Page 246 - Crisis in Higher Education

Redesigning Curriculum and Pedagogy • 217

scale and more easily recoup the investment in course development.
These tend to be general education courses or disciplinary core
courses.
5. Complete programs: Once universities understand the pitfalls and
problems in developing online courses and see the advantages of
their efforts, they should quickly move to offering entire programs
online rather than a hodgepodge of courses that spark the interest of
administrators and faculty. Students should see an online path to their
degree. Graduate and certificate programs are good initial candidates
because they are short, and graduate students and individuals who
pursue certificates tend to be mature and motivated to follow through.
6. Sharing online offerings: States tend to have more than one public
university in order to serve different regions. Having multiple public
universities in the state offering the same online programs should
not be necessary. It seems to make sense for two or more state uni-
versities, possibly all of them, to work together in order to share
infrastructure, development costs, program delivery, and revenue
from online programs.
7. Student fees: Online students should not pay activity fees because
they are not on campus to enjoy the benefits.

10.2.2.4 Productivity and Online Learning
Many faculty members believe that teaching online actually takes more
time and effort than teaching a face-to-face class. They argue that online
courses require faculty to answer the same question multiple times,
whereas in a face-to-face class, the question is raised, answered, and the
issue is resolved. Answering complex questions online can be more chal-
lenging because there is less opportunity for dialogue that enriches the
discussion. It might take a few hours to a few days for the dialogue to take
place using email or some form of instant messaging. Courses that require
showing and demonstrating such as statistics, mathematics, and physics
are more challenging in the online mode.
Although there may be elements of truth in these statements, these
problems can be resolved when course designers think about these issues
from a new perspective, a perspective that understands the capabilities
of the new technology. For example, demonstration can actually be bet-
ter with high-quality, short videos that show students how to calculate