Online Learning Done Wrong


cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward


cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward


cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Tom Woodward

I’ve been talking to people quite a bit about online learning lately because of the new job. A number of conversations go back to my experience getting a master’s degree online through Virginia Tech. I was not a fan of the process. I hated every bit of it and felt completely divorced from the process. In other words, it was a lot like my usual traditional educational experience. In any case, I dealt with it by waiting until the last few days of each semester and did all the work in a few days.

Today, I had to find my VT PIN so I could prove I got the master’s degree. In the search I came across the emails represented above. VT was doing their due diligence. As a matter of fact, I bet they were following some framework about “online quality.”1 This program was one of the “set and forget” models that keep churning out profit with low investment of time for years. There’s very little change in content and less interaction or leveraging of student knowledge/experience. It was particularly ironic when taking the online learning course advocating for the very things that weren’t happening in the online class I was taking.


1 Or the grad assistants were anyway.