Zrinka Stahuljak
Associate professor of French and comparative literature and associate director of the center for medieval and renaissance studies
Steve Hardinger
Senior lecturer in chemistry and biochemistry
By Steve Hardinger
UCLA should invest faculty and funds into online instruction, but certain aspects must be carefully balanced for the program to be successful. The details depend on how “online instruction” is defined.
If defined as posting audio and video recordings online, as supplements to (and not replacements for) traditional lecture, then online instruction can be of significant benefit for students for whom traditional lecture is not the most effective learning mode. The ability to pause and rewind lecture videos, allowing for more detailed understanding, can be critical for these students’ success.
Care must be taken, however, that these recordings are not abused. There is some concern that these recordings might result in higher teaching loads for instructors or even replacement of instructors by recordings. Neither of these possibilities bode well for the quality of instruction or for the university’s reputation.
My own experience with lecture recordings suggests that their use causes the better students to become better, and the less-involved students to become even less involved, resulting in a wider divide between the “knows” and the “know-nots.”
If defined as a complete course online, without traditional lecture, then online instruction can be useful to tap into a market of students not otherwise easily available.
However, an online course can easily consume more instructor time per student than a traditional lecture course, resulting in a decrease in the student’s learning experience. With student enrollments on the rise, and instructors being asked to do more with less, the online replacement for lecture is not a viable solution for large lecture courses.
In summary, online instruction can be valuable, but there are details that must be considered before committing to the concept and details that must be carefully monitored during the courses to ensure maximum learning experience for the students.
By James Catterall
The University of California pilot program in online instruction is off and running. Twenty-five faculty members will sign on in early 2011 to launch courses in January 2012.
The university is rightfully being cautious about this move.
We should be leaders in exploring and assessing ways of delivering high-quality instruction, including possibilities that some instructional goals, in some subjects, in certain designs, for some instructors and for some learners, can be met with online or other technology-based platforms.
An important goal of the pilot is to learn just where online teaching might contribute effectively (and cost-effectively) to the university’s teaching mission. Online teaching might be attractive and renewing for some faculty.
This work should anticipate new technologies and networking opportunities that don’t fit present conceptions of online teaching.
Ironically, online teaching probably works best with relatively small classes where student-student and student- instructor online dialogue can be focused and managed. If so, instructional cost savings may be hard to come by.
I anticipate that a few years on, we will see a judicious and limited role for online undergraduate instruction in the university. Ten years from now, all bets are off!
By Zrinka Stahuljak
The terms of this debate need to be made absolutely clear.
If the motivation and the terms of exploration of undergraduate online instruction are budgetary, as the UC Office of the President indicates, then instruction will suffer because the high cost of investment in successful, first-rate online education has been demonstrated.
Thus, online instruction as a cost-saving and accessibility measure will imitate less selective institutions and only erode the quality of instruction.
If the motivation and the terms are to innovate undergraduate instruction and lead the way into the technological future, then online instruction should aim to allow an open-access educational experience across and among University of California campuses, in real time.
This kind of online instruction will not apply one model-fits-all to large lecture and interactive language classes.
A prominent research university like the UC should enhance and supplement, not substitute, and strategically invest in a hybrid model of online instruction, one that also means a continued balanced investment in its faculty and campus infrastructure.