A proposal to explore the plausibility of online courses was recently introduced to the UC Commission on the Future, a group charged with finding ways of maintaining access to high-quality, affordable education.
Waiting for the proper financial support, the proposal aims to create a pilot program tasked with determining the feasibility of an online program, said Keith Williams, professor of biological sciences at UC Davis and the chairman of the working group on education and curriculum for the Commission.
“The idea is to spend a couple years looking at building a bunch of lower-division, general education courses, offer them online and evaluate them systematically as part of a general program with a view to seeing whether it’s possible, online, to deliver a UC education,” said Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning, programs and coordination in the UC Office of the President.
If found effective, the use of this technology has the potential to maintain the UC’s goals in a time of diminishing resources.
As financial concerns have forced schools to cut their budgets, the onset of online courses could allow students to take classes that are no longer provided by their own university through another UC campus, as well as courses that are exclusively provided by another university.
In addition, online courses could be a means of alleviating enrollment issues, as popular general education courses, often viewed as “bottleneck” courses with limited enrollment, could be provided online.
“It certainly is one answer for courses that are in high demand that students have difficulty enrolling in,” said Dr. Larry Loeher, associate vice provost of the Office of Instructional Development at UCLA.
Last quarter, UCLA successfully explored the feasibility of online courses by allowing 45 Chemistry 14B students to attend lectures exclusively online through BruinView, finding that those who took the course online had little to no grade differences from those who took the course normally, Loeher said.
Online courses could also be used to provide classes to those students unable to afford a residential education at their desired university.
“If it’s possible to deliver high quality online education … (then) you could certainly touch more students across their lifetime offering a whole range of different opportunities,” Greenstein said.
But before any of these benefits can be used to provide a better education to students, the UC must ensure that online education can meet the same standards for quality.
Certain problems include adapting certain subject matters, such as chemistry labs, to an online format, or ensuring that students are not negatively affected by a lack of physical interaction could pose a problem for those hoping to take their next classes online.
“If you move to a strictly online environment, it takes more work on the part of the faculty to get the course going and to attend to all the details about communication with students,” Loeher said.
The pilot program will look to address these problems as it hopes to begin its study into the plausibility of such courses soon.
“I think the emphasis right now is: does it work … is this a way to deliver a high quality selective education, and everything else hinges on that factor,” Greenstein said.