Monday, October 21, 2013

A New Market for Education

Scott Adams (the Dilbert comic guy) described a very interesting idea for creating a type of marketplace for online teaching tools that would allow people to find the best materials for learning each individual subject. It would also allow highly-skilled developers of online courses to make money. I think some variant of this is likely to replace our current bricks and mortar method of teaching. But the transition won’t be easy.

A critical component of online teaching tools that Adams didn’t mention is collecting student feedback in real time. Imagine if software could detect when a student looks tired or frustrated and could adapt the teaching style accordingly. This is what good tutors do and there is every reason to believe that a combination of a computer camera, microphone, and some great software could replicate some of this benefit.

A problem that online teaching tools are certain to encounter once they become a bigger threat to the enormous business of bricks and mortar teaching is changing terminology and notation. It’s common for professionals to use jargon to protect their incomes from outsiders. Teachers can easily do the same thing. Over the years that I tutored math, my biggest challenge was to determine what terminology my tutee’s teacher used so that I could match it. A teacher threatened by a particular set of online teaching tools can easily adjust some jargon and notation to make it more difficult for students to learn from the online materials. Standardized tests could easily be created with a strong bias toward jargon used in class rather than that used by the top online materials.

I don’t think this problem of jargon and notation is insurmountable, but I predict that it is one of the ways that bricks and mortar teachers will fight back in a long, drawn out, and ultimately losing battle against online teaching materials.

16 comments:

  1. Sounds a lot like a higher version of Khan Academy in terms of large scale teaching, but the Jargon change is a derivative of the old University Professor trick of updating Texts (that they wrote) and then forcing their 450 student first year class to purchase it. Even academia has a "hairy money making underbelly" at times.

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    1. @Big Cajun Man: The Kahn Academy is a great start, but it will look quite primitive eventually. There will be more moving images, pausing for a student who starts yawning, and many other things that I can't anticipate. You're right that changing notation and jargon to protect one's turf is nothing new.

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  2. Bricks and mortar schools are leading the way to online education, not fighting it. I'm taking a fully accredited AACSB online MBA program through Colorado State University (I live in Toronto, and there are no fully accredited and fully online mba programs in Canada). I get lectures live streamed (and recorded), have regular meetings online with my TA, and have groupchats via skype and discussion boards with my teammates. My tests are timed online (god help me if the power goes out) and anything the professor writes on the whiteboard is captured as well. I won't say it's the same as being there, but it's damn close.

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    1. @Anonymous: Some higher education institutions will embrace technology as long as they continue to get paid. The real battle will come as online teaching methods start to challenge high schools and the jobs of tens of thousands of teachers. I don't see this happening soon, but it will come.

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  3. The role of real-life teachers is in interaction with students. This role is rather difficult to substitute by a software program. Any reasonably intelligent person must be capable to read a textbook, by definition of being "reasonably intelligent". A student who does not want to learn, and therefore starts to yawn, should not be studying this subject.
    Khan Academy is a great tool. But it definitely is just a beginning. Online, deeply cross-referenced resources with a possibility to use personal markings, followed by an option to ask questions to a real person and a standardized test - this is how I'd like to see education.

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    1. @AnatoliN: Today's software can't match live teachers, but this will change. If we were to declare that students who yawn shouldn't be studying, we would empty all high schools everywhere. As online teaching tools continue to improve, they will adapt better and better to the needs of students -- even the bored ones.

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    2. Disagree. One can learn, but one can't be taught. Should college/uni education start catering to those bored, it will soon reach the state of school education, where "everybody is doing great" and "everybody is a star'. Our society has way too many people with various Bs, who should not have those. Value of education is deflated, while while expectations of graduates (as well as not even graduates) are inflated. Today every 20-something expects to be able to buy a house in the suburbs soon after graduation. Our society just does not produce that much value as much wealth many society members expect to consume. As a result we have growing national debt. And it starts with yawning in class. IMHO.

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    3. @AnatoliN: It sounds to me like your biggest complaint is low standards for testing. I share this concern. It is particularly bad in high schools, but it is prevalent in higher education as well. However, teaching and testing are two separate things. I'm arguing that online methods will take over teaching, eventually. I see no problem with creating great teaching tools that adapt to the needs of students in every way possible. But this doesn't mean that we have to have tow testing standards. If great teaching tools manage to actually help a student learn the material better than traditional methods, then the student benefits. We don't have to create tests that coddle students.

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    4. Maybe you went to a different university than I did, but the professors provided almost nothing in the way of interaction. They showed up to the front of the class, spewed out the book, and went to their next class. Yeah the occassional question was answered or clarified, but interaction? Not really.

      Nevertheless, I still prefer to learn from a teacher in conjunction with a book. I can learn from a book, but I can for some reason learn easier if someone's showing it to me. But that does not preclude distance - there's no reason teaching and courses over the internet have to be all software. Ideally we break down the geography barriers but that doesn't mean we have to get rid of skilled instructors in the process.

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    5. @Glenn: My experience at university was similar to yours. I had little interaction with professors, but learned better from them than I did from a book.

      Your suggestion to use technology to close down distance is underway now at some shools and is likely to pick up. But I think this is just the first step. Skilled instructors will stay around as long as they are the best option. I'm predicting that online tools will eventually become the best option (but they clearly aren't best right now). I'm also predicting that the transition period will be painful for instructors. There won't be any need for a collective decision to "get rid of skilled instructors." It will just happen slowly over time as more people choose online tools for learning.

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  4. eTeaching is on its way in.. just a matter of time and innovation..

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  5. A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.

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  6. eTeaching will work wonderfully for most teenagers when they get to choose what they want to study. When grade 9 skateboarding, grade 10 GTA5, abd grade 11 babe watching become the curriculum, we won't need bricks and mortar teachers.

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    1. @Larry: Teachers can comfort themselves with such assertions, but there is no reason why teenagers would be the ones to choose their own courses. eTeaching will come one way or another.

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  7. Michael, I know this is your blog and you can write what you want but why are you writing about what might or might not happen is high schools in the yet to be determined future? I like your finance stuff, that's where you add value to me, your reader. It's practical and based on reality. Respectfully, Carl.

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    1. @Carl: I realize this topic is outside my usual topic range. But I consider anything money-related to be fair game. The further outside the usual financial topics the more it has to interest me before I write about it. I found Scott Adams's post very interesting. I think that when we take it to its logical conclusion, it means that many young people who hope to make their careers as teachers are in for trouble, eventually. This will certainly affect them financially. Some friends of mine who are in the newspaper business are feeling pressures now that they never expected.

      However, I will take your comment as one vote against future topics like this.

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