Saturday, May 24, 2008

Are We Going The Way of T.V.? Part 2


On Wednesday I posted a video to this blog and asked "Are we going the way of T.V.?" I did not explain what I meant by this question.
In this interview Jeff Zucker's comment of:
"... our biggest challenge is....how are we going to make this transition from analog world where we programed to the viewer and told the viewer when the movie comes on to this digital world where everything is available whenever the viewer wants it..."
...made me think about the following.
For the most part the college set the schedule and tell the students Econ 101 is offered at the following set of times in the following rooms (very similar to how a movie theater offers movies to its patrons). Think of our regular face to face classes as the 'analog world' that Jeff is talking about and the online classes as the 'digital world' where the learning material is available whenever the student wants it.
This trend is coming to education and the community colleges are the first to be hit by it. Look at this article from Inside Higher Ed. Look for the following sections:
Community colleges reported an 18 percent increase in distance education enrollments in a 2007 survey released this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges...
Last year’s survey (2006) found community colleges reporting an increase in distance education enrollments of 15 percent.
...
This year’s survey suggests that distance education has probably not peaked at community colleges.

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