According to this survey, a lot of universities still don’t get that teaching online involves more than knowing which buttons to click. Right now the administrations probably don’t have to care; the demand for distance learning (even weak distance learning) outstrips the supply. But that won’t last forever, and when the market tightens up, universities will be shocked to learn that their customers can now sample a course, a degree program, or even an entire school, and bag it in favor of the competition with far less effort than they can in a bricks-and-mortar world. When that day comes, the competitive differentiator for customer loyalty will be pedagogy.
(Found via Online Learning Update.)
Michael Feldstein is the founder of e-Literate who currently works as the Senior Program Manager for MindTap at Cengage Learning. For more information, see his profile page.
Possibly Related Posts:
- The Chronicle: 8/13/2004: Professors Seek Compensation for Online Courses According to this article in the Chronicle, it looks like...
- Preparing Professors for Online Teaching: How Long Does It Take? I recently had some conversations with a small university that...
- Teaching Hands-On Classes Online From the Sloan Consortium, whose web site is turning out...
- SUNY Offering Online, Cross-Campus Electrical Engineering Degree Update: Here is a press release with a little more...
- Why All Faculty Members Should Blog So much to blog, so little time. There have been...
Pingback: Two Thirds of Faculty for Online Courses Receive No Pedagogy Training