College Considers Merits of Online Education

On Sept. 3, The Chronicle of Higher Education posted an article written by Former Provost and Executive Vice President Alison Byerly discussing the issue of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. While the College rejected using MOOCs as part of its curriculum, many institutions across America have adopted the new model, both for its profitability and as a way to attract new students.

In the article, titled “Before You Jump on the Bandwagon...” Byerly, who is on academic leave this year as a visiting scholar in literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents the questions that she believes all colleges should consider before adding MOOCs to their offered courses. A MOOC is a course offered online that is open to anyone – inside the institution or outside of it – who is willing to pay.

“Colleges that are contemplating a new venture, such as a MOOC or other online-learning offerings, need to ask themselves the fundamental question: Is this consistent with the unique mission of our institution?” wrote Byerly in the article.

The article also asks colleges to consider whether MOOCs fit their institution’s financial model and if their motives for adding MOOCs to their curriculum are appropriate. Byerly urges institutions to consider if they are adding MOOCs for the good of the institution or for the prestige?

Byerly said that she has long been interested in issues related to media and education, and felt that she could combine her knowledge of technology with her administrative experience to offer advice on MOOCs from a strategic standpoint.

“Many schools are moving very quickly to become involved in offering MOOCs,” wrote Byerly in an email. “Yet it seemed to me that there was very little meaningful discussion of the question of what specific goals were being served by MOOCs at the institutions offering them.”

While Byerly believes that technology offers completely different opportunities and benefits than face-to-face classes, she says that MOOCs would probably not serve well at a small liberal arts college.

“I think that there is little reason for students who are at Middlebury to prefer an online version of a course they can experience firsthand,” wrote Byerly.

President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said that Byerly was correct in her suggestion that MOOCs are not the proper model for online education for the College.

“I think there’s a lot of unknowns about MOOCs,” said Liebowitz. “When I started pressing to ask what type of model this was going to be — ‘is it eventually going to be for credit, is there going to be proctoring?’ — it was still very fuzzy. I think Allison’s right. She was saying, ‘before you all rush to this thing, you better think twice about what it is.’”

Byerly and Liebowitz agree, however, that technology certainly has a place at the College and will need to be seriously considered in the coming years.

Liebowitz offered that the College may consider providing online language courses for students returning from abroad. With the limited amount of language professors on campus, Liebowitz said, it may be beneficial to have high-level language students skype into a course taught abroad, such as students joining in on an economics course taught in China.

In this way, explained Liebowitz, students can continue to expand their education in ways that may not be possible with the resources available at the College.

“There are ways to expand the curriculum without increasing the cost or increasing the staffing,” said Liebowitz. “I want the faculty to start thinking about that and to think about ways we can do things a bit more creatively to utilize our resources.”

College Professor Emeritus John Elder, who retired two years ago, has since become involved in the digital revolution. In addition to participating in an online discussion on Robert Frost’s poetry, giving him personal experience with an online education forum, Elder has spent much time considering the effects of online education.

Similar to Byerly and Liebowitz, Elder sees potential in online education, but also recognizes that with a small liberal arts college, there is a line that needs to be drawn between online and conventional classes.

“It seems worthwhile to stake our college's claim in this national conversation, and to investigate how far we can go in pursuing our own seminar-based curriculum online,” wrote Elder in an email. “Not that I think the internet could or should ever replace discussion around a table, but it could perhaps be one way to build upon or extend such face-to-face experience.”

Elder believes that online seminars for students abroad could be beneficial. The professor emeritus also suggested that online courses might be beneficial for students participating in internships, or for graduates of the College who want to continue participating in the educational community.

“I believe that colleges like Middlebury will need to look carefully at the opportunities technology offers,” wrote Byerly. “But also work hard at communicating to external audiences the unique benefits that the residential liberal arts college offers: the mentorship of dedicated faculty, the opportunity to connect classroom learning with experiences outside the classroom and lifelong membership in a close-knit intellectual and social community. That is the real ‘value proposition’ of the liberal arts college.”