April 2010

A Response to The CBC News Series on E-Learing in BC ( produced by Theresa Lalonde)

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/BC/ID=1467283984

Theresa,

As a long-time teacher and e-learning veteran, I'd like to thank you for your series on online education (now called distributed learning [DL] by the Ministry of Ed. mucky-mucks). Unfortunately, many of us had a chuckle when we watched the first episode. Sorry, but the biggest problem in DL is not office privacy!

The biggest issue, by far, is workload. Because DL teachers are not covered in the provincial laws on class size, many DL schools have dumped 300 to 400 students - or more - onto individual secondary teachers. In these cases, there can be no quality relationship between student and teacher, and no authentic assessment. Assignments are read, a mark is entered, and maybe a quick email is sent back to the student. An actual marked-up assignment that explains the student’s grade is hardly ever sent. This is what we call BS assessment. It’s of little use to students… but it’s the only way to handle such caseloads.

If you want good quality DL education, it’s going to cost some serious coin! In fact, most DL schools operate as an “asynchronous” system, where students can work at their own pace. This makes student-teacher interaction and assessment a one-on-one process. This sounds wonderful, and it is for the student who stays in regular contact with his or her teacher, but the system by definition is highly inefficient. One-on-one is never going to be as efficient as one-on-thirty. In other words, even though we don't need entire classrooms, DL teaching is actually no cheaper than regular schooling. If it's done right, that is.

I’m lucky that my particular DL school has so far chosen quality over quantity, but with the cutbacks that are looming, BS assessment may loom on my horizon, too.

There’s a big story here, Theresa, but you’re just scratching at the surface.