Cross-cultural communication is where the tectonic plates of culture meet. We watch it happen! Whatever makes cross-cultural communication work or not is good to post. Got examples, comments, brickbats or bouquets? Send them along!
November 16, 2004
Classmates' EOTO Readings (CK)
Online Schools (C. Kinnion)
I thought this was interesting because here I am doing a degree online. I believe that online education is more a matter of when and how rather than why or if. In the future, there will be more online education, not less.
The problems in your essay seem temporary (All problems seem temporary to positive people!). In this case, I think the cheapening of online degrees is the worst and requires government action. We all have a stake in this, no?
I searched this topic. The first site I found was the best. You must have seen http://www.geteducated.com/articles/degreemills.htm. The advice there is not yet common sense, so schools are exploiting the window of opportunity (The American entrepreneurial spirit is breathtaking). I found all the ads for online schools funny on the MSN site you suggested. Cool!
So, now, I tried to find an opinion, like mine, that online education is related to the peer-to-peer (p2p) movement. I like the great popular effect of the Internet. Some opinion writer must have the broad, pie-in-the-sky essay about online education that I am in the mood to read. No! I could not find one commentator to support what I think.
I will just write it myself: Fields of knowledge are getting increasingly more specialized, and training for these fields more intensive and narrower. Online schools use PCs to manage and make sense of the increasing mountain of research and data. OK, so regular schools have PCs, too. Yet online schools will be necessarily more wired! Online study groups would have the advantage of being multidisciplinary, and that will lead to a lot of new ideas. The cross-germination of ideas will be a direct result of increased online education (These ideas are my father’s, by the way).
What is more, I think that the economy of scale will bring inexpensive computing to people fin far-flung regions. More people aboard means better ideas. I think positively rather than consider nuclear bomb plans getting in the hands of uneducated zealots—haha!
Fun reading:
1> http://www.highedweb.org/2004/index.html Oops! Just missed it (not that I would have gone). Techies care.
2> http://www.indiana.edu/~slizzard/p2p/educommons.html Trend watching in online education. This was not what I wanted when I hunted for a connection between p2p and online education.
