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Remedial courses, the not-for-credit classes many college students (particularly those who attend community college) have to take, and pay for, before they can enter credit-bearing courses, are really troublesome for higher education advocates. Students who take remedial courses are less likely to ever graduate. Recent investigations reveal many students placed in such courses might be perfectly able to succeed in regular courses, if they were allowed to take them.
Remediation is expensive, inefficient, and ineffective. At the same time, many reformers have touted the potential for massive online open courses (MOOCs) to offer free education to thousands of students at once.
The Gates Foundation is wondering if there’s a way to use MOOCs to solve the remediation problem. According to a piece at Inside Higher Ed:
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today announced it was seeking proposals for the creation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) designed to serve as remedial and other general education courses, which are often stumbling blocks for lower income students. The foundation said in its request for proposals that it hopes to encourage high-quality MOOCs that could help improve college completion rates.
Well good luck with that, Gates. This seems highly unlikely to work very well. Online courses are most effective when students are really focused and motivated and need little extra help beyond lectures.
This is the very opposite of remedial students, who are defined by their need for extra help. If they don’t succeed in relatively small classes offered by community colleges, why would online courses with thousands of students be a good idea?
At least the new remedial courses will be cheap.
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Dennis Ashendorf (@OrangeMath) on September 11, 2012 7:21 PM:
How to make money with MOOCs and provide high quality education:
Place the courses within a Learning Management System, LMS, that can interact with another entity's LMS (could be the same LMMS software; such as Brainhoney). The integration would allow a school's LMS to virtually regroup some of the MOOC's students into a virtual classroom that an advisor or instructor could monitor and/or assign more work and/or assist. In short, provide support. The integration would also include assessment results from the MOOC semi-automatically transferring into the school's gradebook for record keeping and/or weighting for a grade.
The power of this limited action can be seen in both the ease-of-use and also in the way the MOOC can make money.
First, imagine a school connecting with several MOOC's from different providers; perhaps all using the same LMS. The students, administration, and faculty would have one or two apps to interact with many different providers (eg the College Board, SAS, MIT, etc.). Also, by using one LMS, the extra work, of transferring the information into a School Information System, SIS, would be simplified for analytics and history.
Second, MOOC providers could earn money by charging for the integration. Imagine the LMS developer giving the LMS away with an embedded payment system (of which it takes a share). A school connects to the MOOC for an annual set fee and a variable fee per student. This provides money to upgrade the LMS and the MOOC courses.
Third, the side issue of MOOC vs MOC should be stated. The purpose of open in MOOCs is both to allow poor or unaffiliated people to learn with the sacrifice of not necessarily getting badges or credentials and to keep out other providers by inhibiting their potential revenue streams.
Fourth, the advantages to the students include:
1. Portfolios of all work could be maintained over time (assuming student maintains login privileges - or exports of data into an EdVault is available.).
2. Many different providers of courses could be easily grafted into conventional schools which should allow monetary savings and improved courses being offered.
Fifth, it should be mentioned, that the Gates proposal should be seen as a way to get more private courseware into colleges; just as credit recovery programs are used to get online courseware into K12. This can be considered anti-public school and probably is. However, consider how California's community and state colleges have reduced the number of courses offered to the great detriment of many, many people. The moral corruptness of this is striking. If even, an non-MOOC provider, like Straighterline was used for remediation and first year classes, no reduction in classes would have been necessary. Students would waste an extra year of their lives.
In short, the Gates proposal is not only beneficial, but fits the way our society has changed under the influence of technology: costs are reduced, but big winners (eg MOOCs and one or two LMS providers) will result. Should remedidal classes really be protected from cost-cutting and standardization? Shouldn't the same systems be applied to K12? Is education just a guild?