A
Course is not a Pizza
Steven
W. Gilbert, The TLT Group, October 21, 2005
Many kinds of course materials can be delivered, like pizza, anywhere, anytime.
Most kinds of courses cannot. Even courses that can be “delivered” cannot be digested effortlessly. Learning requires work. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
Should any pizza be eaten quickly and thoughtlessly?
Most traditional courses cannot be transformed into fully equivalent entirely online courses – especially not by merely digitizing those course materials that may be easily digitizable. Online and traditional classroom versions of the “same course” will always be different in some ways. Each version is likely to be better in some ways and worse in others, and differently so for different learners and different teachers.
PROBLEM
Confusing “courses” with “course materials” runs the risk of ignoring the value
of other dimensions of a course – especially the value of interaction between
faculty members and students, and the value of interaction among
students. Essential opportunities for meaningful interaction may be
eliminated or severely reduced if people (wrongly) believe that everything
important in most courses can be “delivered,” and that learners can get most of
what they really need from access to those kinds of course materials that can
be “delivered” easily.
It has become tempting to refer to adapting some course materials from a traditional course in which learners and teachers meet face-to-face as “putting a course online”. It has become common to refer to what teachers do as “delivering” a course – even if that is leading a discussion.
BACKGROUND & MIT EXAMPLE – SHARING COURSE
MATERIALS, NOT COURSES
As more colleges and universities explore options for offering courses entirely
or partially via the Web (entirely online vs. hybrid or blended), it becomes
more important to be clear about the difference between a course and the
materials used within that course. Perhaps the simplest difference is
that in a course, learners have access to at least one faculty member in some
way and that the faculty member has some kind of access to the learners,
too. On the contrary, when someone only obtains course materials,
they do not expect to be able to interact at all with the author or with any faculty
member.
The MIT OpenCourseWare project (see: http://ocw.mit.edu) provides one of the most vivid and best known demonstrations of this distinction. Here is an excerpt from that Website:
Welcome
to MIT's OpenCourseWare:
a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners
around the world. OCW supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and
education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT's values
of excellence, innovation, and leadership.
MIT OCW:
· Is a publication of MIT course materials
· Does not require any registration
· Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity
· Does not provide access to MIT faculty
MIT is giving away course materials, not courses.
I'll bet that most MIT faculty who have contributed their course materials to OCW are proud of what they are now sharing via the Web with colleagues all over the world, and equally proud that what they are providing to their own current students is even better. I'll bet that most MIT faculty believe that what they are doing today in their own courses is always a step beyond what they made available yesterday on the Web – and that they are right. Further, the valuable interaction between faculty members and students that may be instigated by use of the course materials changes constantly – and what happens in and subsequent to those interactions can powerfully alter the learning of those involved. The unique human relationships that may develop among faculty and students can also be an important dimension of the experience, and one that is not captured in course materials.
The nature of the OCW implies that MIT, as an institution, is committed to the idea that each course is a uniquely valuable contribution of the faculty member(s) and other staff involved. Further, that faculty modify and amplify what they use so often and well, that sharing “course materials” – those that even CAN be reproduced in a format accessible on the Web – is not giving away courses, not giving away the classes.
The same is true at most colleges and universities and for most faculty who share some of their course materials with colleagues via the Web or in ways that were available for decades.
DANGER: CONSEQUENCES
The danger of confusing courses with course materials affects both the faculty
who have developed the courses and other faculty who might want to use the
underlying course materials. Anything that permits people to (WRONGLY!)
infer that by “putting their course materials on the Web” that they are
“putting their course online” is contributing to faculty fears.
Too many faculty already fear that they are being encouraged to take steps that
will eliminate their jobs, or that quality education can be too easily reduced
to digitally available materials.
CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATIONS
So, we should avoid this confusion by respecting the differences between
“courses” and “course materials.” (Similarly, we should not describe what
teachers do as “delivering,” nor think about what students do as “receiving,”
except for those instances of education where that is exactly what is
happening!) Through this more accurate labeling, we can help a little to
diminish two important and growing problems:
1. Slowing educational improvement: Faculty avoid, resist, or resent making some of their course materials accessible via the Web because they fear they are giving up their courses. Many courses that could be improved by sharing course materials via the Web are not – or are too slowly.
2. Accepting inferior education: Faculty and students who are misled to believe that in most courses, access to course materials is equivalent to participation, end up delivering and receiving a diluted education.
Let’s not reduce too much of education to commoditized pieces that can be “delivered” – what we might call the “Domino’s theory of education”: call up, order, have it delivered anywhere, anytime, eat it alone by the slice or the pie.
An MIT course is not a pizza. Nor are most other courses!
NOTE: This is NOT an argument against selecting and assembling small learning/teaching modules WITHIN a course! That is a very old, very valuable practice that is being dramatically, perhaps overwhelmingly, enriched by MERLOT, the MIT OCW project, and many other new ways of sharing instructional materials. This is not even an argument against creating and delivering an entire course composed of such items, BUT ONLY UNDER SOME CONDITIONS. Identifying and articulating these conditions is a worthy challenge and well beyond the scope of this article.
[We began to explore this issue within the “Dangerous Discussions” initiative a few months ago. We began to consider questions such as “What is a course?” and “Who owns a course?” In a moment of whimsy, I offered a slightly facetious and “artistic” comment. See:
http://www.tltgroup.org/ProFacDev/DangerousDiscussions/NotACourse.htm]
For more, see:
“Separated by a Common Language (‘Confusors’)” http://www.tltgroup.org/discussions/confusors.htm
The MIT OpenCourseWare project: http://ocw.mit.edu
For more on the methodology of pursuing dangerous discussions, see:
http://www.tltgroup.org/ProFacDev/DangerousDiscussions/coursenotpizzamore.htm
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