IEEE Spectrum May, 2012 - 32

32

This can all add up to big changes in how we think
about a university education. Could you imagine
a situation where students do some of their degree
work remotely and then do some on campus,
particularly the small, experiential classes that
don't transfer well to online?
This could be a way of keeping costs down,
because you're living at home for a while or you're
working part-time while you're doing the remote
courses. So it could begin to address this issue of

NA * IEEE SPECTRUM * MAY 2012

the cost of higher education. It's hard to predict how
much you could reduce the cost of instruction, but it's
important to understand that the cost of instructors
is the No. 1 cost factor in education. If you could
double the student-faculty ratio by reusing online
material without reducing student learning, you
could significantly reduce the cost of education.

The biggest way this could go wrong is if we assume
that we can fully automate this, if we think that
we can throw students in front of terminals, that
we don't need any live instructors anywhere, that
students can be totally successful without ever
talking to anybody. I think this is a model that will
leave many students behind.
In a university, there is always a very small
fraction of students who probably never need to come
to class. They could just sit in their rooms, read the
textbook, and they're capable enough, focused enough,
disciplined enough, and driven enough that they
could be successful. But that's a very small minority.
Likewise, there's a small minority of students
who could watch everything online, never talk to
anybody else, never engage with an instructor, never
engage with teaching assistants, and learn just fine.
But again, that's a very tiny minority.
The other potential problem is that we could see a
lot of schlock out there. Because the Internet enables
everybody to be a publisher,
we could have a lot of things
post your
out there that are of lesser
comments online at
quality. Will people be able to
http://spectrum.
distinguish quality in online
ieee.org/
education? This isn't resolved.
hennessy0512
We have to remember that
the undergraduate experience
is a whole experience. Part of that, particularly in the
American higher education system, is the process
of living and working with people of your own age.
It involves learning how to work in teams, learning
how to work with people with different backgrounds
and different experiences. You certainly don't want
to dismiss that part in a pursuit of doing it all online.
In spite of these hazards, I think online education
and the role of technology in education are going to be
transformative. And I'd like to think that what we've
started here will not only continue at Stanford but
that other universities will see it as a way to organize
education and to play a larger role in the world.
To do this, however, universities have to be
willing to change. Universities build on tradition
and history, but they also have to be dynamic. And
I think that struggle to balance those two opposing
forces-to not become too attached to the past in such
a way that you can't do something new, or to become
too faddish in such a way that you lose your core
values-is an ongoing challenge for all institutions.
But online education is going to happen; it's not
going to wipe everything else out, but it is going to
happen. We have to embrace it.
❏
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

GABRIELA HASBUN

The biggest
way this could
go wrong
is if we
assume that
we can fully
automate
this, that we
don't need
any live
instructors
anymore

project courses. For this reason, blended learning
models may be very attractive.
It's important to keep in mind the difference
between learning and credentialing. Universities-
and high schools, for that matter-do both:
They assist students in learning, and they provide
a credential as evidence that a student has mastered
certain material. I'm convinced that online learning
will be widely used: The millions of downloads
a day experienced by the Khan Academy and the
broad interest in Stanford's online courses are clear
evidence. But online credentialing is a new space
and one that has much greater uncertainty. We have
to consider a range of issues, from how credentials
received online will be viewed by employers to how
good online credentialing can be.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum May, 2012
