It is common knowledge that the state of online education, to put it nicely, is in pretty poor shape. Most folks know that an online class is a lonely, boring experience — not much better than reading a book. We know that dropout and incompletion rates are outrageously high. The knowledge gained from an online class is superficial and transient. Learning is not always what’s offered. What you pay for is the certificate — the symbol of the knowledge — not the knowledge itself. Also we (the students and the public) have no idea what assessments say about what is really accomplished in these programs. It would be nice to know what their performance and retention figures are from the course providers, but I imagine this would mean revealing “proprietary information.” I bet if the numbers were good, they would be shouted from the mountaintop.
The race to monetize
Additionally, online learning has turned into a race to the bottom. Course providers offer low prices just to capture market share, with little focus on the quality of the experience. Look at how online programs are marketed: simplicity of the interface, ease of access, flexible deadlines, low prices, and all-you-can-eat monthly subscription plans. Where’s the promise of personal or professional growth? Nowhere is the quality of the learning experience presented, only the name (and reputation) of the school.
The great schools earned their reputations from the quality of their instructors and the impact of the learning experiences they provided for their students. Where are the instructor reviews and the surveys of past participants? Marketing these self-paced online programs is all about reducing marketing friction: it’s easy to buy, and in no time at all, you have that degree. But the degree is not the education. In this case, an online degree is a misrepresentation of an education. Oh, and by the way, “let us help you” get a federally guaranteed loan to buy that virtual degree. It’s a poor-quality education, and any honest educator or HR hiring professional will tell you so.
Provider Strategies
These strategies will inevitably take online learning providers down the well-worn path of price wars and choosing efficiency over quality. The only reasons people have to complete these courses are
- to get a certificate for their resume
- to check off an employment requirement, or
- to get reimbursed for their class fees. These are not good bases for high student engagement and ultimately hurt and reduce confidence in online education.
We can do better.
If you have a basic knowledge of education and education theory, the solution to this problem is pretty easy to grasp. Deeper learning requires interactivity, and interactivity requires relationships. You have to be able to test your ideas and new knowledge in discussions with groups, challenging projects, and under the guidance of a teacher or mentor. These programs are not built for the learner; they are engineered to capture the client.
There are two models in education that come into play
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Engagement says that to learn more deeply, we need to engage in higher-order thinking skills and apply our new knowledge to challenging problems. If we merely read, or worse, skim for answers to the test — like kids are taught to do today — we’re not learning; we’re practicing low-lift cognitive skills like recognition and recall. We have to practice the knowledge, digest it, and work with it so that it becomes our own. In the current scarf and barf model, we have no opportunity to evaluate, analyze, and create.
Furthermore, the typical online class forgets Bloom’s higher-order thinking skills and typically stops at recall. The lack of application of new skills and concepts means that the knowledge is short-lived and very rarely retained. Constructivism learning theory supports this by holding that we learn by doing, by constructing mental models that build on prior understandings. This model assumes that the learner engages and interacts with the knowledge and skills presented to develop their own understanding. In traveling this path, we put our society’s intellectual capabilities at risk. We are taking the easier path, not the path of growth. Perhaps now even “less traveled.”
Interactivity is the engine of deep (aka significant or transformative) learning
We need to fuel the human side of learning, the idea that we learn more by interacting with our peers and our mentors than on our own. We need relationships: you know, those risky, troubling things that just get in the way of just getting things done? Also, we need to know that our teachers are credible and that they care about us. For groups to work, there must be trust, mutual responsibility, and commitment.
Therefore, we need each other to hold us accountable, to have our ideas challenged and our successes recognized, and to encourage us. We need goals and achievements to rise and to fall. Learning requires relationships that must be built anew over time. If you look at the topics and content of these programs, they are not topics that lend themselves to interactivity. You’ll see linearly organized content (engineering) and easily measurable skills. You won’t find programs that require reflectivity or discussion. These just don’t fit the model.
How do we market
We are a marketing-driven culture seeking to ever differentiate our products and services to create market value. The job of marketing is to uncover our weaknesses (and sometimes concoct) and then ameliorate our pains. Constantly being bombarded with messages that tap into our insecurities, putting us back on our heels, wondering what we need to do next to feel good and to be accepted.
We suffer from a fear of negative experiences or cultural negaphobia. Avoid the difficult, the sticky, the challenging — taking the path of least resistance. Why should education be any different? Education is now a transactional business. Click and drop. By lending their reputations to these rote online learning experiences, great schools and thought leaders are diminishing their brands.
Basically, these trends are widespread in our society, and if education continues down this path, we foresee greater isolation, degraded performance, and resulting alienation. If you look at common societal complaints today, many are rooted in this shift from relational to transactional. Common employer complaints are the lack of soft skills, or what Seth Godin calls “Real Skills.” Our schools have retreated to the defensible tautology of standardized tests; half of the students who drop out do so because they are bored. In our work lives, we are now always on 7×24, stressed and overloaded — with less and less time for family, relationships, and civic participation. Our health care is determined by insurance companies and permission by billing codes. Car dealers are now “haggle-free” as if that were a good thing for the buyer.
Barriers to businesses
Barriers to entry to develop competitive businesses are ever-increasing, allowing companies to entrench. The number of publicly traded companies — accountable to their shareholders — has declined by 50% in the last twenty years. Most businesses now limit customer access only to call centers, which are, in turn, automating transactions along decision trees. Eliminating or obfuscating the option to speak with a real person, and for some silly reason, re-direct callers to their websites (as if the internet was something new?). Who will this help? If a company does not recognize that a customer who cares enough to call in is really trying to help them be more successful, they are missing out on free market research! And more to our point, have you ever tried to contact your local political representative? They are no longer accountable to the individual citizen but to donors and lobbyists.
Comparatively, to have interactivity in education, we need to have qualified mentors (not just content area specialists), engaged students, student-teacher and student-student relationships, high-functioning groups, and clear and well-managed processes. Developing effective citizens with independent critical thinking, decision-making, and personal empowerment that comes with mastery requires an interactive model. This has been the domain of the elite school’s classrooms (Harvard Business School is famously case-based.) To raise the level of our citizenry, we need to raise the capabilities of citizens — the managers of our democracy. We need independent-thinking, compassionate, yet considerate citizens. The well-off will still have access to the premium programs. Unfortunately, those with more modest budgets will be tempted to compromise with a flat and superficial online degree program.
Conclusion
Eventually, the development of cloud-based SaaS applications and the ubiquity of computing and mobile devices has been accomplished. The business model that got us to the point has served its purpose. It’s time the industry grew out of its — impulsive race to be first and attended to developing and delivering quality. With the tools we have now, we can and will move high-quality, interactive education down to new markets. We advocate a model based on personalized learning in small groups, with a skilled mentor actively working to build relationships via active efforts and synchronous meetings.
Lastly, we think this provides the best outcomes for our participants and the most rewarding experience for our mentors. Recall your favorite class. I bet your story includes the relationship you had with the teacher. The subject may have been interesting, but it was the relationship with the teacher and how they orchestrated the class that helped you grow as a person.
Let’s get past our fascination with our new technologies and demand quality educational programs.