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  • An Offer for Online For-Profits

    By Joshua Kim May 11, 2010 9:26 pm EDT

    My offer is to evaluate the quality of a (hopefully representative) sample of your online course design and report the results in this space.

    I will not be able to evaluate the quality of your faculty, or the interaction in the course. This means that my evaluation will be limited to judging the quality of the course design and course curricular materials available through your online platform.

    Why do I make this offer?

    Mainly, I'm curious if any online for-profit colleges will take me up on it.

    We have some disconnect between the worlds of for-profit and non-profit education providers.

    Sometimes, we hear that the quality of the online courses from the for-profits is very high. For-profits can invest inputs in course designers and course design. For-profit institutions can impose a uniform standard for course design, one that is informed by a continuous data-driven improvement model. Courses can be staffed by faculty who are skilled in teaching, guiding and mentoring - leaving the course design process to professional learning designers and subject-matter experts. This iterative process should create uniformly high quality course designs.

    In other places we hear that the online course design in for-profit settings plays to the lowest common denominator. Rigor, innovation, and a focus on learning are not the primary concerns in course design - rather convenience and ease of use are prioritized.

    This latter view is reflected in the PBS Frontline show, "College Inc."

    Below is from the transcript from the show for the brief section that dealt with a for-profit online course.

    "An on-line course at Grand Canyon costs from $400 to $550 a credit hour. We watched an on-line class at another school. We were asked - and agreed - not to show it, but for the most part, it's just instructor-led discussion groups. There's little in the way of video or graphics. But it is convenient."

    I don't believe a course needs to be media heavy to be high quality, although this is certainly an aspect. Areas that I'd look toward in evaluating a course would be:

    a) A clear narrative flow and internally consistent logic to the course design.

    b) The presence of well thought out unit (module) learning outcomes, with activities to support the stated outcomes.

    c) Lots of opportunities for student interaction, collaboration, and creativity.

    d) Strong curricular materials (and yes some multimedia in the form of faculty voice-over presentations and curricular media), as well as articles and links.

    e) Formative assessment, scaffolded assignments and project based learning.

    Having never seen what a for-profit online course looks like, I have no way of judging the quality of their design.

    I look forward to hopefully someone taking me up on the offer.

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Comments on An Offer for Online For-Profits

  • Other issues are important too.
  • Posted by Raymond Rose , Online Learning Evangelist at Rose & Smith Associates on May 12, 2010 at 9:30am EDT

  • Joshua:

    An issue many online course designers (for-profit as well as locally developed) seem to ignore is accessibility. The issue wasn't on your list. I know many for-profit providers say their courses are designed to be accessible, but then I'll see multimedia that doesn't meet the basics in accessibility.

    Considering the cost factor for-profit online course providers should have fully accessible courses.

    I'm also concerned with effective online course pedagogy. I'm seeing way to many online courses that basically want to replicate on-ground pedagogy rather than build a course that incorporates what is known and proven in research to be effective online pedagogy.

    If someone takes you up on the issue, I'd be pleased to offer you some assistance.

  • accessibility
  • Posted by Joshua Kim on May 12, 2010 at 11:30am EDT

  • Raymond...accessibility should have definitely been on the list.

    And I agree with your comments about not wanting to replicate on-ground pedagogy.

    Josh

  • Posted by christopher on May 13, 2010 at 2:45pm EDT

  • Shouldn't the comparison really be to online courses offered by non-profits? The for/non-profit distinction is really a red herring if we are discussing the quality of online education.

  • need a consistent look at quality
  • Posted by Gremlin , Biology at CU Online on May 18, 2010 at 4:30pm EDT

  • This sounds to me like the old argument about online versus on ground courses, where it was automatically assumed that all on ground courses were the wonderful gold standard of education, and it was up to online courses to "prove" that they were as good as that gold standard. Not all on ground courses are great, and not all online courses are great, it depends on many factors. And I'd say the same here. I'm sure there are many online courses from traditional faculty freedom universities that are good, but there are equally many that are horrible. I've been in a position as an online education trainer and have seen many online courses and the quality of these courses varies tremendously. To set up a straw man that all for profit courses are automatically bad and all traditional faculty freedom online courses are automatically great is not a useful starting place. In a perfect world you'd do a blind study of courses from both types of institutions (multiple courses, multiple schools of each type, multiple disciplines, etc.), and then make some conclusions. Instead of starting with your conclusions and trying to prove them.

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