Exposed
So much “common knowledge” about college is dead wrong. Let’s look at some commonplace myths that we’ve busted in the last year…Read Full Post


Online Education in the News

Schooling That Works: Four Great Innovations 12/28/2010

In The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP): Higher Education and the Economy blog on Forbes.com, Richard Vetter writes:

Readers of my rants about higher education know that I generally believe that higher education in America is highly inefficient, overpriced, and produces dubious outcomes, including many graduates who end up in relatively low end jobs. But not all of higher education is like that. I would like to discuss four examples of schools or ideas that work –that lead to either a higher quality or lower cost educational experience –or both… Read Full Story

Virtual classrooms: Online education is changing school hours, buildings, interactions 12/28/2010

In 2006, Michigan became the first U.S. state to require all students to have an “online learning experience” before graduating high school. This article, by Dave Murray of The Grand Rapids Press on MLive.com, discusses the sweeping changes in education in both lower and higher education in the state. Here’s an excerpt:

"We’re finally reaching the tipping point,” said Jamey Fitzpatrick, president of Michigan Virtual University, which provides online courses to students in 400 districts, including in West Michigan. “Right now, we’re just scratching the surface. We will soon be able to transform every child’s education.”

About a quarter of all students will be enrolled in Internet-based classes within five years, and at least half of all high school classes will be offered through computers before the next decade ends…

Read Full Story (Be sure to check out the reactions and comments for a spirited discussion of the future of education -- Editor)

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Burck’s Blast: Accreditation is insufficient to determine course quality

Opinion from the leader of the StraighterLine Revolution, Burck Smith

The following comment by Burck Smith was posted on 12/16/10 in reply to a special report on InsideHigherEd.com:

While we thank IHE for the attention, it is unusual and unprecedented for Inside Higher Ed to dedicate a 3 part article to the review of a single course from a single course provider by a single student under a tabloid-esque banner. To provide a comparable headline, the article could just as easily be titled “Colleges Wildly Overcharge Students and Taxpayers for Online Courses.” Similarly, the article casts StraighterLine as a curricular experiment, when it’s really a pricing innovation. There are a variety of issues that should be raised as well.

First, like any good college or professor, we are constantly updating and improving our courses. Prior to the writer enrolling, this course was reviewed and recommended by the ACE Credit service and given a positive review by the DETC, a DoE recognized national accreditor. Since the writer’s enrollment in April, we have incorporated a variety of recommendations including shortening the time given on exams, including weighted and cumulative exams, and adding an additional layer of identity verification. Further, several weeks ago we announced that, in the coming year, we will give students the option for full exam proctoring and the ability to select moderated cohort based courses in addition to self-paced courses. Lastly, we periodically review the courses to make content updates or even wholesale changes. Given that this course was reviewed and recommended 13 months ago, we haven’t had a chance to do that with macroeconomics. The writer has provided a very public snapshot of a course that was deemed sufficient by all the course review bodies available to us at the time of enrollment. This course, like all of our courses, is continuously improving.

Second, now that Inside Higher Ed is acting like the Consumer Reports of online courses, I presume that we will see several thousand more 3-part stories on all of the other colleges offering distance education courses? If that reporting burden is too much, perhaps they should just link to Rate-My-Professor and publish the student reviews found there? It is interesting that the writer neither included comments from other students nor actually compared her experience in a comparable online course. Like colleges, we conduct post-course student evaluation and over 90% of our students would recommend the course to a friend. If colleges actually used student comments to make credit decisions on their courses, there would be few colleges awarding credit. StraighterLine has been through every 3rd party course review available to us. The course taken by the writer has been reviewed and fully recommended for college credit by the ACE Credit service, a service to whose recommendations more than 1000 colleges profess to adhere. This course was reviewed by DETC. This course was reviewed by the College Board’s AP service. Our partner colleges, who award transfer credit for our courses, have been given complete access to the courses. What is the appropriate way to evaluate courses – a single student’s perspective or course-level reviews conducted independently by dozens of professors, dozens of accredited schools and several higher ed associations?

Unfortunately, the standard used by most colleges for the award of transfer credit, the presence or lack of regional accreditation, is not only insufficient to determine course quality but is also unavailable to us. Despite the fact that credit (and courses) are the unit of academic currency in an age when students can take courses from anyone at anytime, individual courses cannot be accredited, only degree granting programs. This means that colleges can offer, and accept for transfer credit, taxpayer-subsidized courses of wildly varying and indeterminate quality under the umbrella of accreditation. If industry-wide course level, outcome based standards existed, we’d be thrilled to follow them. Unfortunately, such standards are always resisted by colleges and accreditors alike, resulting in entirely subjective decisions about what constitutes college credit. Such subjectivity lets colleges keep those with threatening business models out without having to examine their own standards of course delivery.

Further, we are very confident that students that successfully complete StraighterLine courses will have greater success rates in follow-on courses and in degree attainment. An increasing amount of general and accepted research around the persistence rates of students that start college with prior learning assessment credit, that start college with AP credit and that start college with dual enrollment credit (particularly in Math), all point to the fact that students that start college with some credit are more likely to succeed.

Third, StraighterLine is one of many options available to students. Not only is it low-cost, but it’s also low risk. If a student decides after a month that they aren’t ready for college, then they are out $138. If a traditional student decides that they aren’t ready for college, the student and taxpayer is out several thousand dollars. Working online in a self-paced environment is not for the faint of heart. However, if a student is willing to do that, it shouldn’t cost them the same either. Further, our model doesn’t apply equally well to all subjects. Courses that are heavily weighted toward skills and knowledge acquisition (for lack of a better description) are much better suited to both online and self-paced learning. Many of these courses also happen to be the freshman level courses usually delivered in a large lecture environment. Consequently, this is our only focus.

All of the elements of StraighterLine courses are used extensively throughout higher education. To build the courses, we use the principles of Course Redesign which are used by hundreds of college and which de-emphasizes the primacy of the instructor-led model for large, introductory courses. We’ve been through every 3rd party validation process available to us. The controversy around StraighterLine seems to stem from the fact that we dare to price closer to the true cost of delivery and that we are completely transparent about what are courses are and are not. I would challenge the rest of higher education to do the same.