[lbo-talk] MH & DG on university

Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
Sun Feb 26 10:48:48 PST 2012


On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 9:04 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:


> At 09:08 PM 2/25/2012, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
>
> are we skyping? where i have trouble is thinking of getting out away from
>> the computer. but maybe i should let that go. it would be really nice to
>> be
>> able to get to younger kids, too, before they've gotten ground down by
>> exactly the thing we're complaining about.
>>
>
>
> don't let it go. when i went to take courses locally, i discovered there
> are very few web based courses anymore, not even at the local community
> college. they are either all in class or hybrid - EVEN in computer
> programming classes. I asked around and the reason why is: they suck.
> Students hate them; teachers hate them; no one learns anything.

I taught a couple of online courses 15 or so years ago at the New School (back when it was still NSSR). they were just getting their system up and running, and there was a change of software when i was there. this was still essentially pre-web as a delivery system. truthfully, i had a good experience with it and i think the students did, too. but i've never been able to see it as a substitute for f2f interaction. not exclusively, anyway. and the students were older than traditional college age, from mid-20s to 40 and even 60. the course was on cyberpunk, btw. :) not that anyone asked.

but of course these were people with internet access, financially stable, more or less grown up, and all of that. i'm partly concerned about reaching younger audiences in addition to older audiences. and it seems to me that's easier to do, probably, with something local and face to face. but the infrastructure challenges are worse, i think. i wonder if you wouldn't have to work somehow with local schools or some other local organizations to set it up. well, i kind of think you would.

but maybe not.

j



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