Lectures Online

Inside Higher Education reports that Yale will

be starting a version of an open access online tool for those seeking to gain from its courses. But the basis of the Yale effort will be video of actual courses — every lecture of the course, to be combined with selected class materials.

I predict that over the next 3 to 5 years higher ed will be grappling with the idea of open courseware and open content. As I voiced in a recent post to the Ohio Learning Network (OLN) Podcast Listserv:

The innovation and investment in the web is in tools for collaboration, sharing, self-publishing and managing information flows. If you are reasonably curious and adept you can find information and community around any imaginable subject or endeavor. Using "small pieces loosely joined" you can create your own learning environment. How will locked down, CMS-based learning experiences go over with a generation raised on MySpace, YouTube and Flickr? A CMS is also a "content
rationing system." Surrounded by abundance, who would choose to be rationed? Sure the web is a wild an unorganized place. But we can teach how to tame it and use it wisely. Even after the quarter ends.

Returning to the specifics of the Yale project, the project is commendable and could potentially be the bedrock of a multitude of education "mash-ups." But their rationale for recording course lectures is interesting. Richard Baraniuk, founder of a similar effort at Rice called Connexions, said "the Yale project is opening up access to even more of the student experience, namely the in-class lecture environment.”

Yale officials said that they view that in-class environment as crucial and so wanted to build their open courseware model around it. “Education is built on direct interaction, and face to face is ideal,” said Diana E.E. Kleiner, a professor of the history of art and classics who is directing the project.

Is face to face ideal? Proximity does not equal quality. What about the face to face is so good? The professor's intellectual radiance? Chit chat with other students? If the value is dialogue the online environment provides it, perhaps in an even better format with structured, published and archived conversations on discussion boards and other forums.

Moreover, pointing a camera at a lecture does not necessarily produce the best online learning artifact. Being required to sit and view a small box on a screen could be no better, and perhaps worse, that sitting in class. It will be interesting to see how Yale records and presents these lectures. Perhaps Yale believes that their professors' personalities are compelling enough that we will want watch them talk for an hour. Perhaps they will be.

It has me wondering how we develop criteria by which we decide when to record and publish an in-class lecture or when to record specifically for online delivery. What should we do differently, if anything, when considering online delivery?

Technorati Tags: Yale, CMS, Open Courseware, OLN