Categories: Theory & Rhetoric, Technology
Subject and Citations:
What happens when two conservative scholars channel the Frankfurt school scholars to analyze online education? A fun romp through intellectual fields with a few surprising insights. After reviewing the beliefs of the Frankfurt school, its history, and the history of online education, the authors put on the lens of those philosophers and ask what they would say if they were around for the advent of online education.
Dayley and Hoffman concluded that fully-online education students do not experience traditional college life, the campus, the library, the culture, the social aspects of the institution; such students get the learning, the knowledge, and the degree without experiencing the aura of college with the social rites of passage, intangible benefits of growth, personal connections/relationships, and tactile/tangible experience the university provides. The beauty and grandure of the campus is replaced with the posters of the bedroom or the television in the living room.
They questioned the value of some MOOCs and other free (ie iTunes U, EDx, MIT) online courses that provide the learning but do not provide the accredited degrees or certifications of completion. They questioned the scrutiny of the tools used in distance education that could track, control, and manuplate students, and they explored the fiscal motivations for the massive shift to digital education.
Though not groundbreaking, this article raised serious questions about what is lost as online education continues to gain acceptance and momentum.
