Message Boards vs. Classrooms

[hmkpoker]

I don't need to tell anyone that people communiate differently on message boards than they do in real life. One is more free to speak his mind. The anonymity makes individualism much easier. Speaking exists in time whereas writing does not; accordingly, there is less pressure online to present your views, and one is more likely to gather his thoughts and form a good argument than instinctively attack with logical fallacy. Message boards are more convenient; one can engage in them at any time, whenever he feels like it, and participate just the same in everything that happened as though he were there when it happened. There is time and opportunity to research whatever you want when you need more information. If someone really wants, they can make audio or video recordings of their responses and post those.

While they're more impersonal and take longer, I think they're unquestionably better for intellectual debate and discussion. My question is, would they be better than classrooms at a college undergraduate level? Transportation to lectures is annoying, rehearsed lectures can be recorded, taking notes is a hurried and unecessary activity, and the questions students ask are often poorly phrased and the time constraints prevent any actual prolonged discussion from taking place. A college course done entirely through recorded media supplemented with message boards is more convenient to students and teachers, and greatly reduces overhead.

Now there are some classes that could not be done in this format (arts, theater, public speaking, science labs), however I see no reason to suspect that such a format would be more conducive to education than the conventional one.

The problem, of course, is that such a method is much, much, much cheaper, and accordingly there is less opportunity for profit by Big Education.

[FortunaMaximus]

[ QUOTE ]
My question is, would they be better than classrooms at a college undergraduate level?

[/ QUOTE ]

For the freshman year, I think Big Education would be happy to trim costs. The classrooms are huge, and the biggest dropout rate is the frosh %, for a variety of reasons.

It'd trim their overhead and allow them to keep the tuition spew from first-year failures.

An argument can be made for the fact that first-year tuition can be scaled down along with the qualifying requirements. That along with the overhead from maintaining huge lecture halls being excised, would actually end up being a net gain for them.

In that case, a freshman year would be a lot more focused on electives and networking, and adapting to the college experience.

I know I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if something like that was in place, and might even have bothered to finish out the year. All 3 times.

[hmkpoker]

Keep in mind that if such a thing became popular, it would mean that students would be fully capable of attending the university from anywhere. This makes on-campus housing obsolete. So this doesn't just cut overhead, it also kills the school from being able to rent out dorms at high prices and make a killing off the meal plan (frosh are always the biggest spenders on housing and food).

[FortunaMaximus]

[ QUOTE ]
Keep in mind that if such a thing became popular, it would mean that students would be fully capable of attending the university from anywhere. This makes on-campus housing obsolete. So this doesn't just cut overhead, it also kills the school from being able to rent out dorms at high prices and make a killing off the meal plan (frosh are always the biggest spenders on housing and food).

[/ QUOTE ]

Not if one of the prerequistes for froshs is to attend on campus and the structure of the university demands that you put the hours in on-site electives. It'd increase the effectiveness of the transitory aspect into adulthood, give the kiddies independence from their parents. They'll still have to fork over to eat and they still have to sleep somewhere. They would still have to do their tests on-site with proctors.

Distance learning is pretty big here as there are many remote parts of Canada. And something similar has been in place for secondary students for a couple decades, and there's an increased number of post-secondary schools taking the same approaches in regards to learning modules/testing processes.