Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Is technolog driving down the cost of teaching undergraduates.
Interesting article from Washington Monthly.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0811.carey.html
Any comments?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
This article is expressing some very interesting thoughts. Coming from a country were education is considered a common good and is offered (at least until now) for free, I am in favor of examining every possible way to bring the cost down for students. However, some of the practices mentioned in the article and being applied in some universities require more thorough thought. For instance, I do not think that multiple questions can really evaluate the level of knowledge a student has acquired especially in classes such as math and engineering. Technology can be used in other forms such as delivering lectures off-line (the same lectures can be used every year especially for fundamental courses that do not change from year to year). Then the instructor can offer his office hours for further clarifications, while examinations can be in the traditional form of open questions graded by the instructor or the TAs. Other possibilities would be to use resources such as academic earth, or coursera, which already deliver classes online and Universities can simply host their evaluation process. Of course, each single of these potentials need to be carefully examined and tailored towards the specifics of the course.
I also would like to conclude with one of the writers phrases "As a result, price has become a symbol of quality instead of a component of quality"; it is really unfortunate that we tend to know the price of everything but the value of nothing…
Post a Comment