Category: Internet

Kaplan’s ads (or fantasy island meets back to the future)

While hanging out and watching a little television the other night, I saw an ad for Kaplan University, part of their “talent” campaign. The ad depicts a professor and college classroom straight out of central casting. The professor wears a sweater vest and a bow tie, he’s bald, in his fifties, and he is African American (that throws a bit of a wrench into the stereotype). He stands at lectern on a small stage in an anciently old lecture hall, a chalk board behind him–the word “talent” is scrawled on it– and a group of college-aged students in front of him. The classic “sage on the stage” scene. He’s giving a speech about how we are wasting talent and time in an educational system “steeped in tradition and old ideas.” Our professor says it’s “time for a new tradition, that talent isn’t just in schools, it’s everywhere.”

And suddenly, we’re transported to the magic of the “online classroom:” a woman laying on the couch and watching a laptop with her cat, a young man watching the professor on an iPhone while waiting for a subway, a mom sitting at a kitchen table watching the professor with a couple kids running about, a male model propped up in bed with coffee and a laptop, a business woman watching the professor on some sort of hand-held device, and a young woman sitting on an apartment roof with her laptop, perhaps the only place where the wifi signal is strong. And I swear I am not making any of this up– watch the ad. Through this montage, the music swells and the professor tells us again and again “it is time for a different kind of university– it’s your time.”

According to this Business Wire/Yahoo snippet about the campaign, “‘The new campaign makes a statement that the U.S. traditional higher education system doesn’t always meet the needs of today’s adult learners, mainly working adults struggling to balance jobs, families and education,’ said Andrew S. Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc. ‘At Kaplan University, we are rewriting the rules of higher education by offering students the opportunity to customize their education to meet their needs, and by providing resources and support to help them succeed.'”

Well, I see the point they are trying to make. But this is so wrong in so many ways.

First there is the fantasy of the kind of instruction being provided (potentially) by these online classes, of the “great minds” teaching to the masses. Long-story short, that’s not what has historically happened. David Noble (who I largely disagree with) made this point a decade ago: correspondence courses promised this sort of experience 120 or so years ago, but ultimately, what ended up happening was the “great minds” wrote up a few lessons and unknown and frequently inexperienced part-timers actually did the teaching. That is a danger at all institutions, but I guarantee you that you will never take a class from a “distinguished professor” at Kaplan simply because about 90% of their faculty are part-timers.

Second, there is the fantasy of the kind of students and the student experience. Basically, the ad depicts two kinds of students: those who are literally laying around and those who are doing something else while “learning.” I think the not so subtle implication here is that you can take classes online while simultaneously working a real job or something, or taking an online class is as easy as laying around on the couch with your cat. The one student the ad does depict that is somewhat realistic in my experience is the woman (perhaps a single mom?) sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop while a couple kids are running around. Lots of my online students have been single women with young kids, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a male model who laid around in bed all day.

And then there is the “back to the future” aspect. Kaplan is accusing traditional institutions as being “behind the times,” so what do they do to depict online learning? Why, they show a bunch of people watching a lecture! Splendid!

I appreciate that they can only do so much in a 30 second spot, but the fact is the point of online learning/teaching is not to replicate the face to face experience. Rather, the point of online learning/teaching is to take advantage of medium that fosters a lot of interaction between students and instructors. Speaking of which: I need to stop my rant here so I can actually go and do some online teaching this morning….

First blog title post from each month meme (the way things were in 2008, part 1)

I am so rarely tagged to do any sort of blogging game/meme I feel kind of obligated to respond to Rik “Canned Goods” Hunter’s invitation to post the title of each blog post for the month. So here it goes:

Kinda interesting to go back through the old posts– if I have time, I’ll try to do another post about blog entries that tell more the story of 2008 around here.

Anyway, trying to tag others here, I’ll start with a couple locals:

And a couple of friends further afield:

“The Future of Writing” (though this did happen in the past…)

Something I just stumbled across in the blogosphere that might come in handy for a variety of classes, certainly 516 and the multimedia part of 328: “The Future of Writing,” which was a two day conference at UC Irvine back in early November. There are a bunch of podcasts of speakers and stuff that might be good “assignments.”

“The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education”

Via the NCTE Inbox comes “The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education,” which is a resource published on the Center for Social Media at American University. This includes a long article and this six or so minute movie:

The timing of this is good for me because these are topics that are coming up right now in English 328 as my students work on short collaborative movies and as I think about English 516 for the winter term. And there seems to be some good stuff at this AU center. For example, another resource to look at when I get a free minute: Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video. This one seems to be particularly about mashups and remixes and how they “could” be legal under certain circumstances.

Of course, the timing on this is also bad since I have no time right now. All I can do yet this morning with these things is post some links. I have a mid-semester “to-do” list that could choke a horse….

One video leads to another

A grad student and friend of mine sent me this video, “The Matrix Runs on Windows:”

Funny stuff, which lead to another video, “Professor Wikipedia:”

That Wikipedia one is certainly going to find its way into a class sooner than later. Anyway, now it’s on to grading stuff.

A bunch of links I came across yesterday

These are things I was going to link to yesterday, but I went to bed instead. So here they are now:

  • “Typewriter stays relevant in technology-saturated world,” from the LA Times. It’s about a family-run typewriter repair business and it claims that the typewriter is making a resurgence. I don’t know; I hear the argument that computers are a distraction if someone wants to “just write,” but you’d have to peel my computer from my cold, dead hands. I could see this being useful for either 328 or 516.
  • Laptop stand made from a coat hanger. I don’t think this would work that well for me because my Apple laptop doesn’t open flat like the laptop in this design, but it’s still something that’d be worth playing around with for an afternoon.
  • “I think I’m musing my mind,” which is a column from Roger Ebert where he writes about what losing the ability to speak has meant to him for his writing. Kind of an interesting piece, maybe the sort of thing that might be interesting in 328.
  • “Undecided,” by David Sedaris in the current issue of The New Yorker makes me wonder even more about that all-important group of voters and about his voting as a child. Funny stuff.
  • “3 Ways Web-Based Computing Will Change Colleges” from IHE, which is basically about the power of apps like Google Docs for sharing stuff and changing the way that IT works. I think it’s interesting, but there are two big problems. The article addresses one, which is privacy. The other one is that these apps are not quite ready for prime-time for me. Though the sharing part is pretty darn handy, I would agree.
  • Finally, this is something I came across this morning: Jenny Edbauer Rice’s tutorial for iMovie, which is something I might very well use in the next week or so for English 328. A handy start for my student’s future video projects.

Yes, but where is my flying car?

Not much time to blog or read blogs today, but I did come across this nugget via elearnspace I thought I’d post: on the official Google blog is this post written by Vint Cerf, “The next Internet.” Provocative stuff, some of which strikes me as true, some of which strikes me as scary, and some of which strikes me as, um, goofy. For example:

A box of washing machine soap will become part of a service as Internet-enabled washing machines are managed by Web-based services that can configure and activate your washing machine. Scientific measurements and experimental results will be blogged and automatically entered into common data archives to facilitate the distribution, sharing and reproduction of experimental results. One might even imagine that scientific instruments could generate their own data blogs.

Of course, maybe I’ll have no need for washing my clothes at all in a decade. Yoda says, “Always in motion the future is.” Or something like that.

“Online Universities are Gaining Acceptance, Pollster Says”

Kind of an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Online Universities Are Gaining Acceptance, Pollster Says.” It strikes me as a bit dubious because the claim of the headline comes from a book by John Zogby called The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, “which is based on Zogby International polls and other studies, also touches on public attitudes toward politics, consumer habits, spirituality, and international affairs, and on what men and women really do want from each other.”

That sounds a bit too much like everything and the kitchen sink for me to make much about a claim that higher ed and the online world, and there’s a big difference between an “online university” and a university that has some online offerings. According to CHE, Zogby talks about higher ed in the same chapter he talks about car sharing companies, blogs, and microbrewed beer. Sure, those things all go together….

I don’t think there is any question that online courses and online programs are more popular and more accepted than they were even five years ago, and it is not at all difficult for me to imagine a future where the vast majority of college students take at least some classes online. But I don’t think we’ll all be attending college online while driving around our shared cars and drinking our microbrewed beer anytime soon.

“The Trolls Among Us”

From The New York Times coming out this Sunday, “The Trolls Among Us.” I don’t have time to read it too much right now– I’m getting ready to go to Vegas, which my millions of readers will read about soon– but maybe I’ll pick up a copy of the NYT on Sunday for a change of pace. It looks like potential reading for a number of the classes I teach.