KOI ANUNTA/YH

Ivy League Online?

THE OFFER

A billionaire donated $100 million dollars of his own money two weeks ago to found a university that will offer a free "Ivy League quality" education to the masses (those that can afford Internet access anyway).

Only a few days later, that same billionaire then lost almost $10 billion, or over half of his net worth, after the value of stocks in his company plunged. MicroStrategy, Inc. lost over 50% of its share price due to its announcement of a significant miscalculation in the reported earnings for the past two years.

As though Michael Saylor was not getting laughed at enough already.

The second event could just possibly be put up to the volatile combination of technology and stock market that is behind many dot-coms.

The first event, though, is a little harder to explain. Does the CEO of MicroStrategy have his eye on something most other people can't see yet? Or is Saylor just trying to nab an extra large tax break weeks before the April tax day?

THE STAKES

Here's the question:

Wouldn't you jump at a chance to:

• get into the real world early while still being able to continue your learning?
• start your own business, work on eating up the '6+ years of professional experience' requirement for your dream job, or take a trip around the world, without even having to take a year off?
• be taught by some of the brightest minds from around the world, while they are still around the world, and while you sit in your pjs contemplating a large jar of marshmallow fluff?
• leave behind the four gray walls of the institutions you've been attending daily for the last four-fifths of your life, and get on to the good parts (that is, if there are any)?

Oddly enough, many of the answers to the above questions range from "Not really" to "Absolutely not!" What are we missing?

THE DEAL

Online education is no new thing. Distance learning programs, where course materials are sent to students by mail and exams sent back to the teacher for grading, have been around since the 80's. Many online courses are simply an extension of these, updated for the 21st century. This is also the reason why most online classes are offered as graduate courses, (MBAs being especially popular) or non-credit learning sessions.

But despite its humble origins, online education is fast becoming the next big issue. Most universities already have technology integrated into their systems one way or another, but many are also beginning to see the other possibilities in this new area.

Strayer Online is just one of many programs offering online courses leading to both Bachelor's and Master's degree in addition to the usual Associate and Diploma programs.

Like many such programs, Strayer is affiliated with a larger institution, Strayer University, providing it with advantages in creditability and in access to essential resources.

Strayer's online courses use special software to allow the students to interact with the classes. Through the use of a virtual "blackboard" that everyone logged into the class can see and write on, the students can be involved in the class just as much as they would be in a traditional course.

Systems like Strayer's depend on an array of companies that have popped up all over the Internet, offering services to individuals and institutions for online learning.

One of these is Blackboard, Inc's Blackboard.com, which is a free learning tool that can be used to create virtual classrooms similar to Yale's classes.yale.edu server. Professors can use the site to set up stand alone courses that are supported through the use of chat rooms, discussion boards, and digital drop-boxes which do online file exchange for assignment submission.

A class currently being conducted there is English 1101, an introductory college-level writing class at Troy State University.

The course is held entirely by discussion board and e-mail, though the students are required to meet three times during the semester for a monthly progress meetings. In the meantime, the syllabus, required texts, grading scheme, and course materials are posted on the site at Blackboard.com. Class time also includes a mandatory weekly section meeting in the form of real-time chat.

Blackboard.com serves hundreds of other courses from a class on Object-Oriented Programming from the University of Texas at Dallas to anthropology class on taboos from American University, Washington D.C.

On an even larger scale, the State of Illinois has its Online Network, which is "a collaboration of thirty-one community colleges and the University of Illinois" whose purpose is "to build the foundation for developing, delivering, and supporting courses delivered in a completely online format."

THE ISSUE

Despite the current interest, however, most people are not concerned about online education taking over the undergraduate world. The main sticking point is the lack of human interaction.

"There's so much more to college than information," said Ifeoma Okafor, BK '00. "The idea is to make things easier for [the students], but then you have to make a special effort to interact with people."

Matthew Herberg, JE '02, also agreed that it was an interesting idea, while pointing out that an online college education would leave out much of the social interaction that is the main reason most people go to college anyway.

Others bring up even more serious objections.

An article written by the president of Sarah Lawrence College and published in the Washington Post entitled "CyberU: What's Missing" decried the unmoderated move towards the use of new fangled technologies for mass information delivery.

It asked administrators to resist the lure of online education if it is not accompanied by an equal amount of training in analysis, evaluation, and research. "It is not enough for our students to know; rather, they should know what to know and have the capacity to imagine," it insisted.

A few weeks before that, a story from the magazine Canadian Business expressed complaints that educational institutions are pouring money that would be put to better use elsewhere into "computer-based schooling" systems hyped by profit-hungry entrepreneurs.

And a protest was held at the University of Massachusetts to speak out against plans to implement online courses and provide computers in dorm rooms for the sole purpose of saving money on quality educational resources.

THE REPLY

In the end, the general consensus seems to be that online undergraduate education is not likely to work as a stand-alone venture. Distance learning has proven most effective when accompanied by face-to-face interaction between the teachers and their students, and this is what is preferred.

Given the current state of the debate, online learning systems have a long way to go before they are accepted as mainstream methods of education. While they have a lot of potential, the convenience they offer will have to be balanced against issues of quality.

"An online education could enhance, but never replace a Yale education," said Sean Glass, TD '02, president and founder of the Yale College Entrepreneurial Society.

He went on to say that online education will be most useful when it can be integrated with existing infrastructure to produce a more flexible system for learning, both pre- and post-graduate.

Most of the resources needed for this are already in place here at Yale, though under-used. Glass pointed out the classes.yale.edu server as an example of a tool that could be potentially profitable for both professors and the students in classes they teach if it were more widely used and integrated.

So the final word for now is that students are not ready to give up the comfort of traditional learning institutions to enroll in Saylor University.

Okafor added that the idea of being able to join a class across the world in Australia using the web is tempting, but "there's so much [actual] life experience can give you." This possibility of bringing so many people together to learn cannot hide the fact that there is no real interaction between them.

For much the same reasons, while Herberg can consider a semester or two spent online, he does not think it is a viable option for a four-year college education.

So Michael Saylor's university is not likely to be joining the Ivy League anytime soon. But he can always dream, can't he?

THE END

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