The ugly truth is that I have no problem with the collection of metadata. I do not care if someone out there knows what keystrokes I hit, or how long I stay on a web page, or how many games of Freecell I have played since December (950). I do not care that a guy in Des Moines knows that on April 18th I viewed an online ad for Purina Pro Plan dog food. If that helps them target advertisements to my needs, I am okay with that as long as I keep getting free services from google such as email and google drive. I also get Freecell for free.
The problem is that I know it won't stop there. I have read enough dystopian literature to understand where all of this is heading. Pretty soon "they" will have a camera in my living room to make sure that I heartily sing along with the national anthem when it comes on the television at 5:00. I am not sure the exact steps required to go from Purina to Big Brother, but my ignorance of the process is clearly part of "their" plan.
I enjoyed the article by Audrey Waters. I like her style. She raises good questions and she doesn't pretend that she knows the answers. She points out some fairly disturbing trends in data mining and information gathering. The concept of having a camera in my classroom to determine whether or not I am an effective teacher is one of those disturbing possibilities. Imagine being the person whose job it is to watch those tapes. What an awful way to make a living.
Of course, some of the concerns raised are not real concerns at all. Whether or not Purdue University's Course Signals was as effective as advertised by the school does not concern me. It does not appear that anyone was placed in jeopardy by the system. No one is claiming that student performance deteriorated due to its use. The only debates are level of effectiveness of the program and the confidence in Perdue's claims. Neither of those areas impacts me.
It all comes down to student data. Again I declare that if it is guaranteed that no names or identification will be attached to the data reports and only group information will be disseminated, then I care not what happens to it or who gets ahold of it. To me, there is a big difference between "Bryan Kurish posted 8 blogs during the VOLT program," and "Students in the VOLT program posted an average of 7.3 blogs." The second one uses my data in a way that does not bother me at all.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to attend the Two Minutes Hate.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Reactions, Week 3, Module 4
Some very interesting reading this week. I will begin by expressing my thoughts about the U.S. Department of Education review of research on the effectiveness of on-line learning as compared to face-to-face courses. I am, frankly, surprised by the results of that review. It has long been my expressed opinion that teaching someone in person is the best way to teach someone. The teacher gets to know the student and then makes necessary adjustments to the curriculum to match the student's needs. On-line courses only become a better option when, for whatever reasons, some of which we will get to later, students cannot access a face-to-face setting. The job of on-line courses, then, is to try to be almost as good as face-to-face classes. Not better. Almost as good. The U.S. Department of Education report says that I am wrong. Me. Wrong. I have difficulty accepting that outcome and I am not ready to acquiesce to it.
Let's start from the beginning. From the report: "The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." (p. ix) That is a pretty clear statement. To be accurate, the report established that these results were true in higher education settings and could not, due to a lack of data, be applied to students in K-12 settings where I exist. So that's one thing. I can still claim that face-to-face classes are better in high school. No one has knocked me off that perch, yet. Another notion from the report is also puzzling to me. The authors found that blended courses are the best of the bunch. It seems strange to me that, if adding face-to-face time to online courses makes them better, going to all face-to-face would have a negative effect.
Another area of concern for me is that the reports says that students "performed better". What, exactly, does that mean? Does that mean that they learned the material better? Does it mean that they got better grades? Does it means that they self-assessed and claimed to have performed better? I combed through the document and could find no indication of how performance was measured. In fact, one of the caveats of the report is that "many of the studies suffered from weaknesses such as . . . potential bias stemming from the authors' dual role as experimenters and instructors." (p. xvii) The possibility exists, therefore, that the results of the some of the studies were tainted due to grade inflation because the instructor wanted the online version of the course to appear better.
So, with all of those doubts, I am prepared to stick to my guns and say that online learning is a wonderful and viable option, sometimes the only option, but it is not yet better than sitting down with your teacher and learning from her.
The other piece of interesting reading was the Killion et al. article Are Virtual Classrooms Colorblind?. This article brought up some very important issues for me. When I design my classroom environment, are my "on-line learning materials . . . developed primarily from an Aglo-Saxon perspective" (p. 4)? I never considered that question. I understand that, by the very nature of a course being presented online, I risk alienating a sector of the population that cannot afford internet access, but I have not considered the nationality or race of my student population as of yet. The idea that "Interface design elements may elicit a range of responses from different cultures related to format ( e.g. colors, icons, sounds), navigation through content, and communication channels" (p. 5) is entirely fascinating to me. I now have new considerations in the design phase of my work.
Let's start from the beginning. From the report: "The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." (p. ix) That is a pretty clear statement. To be accurate, the report established that these results were true in higher education settings and could not, due to a lack of data, be applied to students in K-12 settings where I exist. So that's one thing. I can still claim that face-to-face classes are better in high school. No one has knocked me off that perch, yet. Another notion from the report is also puzzling to me. The authors found that blended courses are the best of the bunch. It seems strange to me that, if adding face-to-face time to online courses makes them better, going to all face-to-face would have a negative effect.
Another area of concern for me is that the reports says that students "performed better". What, exactly, does that mean? Does that mean that they learned the material better? Does it mean that they got better grades? Does it means that they self-assessed and claimed to have performed better? I combed through the document and could find no indication of how performance was measured. In fact, one of the caveats of the report is that "many of the studies suffered from weaknesses such as . . . potential bias stemming from the authors' dual role as experimenters and instructors." (p. xvii) The possibility exists, therefore, that the results of the some of the studies were tainted due to grade inflation because the instructor wanted the online version of the course to appear better.
So, with all of those doubts, I am prepared to stick to my guns and say that online learning is a wonderful and viable option, sometimes the only option, but it is not yet better than sitting down with your teacher and learning from her.
The other piece of interesting reading was the Killion et al. article Are Virtual Classrooms Colorblind?. This article brought up some very important issues for me. When I design my classroom environment, are my "on-line learning materials . . . developed primarily from an Aglo-Saxon perspective" (p. 4)? I never considered that question. I understand that, by the very nature of a course being presented online, I risk alienating a sector of the population that cannot afford internet access, but I have not considered the nationality or race of my student population as of yet. The idea that "Interface design elements may elicit a range of responses from different cultures related to format ( e.g. colors, icons, sounds), navigation through content, and communication channels" (p. 5) is entirely fascinating to me. I now have new considerations in the design phase of my work.
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