Wed 16 Jan 2008
Is it possible to systematically educate someone based on a series of internet discussions with both amateurs and professionals in the field who genuinely hold an interest in the subject? E.g. I learned more from the “What would happen if you halted advertising for major brands like Coke and Pepsi” thread than I did from struggling to stay awake in Intro to Business and grudgingly doing the readings and taking summary notes on the textbook.
(Bonus metaquestion: Is it the fault of the individual or the institution if someone finds that posting to BBQ/MeFi hones their critical thinking skills and piques their interest in the world more than attending class does?)
Posted by Phire4 answers so far!
If the professionals in the field identify themselves, then Internet discussion begins to look a lot like a correspondence course. Let’s look at the differences.
1. “student”-initiated rather than “teacher”-initiated topics. This will make the discussions more interesting to the students, but they may also leave the students with large knowledge gaps.
2. Similarly, whereas online Q&A attempts to establish “truth”, more or less, this is not always the case for classes, at least in the social sciences and humanities. If the professor disagrees with the majority opinion of their field, they will still teach you their field’s dominant view in class (in addition perhaps to their own). This means that what you learn, even though it might be wrong, will put you on the same page as others in the field.
3. Online discussions don’t have assignments. Assignments are important, say my professors, for a few reasons. One is that you might think you know things, but unless you are forced to use your knowledge, you’ll never be sure. We’ll assume this can be overcome by sufficiently conscientious students. But the other thing that assignments do is teach you how to do things, which is something hard to get in discussions. Many classes are designed not just to teach you facts, but ways of thinking and ways of doing things. These, I’d think, would be hard to pick up just from online discussions.
And as for your metaquestion, I’d say it’s the fault of both. Unquestionably, most institutions tend to do a worse job of being interesting on the same topics as (say) informal discussions. But I’d also argue that for the vast majority of people, there’s a portion of stuff in any field that is inherently boring to them. You probably won’t learn this stuff in a non-institutional setting, which will make the institutional setting seem more boring by comparison. But that boring stuff might be important, too.
I learned much of my economics informally, but then took classes later on. While I got conversant with many economics principles and the general ideas of economical thinking from conversations and independent learning, until I actually took an economics class, I couldn’t tell you what a Cournot duopoly was or why it mattered, I couldn’t determine demand elasticity, I couldn’t tell you what price a monopolist sells at, and I couldn’t tell you how to determine the domestic savings rate or the gross national product. I couldn’t even understand most of the graphs economists use. These things might not be as important when it comes to feeling like you know about economics, but to actually do economics, or read economics papers, or to answer the questions economists ask, these are gaps that have to be filled in.
The problem online is the BS factor. As illustrated by some recent MeTa thread, *gasp* everything you read on the interwebz isn’t true! In a “real” classroom, though the material may seem boring and trite, there’s an understanding that it’s true insofar as much as it can be (though I suppose the validity of some textbooks can be argued). Additionally, you hope that the teacher also has a good enough understanding of the material to pass that information along- especially in colleges where the better brands (college names) are supposed to have a better education.
Is it possible to systematically educate someone based on a series of internet discussions with both amateurs and professionals in the field who genuinely hold an interest in the subject?
Is it possible? Absolutely! But you need a student who is willing and able to learn in that fashion; and you need conversational partners who are willing and able to provide that knowledge. And when you say “internet discussions”, the question comes up as to what the teacher-to-student ratio is, and how that affects (a) the quality of the education and (b) the resources required to educate a given number of students.
You used the word “systematically”, and I think that knowing what’s meant by that makes a difference. A classroom teaching architecture is by definition systematic—that’s one of the efficiencies of that approach:
- You locate one professor;
- You vet them for their ability to teach a subject;
- That professors teaches n classes of m students about a subject.
There’s money in it. Whether that’s the best motivation for teaching/education is another discussion, but the thing is that the money interest provides some strong incentives to make your educational system attractive to potential students.
Learning instead from online discussions? There may be a scarcity of resources (masters willing to work, one-on-one, pro bono); there’s probably a lot more intimacy (which I consider good for learning); there’s a lack of checks on the validity/bias of what you’re learning. A lot of tradeoffs.
It’d be a lot of work to attend Internet Conversation University and be sure you have something comparable to a normal university education; on the other hand, there’s probably a lot that could come from it that would be harder to get from a standard four year program at your average school.
I think it’s definitely possible to acquire solid knowledge through internet discussions. Perhaps someone who specializes in a field will recommend a list of reference books, or might know the latest breakthroughs in the real world vs. academia. Also nothing beats real world experience (i.e., someone who has run a business as opposed to someone who knows only the theories of running a business). Unfortunately, there’s a lot missing, such as word pronunciation, learning how to interact with others face-to-face, structured curriculum, and of course, that piece of paper employers usually want you to have when applying for a job. By structured curriculum, I mean, for example, it’s fairly easy to pick up a programming language and monkey around with it yourself. But if you don’t have the foundation of a good logic class and documentation skills, you’re ultimately going to be a sloppy programmer who leaves a trail of undocumented programs lying around for other people to fix. Also there are some classes that don’t do well on the internet. I took a directing class once, and there’s no way to stage a play online and present it to an instructor; that negates the whole meaning of live theater.
There is probably no fault in either the student nor the institution, it is probably a clash between teaching and learning styles. If having a formal degree is important to being hired and recognized in your chosen profession, you might want to seek out professors whose teaching style matches your learning style as closely as possible. Of course, picking up information via the internet will give you an edge, as long as you know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.