Does online education need to be free to succeed?
October 8, 2012
Salman Khan, future billionaire? (credit: Khan Academy)
Also see the three related posts today (below). — Ed.
According to venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, technology will “disrupt” education as we know it, and maybe create a few billion-dollar companies along the way (see “The Crisis in Higher Education”), says Technology Review.
According to Dow Jones VentureSource, VCs invested $217 million in digital education companies during the first half of 2012 — more than they did during all of 2010. The explosion of new companies is creating a complex environment, as this map of the dozens of technology companies active in K-12 schools makes clear.
So which of these startups will end up mattering? Today, the venture firm Union Square Ventures took the unusual step of blogging about its “investment thesis” in online education. Union Square’s bottom line: the best investments will be companies that give educational content away for free.
To accompany its analysis of the education market, Union Square provided a reading list of news articles whose arguments it apparently found persuasive.
However, Union Square says that unless people can turn “free” online courses into an actual academic credential, or into a career, digital education will remain “aspirational and removed from the day-to-day of many people.”
Comments (10)
by Katherine MacLean (old science fiction writer and research fan
I agree to Ricks comments but I believe multitudes sitting still in rows listening silently to the same lecture is unhealthy and unsocial. Causes , lack of circulation of blood through the brain caused by inactivity lowers understanding.. Boredom forces attention to other thoughts, The command to be silent lowers socialization and loses the chance for discussions which are proven to increase understanding and enjoyment . If there are to be any schools, at least they could combine listening to taped lectures through earphones with exercise sports like running, or swimming. or climbing. Activity doesl not prevent listening to earphones. I it does not prevent discussion through cell phones. Anything students don’t understand they can replay, or ask a question to a taped Question +Answer part of the lecture program..Classrooms are unnecessary Gymnasiums and coaches might be necessary to keep city students out of traffic.They will like the combination. Enjoying school is necessary, or entertainment will displace schooling,
The only excuse for lining up big blocks of students like silent robots in supervised classrooms is for the Tests For certifying gradings, and all missed answers could scheduled the student for repeated instruction with interesting examples.for further learning but not the whole block of questions. Whatever skill or learning graded A on the certified watched test is then immediately entered in an open record open to all potential employers. who need skilled workers in that skill. Certifiable test results are the only reason for isolated blocks of students to be in a classroom under observation. Access to information on line will be free. Students should be able to take tests for certification by turning up at the testing place, submit to absolute identity checkout. and answer test questions or skill tests by keyboard or yes no buttons, or pushing answer choice buttons. with answers registered at their identity record. Their should be access to testing for anyone who studies or learns personally, not in regimented immobilized rows. Most bright kids of pre high school age knew about pyamids, cave men and dinasaurs, and the boys knew car engines and could do some kinds of repairs and I from doing small statues in clay and thinking I would be a doctor I learned and could name all the muscles of the human body and all the known hormones and their effects. . Reference books were not available to children, and though I asked at school for testing, There were no tests on specialty subjects available to children,Nor for adults, except as part of advanced courses, with no admission to the courses tests except by costly fees and wasted classroom time, Kids can now study history, science and languages free on the internet. but what of tests?.Does a lad in fifth grade who can describe the boyhood of Alexander or explain the strategy of each of Alexander’s battles with the Persian Empire,,get any credit for it or just be ranked a dummy for not being able to name the current vice president.president? Educational rankings might not do justice to the learned voluntary scholars of any age.and their expertize is not listed and open for consultation. Too bad to miss the expertise of hobbyists They can be very expert at any age! They could be back up tutors and Q+A for additiona history questions. .
by OmniDo
In my opinion, the most likely event as far as “Finance” is concerned, is that “Profit” will disappear altogether from Education, and “Expense” will be all that remains; such as that which is required to provide proper aforementioned “Certification”.
This is not an impossible prospect considering that all profit is artificially produced anyway and has no tangible or valid existence; physics already tells us (and has told us since time speculatively began) that you cannot get something for or from nothing, thus “Profit” is a deliberate deceit and an exploitation by the powers that be.
Even concepts like “Equitable Trade” are nigh-impossible, since the good ol’ Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn’t allow for an even return on any energy expenditure.
There will always be something “Lost” in the change that cannot, (as far as current physics models are concerned) be reclaimed.
Since Entropy rules everything (even economics and commerce), the influx and development of our technology has been paid for by the centuries of inequitable energy investments from the systems that produced them.
Education will become cheaper and cheaper until finally, no human instructors will be required.
I laugh a bit at the debates now (not to diminish teachers, for many of their acts are true examples of humility, philanthropy, and nobility) because what will people say when we have the technology to literally download entire years or even decades of information, directly into our hybrid machine-biological minds?
This change was inevitable, and there will be many more to come in most of our lifetimes.
by DeBee Corley
“Legacy” education will resist certification to its last breath.
by Editor
I think we will see new forms of certification emerge. For example, imagine semantic Web domain ontologies in which people are assigned classes, attributes, and relations (based on objective testing) — a sort of deep hyperstructured/multidimensional expertise/experience online database with Linked In/Wikipedia/social media aspects. It would be compatible with the reality that knowledge is growing exponentially, so anything we have learned in “schools” (a really hilarious notion to denizens of the future) will quickly be obsolete, so ad hoc project teams (not companies — another hilarious notion in the future) will select project team members (not “employees”) based on a database match (along with online or in-person dialogue, etc.). Of course, those who have had their natural originality, creativity, fast-thinking, and instant-learning ability destroyed and their minds frozen by formal “education” (another hilarious notion) will not be able to adjust to this new reality and keep up, so the downside is that there would be a disruptive period as the new reality emerges. Perhaps we are entering it now?
Which suggests a new profession: reality engineers — helping the education-stunted to break free from their institutional infantilization, using a new type of reality therapy….
by Zoe Najim
Why does everyone assume that “socialization” is part of education? In post -secondary education, students are living in the world, they have friends, sometimes careers, or at least jobs…They are not living in a bubble just because they are taking an online class or two.
by Editor
infantilization is profitable
by rick
Schools and “education providers” will probably find digitized instruction might as well be given away for free, including testing services as long as they’re automated. What’s lost in fees may be made up as virtual advertising for their other services, plus automated testing can serve as an extension of market research. In fact, on-line coursing May partially take the place of entrance tests and prior grades as acceptance criteria for in-person instruction.
Finally, if online instruction is considered comparable to in-person instruction, that should blow the mystique of the single campus
by rick
(Sorry for the wired flow, typing this on the phone.)…accepting online as comparable to in-person should blow away the mystique of the unique single campus– as with other service industries, if you can’t reproduce it, do you really understand it? — in favor of dominating the market by franchising. Can schools, daycare through grad school, be transformed into 1 to 2 dozen global brands?
by rick
My armchair analysis, for free, below.
Education involves 3 processes: socialization, training, and certification. Most of the current digitization of schooling (admittedly not synonymous with education) only involves the training component. Socialization involves both the enforcing of adoption of perspectives of the groups one hopes to joins through the training, as well as the mutual learning about each others’ undigitized culture that goes in at least 3 directions: teacher to student, student to teacher, and between students. It also involves mutual learning of each about their acceptance of the other (does each really want to spend the rest of their careers with people and situations like this). Finally, certification ensures that the student really gets it, from the perspective of the practitioner community.
by oblom
Rick,
To continue your line of thinking, the “training” aspect can be moved online, leaving traditional schools with “socialization” and “certification”. Now, some say that online can be a good substitute for social environment. To this I say “baloney”. Similarly, online certification can only be trusted so much. You really need to jump through the hoops to avoid cheating.
So, perhaps we’ll be looking at a transformation of schools. A combination of online with physical. Watch the lectures online at your own pace. Come to classroom for a discussion and a test. On the one hand colleges can reduce fixed costs (i.e. real estate). On the other, the can lower prices and attract more students. A single teacher may end up teaching, say 100 students in one class, as opposed to 20.