The University of California Online Instruction Pilot Project will make UC-level courses available online to UC students in January.
Originally proposed by the UC Office of the President and heavily promoted by Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley’s law school, the project was intended to be expansive “”mdash; like an 11th UC campus but web-based, said Robert Anderson, chair of the UC Academic Senate.
UCOP hoped to raise $30 million in outside support. But when a gift came in, it amounted to less than $1 million.
This prompted leadership to take out a $6.9 million loan from the UC, Anderson said.
As a result, the project has been steadily whittled down to 26 courses ranging from humanities to sciences.
Anderson said some faculty believe it was unwise to risk almost $7 million during the poor economic climate.
Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning, programs and coordination, recently returned from China where he promoted the program at Chinese universities.
Enrollment in online classes by non-UC and international students will help to repay the loan, but the details and prices are still unclear, Greenstein said.
In general, the project is a “strategic investment” that will help the university improve its current financial situation and outreach, Greenstein said.
Susanne Lohmann, a professor of political science at UCLA, is participating in the project. Lohmann will teach an online course titled “Diversity, Disagreement and Democracy.”
The quality of classes with large enrollment is questionable, she said, and online courses may better engage students.
Lohmann said there is less interaction and less incentive to attend class in traditional classrooms with over 100 students. Online classes are faster in terms of execution and generating results for the games she intends to use as teaching mechanisms to make the class more engaging, she said.
Maintaining UC quality education online will be costly, said Andrew Leuchter, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral science and chair of the UCLA Academic Senate. But if a UC education is more broadly available or more easily attained in a four-year time frame, online opportunities would be valuable to the people of California, he added.
One potential benefit of the project is assisting with impacted classes, Leuchter said.
In the spring, Lohmann said she will test the quality of her course by making all her students write the same paper. Her graders will not be able to distinguish between online and traditional students, and after the grades are in, the classes’ performances will be compared.
Victoria Vesna, media artist and professor of Design | Media Arts, will teach “Art, Science and Technology, DESMA 9.” Online instruction will be beneficial, she said. Instead of writing papers, her students will post weekly blogs online, she said.
In her case, putting the class online was “a natural thing to do,” as media arts is an increasingly online field and she has already been incorporating blogging and the Internet into her curriculum, she said.
“(Having the class online) is a richer experience,” she said. “It is easier in many ways for students to absorb information because they can view lectures on demand and work at their own pace.”
Vesna said her only concern with the design of her class is how it will work with TAs and larger classes.
But participating faculty have expansive resources to help them, including other faculty, a programming team and a development team, Lohmann said.
It is a social and collaborative process, Lohmann added.
After the courses are implemented, they will be evaluated for effectiveness, Greenstein said.
“We’re growing into this (project). We’ll know more in the next several months,” Greenstein said. Market research in the coming weeks will help to develop a pricing model, he said.