Yesterday in the hallways of Michel Foucault Memorial Panopticon, I heard the following conversation as two student passed a classroom labeled "Distance Learning Classroom."
Student #1: What's a Distance Learning Classroom?
Student #2: It's where they broadcast a video of a professor's lecture from a remote location.*
Student #1: They do that?!
*Well, actually, it's where they film such lectures -- in front of a live audience! -- to broadcast later to students *not* in classrooms. But as I used to say in the fifth grade, "same diff."
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Best overheard conversation in light of current trends in higher ed
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7 responses:
Your Memorial Panopticon is indeed very I Carceri. (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/melancholy/spaces.html)
Sort of makes me wax conspiracy theory-ish about the motives behind this video lecture stuff.
I have to wonder what will happen when Clear Channel takes over syndicating them - if the same thing will happen to college education that happened to FM radio, a la Harrison Bergeron.
All I got to say is it's about time ol' Foucault Baby got some love!
Let me know when they put in a Jacques Derrida Memorial Quantum Collider.
The Derrida Memorial Collider. I love it.
"Placing particles sous rature since 2009"...
Ok, you guys are cracking me up. But my point was more about distance learning: even students think DL is bizarre!
OK. Sorry, I'm easily distracted...
I've never actually taught a distance learning class - only heard colleagues in other departments complain about their distance learning students not doing as well as face to face students.
I've seen studio art (especially digital media) classes delivered online. But, traditional studio art instruction requires so much one on one interaction - a lot of classes don't have any lectures at all. (mine did...) So, I've always felt like online art students are being cheated out of one of the most important parts of their education.
I'd have a lot of sympathy for students who finally get into a University (yay!), take out unspeakable loans, get lost on campus, learn all of their professors during the first year are T.A.s, suffer their first near-suicidal hangover, then get hit with an, "Oh, your professor in this course only exists in digital format."
Seems like they'd feel duped. Demand a partial refund.
Either that or they'd realize they'd lost their last excuse for not getting that day's notes.
BTW, I do actually thing mass syndication is one of many possibilities in the future of distance learning - in a non evil conspiratorial way. Also not in a good way.
You know: technically speaking, this means you could sign up for a course that you yourself are teaching. And if someone else is grading the course--as the more paranoid among the faculty think will someday happen--someone will be in a position to grade your own grasp of yourself.
:)
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