University of California teachers’ union aims to block online classes

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/11/university_of_california_lecturers_union_says_it_can_block_online_programs

by cwan • 15 years ago

126 63 15 years ago

insidehighered.com

TomOfTTB• 15 years ago

I actually see this as a good thing. The people who revolutionize education probably aren't going to be people from the old system. Because people from the old school tend to think of it as "using technology to emulate the current classroom experience"

The real innovators are going to be the people who come to the system from the outside and find a new way of teaching. And it will be much easier for those innovators to gain people's attention if the existing system isn't muddying the water with weak online offerings.

pothibo• 15 years ago

Fear of being deprecated! Imagine if APIs would act the same way.

mkopinsky• 15 years ago

Some of them do. c.f. PHP's mysql interface (as opposed to mysqli)

anigbrowl3• 15 years ago

I don't think it's going to change that fast. While unemployment remains high, a degree from Khan academy (so to speak) is not likely to get anyone out of the resume pile and into a job. There's a shortage of STEM talent in the US so the tech world is a bit more open-minded about what constitutes a viable education, but in many fields you simply can't work without a qualification from an accredited institution.

Take law, for example. In CA, NY, and a few other states, would-be lawyers can study via apprenticeship, distance learning, or some combination of the two; although this can be a career handicap compared to attending a decent brick-and-mortar school, it doesn't impede one's ability to sit the bar exam and receive a law license. But in Texas (a large and growing legal market), it does - you can be admitted as an attorney to some other state bar and to federal bar, but if you got your law degree by correspondence then you won't be given a TX law license. Of course this won't last; eventually some attorney with a non-traditional legal education will win some landmark case in a federal appeals court, and barriers like this will be scrapped because nothing succeeds like success, and no state bar wants prevent a big client from hiring the star lawyer of the moment due to some ancient admittance rule. But right now there's much more supply than demand, so employers have little or no incentive to take a risk.

Of course, many jobs do not require same sort of rigorous standards that exist in the professions; you could make an economic argument that all credentialism is a kind of rent-seeking. But it's not going away until there's some alternative measure of skill that adequately predicts performance. Again, it's a bit easier in tech; you can sample the results of someone's work on their web page, and often it either works or it doesn't. It's less obvious how to do that in other fields.

byoung22• 15 years ago

While unemployment remains high, a degree from Khan academy (so to speak) is not likely to get anyone out of the resume pile and into a job.

Consider all of the people who go to community college and transfer in to the prestigious school for the last two years, and get the same degree. You don't need to get a degree from Khan academy, you just need to get the knowledge. Then you can transfer to a prestigious school and get the degree that gets your resume noticed.

nickik4• 15 years ago

Agree, lawyers protect them self not there clients with the credentialism. Its madness. Everybody can study up some basics and then really go into a field. It is rent-seeking.

A nice podcast on this: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/09/winston_on_lawy.htm...

willpower1013• 15 years ago

I honestly think the real innovators, Like the listed Stanford classes below, will come from the inside.

You can treat academia like any other industry and you need someone who knows the the system very well to innovate a better means. Plus, mass online education will still have to conform to some form of the highly bureaucratic standards that give real weight to the degree.

stdbrouw2• 15 years ago

Essentially, what this says is that doing more stuff online shouldn't be an excuse to fire teachers. That seems very sensible: online education scales better than classroom ed, but that doesn't mean that it's a self-evident thing to do, and we still haven't figured out the best practices, so until we do, we need as much professionals as we can to make sure those online classes are up to scratch.

maratd• 15 years ago

> Essentially, what this says is that doing more stuff online shouldn't be an excuse to fire teachers. That seems very sensible

No, it isn't sensible at all.

This is an attempt by an entrenched interest to stave off and destroy innovation for their own benefit. The more teachers that work, the more dues they collect. They couldn't care less about the quality of the education rendered.

Imagine a kid from a poor neighborhood sitting in on a lecture from a top tier university. That's what we're talking about. That kind of educational opportunity. And the unions are trying to destroy that.

It's heartbreaking.

nobody3141593• 15 years ago

The lectures are already online for the poor kid.

What this is proposing is that you turn up at UC, pay your $50K tuition, are given a list of youtube URLs to the MIT lectures and collect your diploma.

stdbrouw2• 15 years ago

No disagreement here in general, unions are what they are. I just don't think you can portray this specific deal as a kick in the nuts for democratizing top-notch education. I can just as easily imagine university admins trying to make a quick buck out of badly organized and recorded lectures as I can imagine reactionary professors trying to save their asses. Both are just as scary.

jberryman• 15 years ago

> Imagine a kid from a poor neighborhood sitting in on a lecture from a top tier university. That's what we're talking about.

No, that's what you're imagining we're talking about.

lutorm• 15 years ago

This is an attempt by an entrenched interest to stave off and destroy innovation for their own benefit.

No, it's a way by an entrenched interest to cut funding for teaching. They couldn't care less about the quality of the ecucation rendered.

Yes, I'm talking about the UC.

sixtofour• 15 years ago

From Stanford's online, open to all database course announcement page (login required) from yesterday:

http://www.db-class.org/course/class/index

"As of this morning we have 68,000 students enrolled in Introduction to Databases, and the number is growing daily. Wow!! The reception has been way beyond expectations -- we're pedaling like mad to keep up, and having a great time. Please visit the Q&A Forum if you have questions, or if you have answers! With a class this size we're certainly relying on students-helping-students. Welcome aboard."

It seems there's demand.

metajack• 15 years ago

The AI class had 160,000+ and the Machine Learning class had more than the DB class I believe.

The demand is very high, and all three of these are fairly specialized classes.

willpower1013• 15 years ago

Hey I'm in that class! lol. (Actually I'm in all three of those online Stanford courses this quater, DB, Machine Learning, and A.I.)

smackfu2• 15 years ago

And next year, they can just show the same videos again, and lay off the teachers. Everyone wins! (Except the teachers, so maybe that's why the union should fight for it, eh?)

CamperBob• 15 years ago

In other news, the Buggy Whip Assembler's Union has some concerns they would like to raise regarding the adoption of the new "Horseless Carriage" technology.

electrichead• 15 years ago

I wonder how long it will be before we come to recognize that virtual things are not the same as physical things and so should not be treated the same. I see luddites everywhere holding us back with insane policies that might make sense in the physical world, but have no bearing in the virtual world.

You can see examples everywhere: an e-book is priced at almost the same price as a physical book; the RIAA wants us to treat each copy of a song as a separate physical thing, newspapers have no idea how to deal with the deluge of more timely and vast amounts of news curated online for free. There are so many examples of established industries failing to innovate and thus try to hold back everyone else who is trying. I wonder how long it will be before the generations that are uncomfortable with technology get replaced with the generations that are.

mindstab• 15 years ago

Great, let's just stop educational progress and innovation to save a few jobs. Because the economies of the world will stop innovating too to save a few jobs for us. They would never just leave us behind.

algorithms• 15 years ago

I smell communism... Joke aside, I can't stand it when people dismiss great ideas because of the fact that it will cost some people (temporarily) their job. It's the same with every major revolution in technology, e.g. industrial revolution, Computers, Internet, Cloud Services, Chips to analyse biological data, ... Yes, there will be some people who will lose their teaching job because the system gets more efficient but they will find another job (maybe even involving the new system).

scrod• 15 years ago

I hope they succeed and I fully support their efforts. Distance learning programs will never be a substitute for genuine classroom-based interaction, and under no circumstances should they ever be used to replace skilled teachers.

And even if that weren't the case, unions have every right to fight for the interests of workers, and should do so at every available opportunity.

mtgentry• 15 years ago

Under no circumstances? I think an online entrepreneurship class taught by Paul Graham would certainly be as good if not better than any real life offering the University of California has to offer.

dstein642• 15 years ago

> Distance learning programs will never be a substitute for genuine classroom-based interaction, and under no circumstances should they ever be used to replace skilled teachers.

I have found that distance learning is great. I have watched lectures on the internet, and found the convenience of watching when I want and being able to rewind are some advantages over classroom-based learning.

While it may still be difficult to have questions answered as quickly as they can be answered in a classroom, I disagree that it "will never be a substitute for genuine classroom-based interaction," as technology will hopefully be able to address the current shortcomings.

Is your view based on a negative experience you had with online learning?

Homunculiheaded• 15 years ago

I think 'never' is way too strong a statement. As mentioned in other comments 100+ student lectures are pretty much as impersonal, the only difference is you can rewind an online lecture, and usually have it taught by one of the best in the field.

Additionally I've supplemented poor university teachers with excellent online classes to much success. Personally I think the future of education should be something like students taking Stanford's ai class with local teachers acting as TAs and adding a few supplements + classroom interaction. You read Norvig's textbook, why not have him teach the material if you can?

Having taken far more than my fair share of classes, my experience is that, aside from project heavy courses, only upper level grad classes are really something you couldn't replace with a mass-audience, online course. And these are just training wheels for researching closely with a professor or research team anyway.

For lower to mid level undergraduate courses I actually feel that online classes (given that they are top tier classes) are better. A good teacher is much, much more important in earlier learning than later (a smart grad student should have no difficultly learning advanced material even with an awful teacher)

Gfranc• 15 years ago

"Having taken far more than my fair share of classes, my experience is that, aside from project heavy courses, only upper level grad classes are really something you couldn't replace with a mass-audience, online course." I wholeheartedly agree.

Sure, they have the right to protest and ban online courses...but let's be realistic, this is in no way protective of students. This is 100% a "save our own ass" initiative. Call it what it is. Anyone that remembers their first two/three years of college can attest to the utter nonsense that is classroom lecturing.

byoung22• 15 years ago

Personally I think the future of education should be something like students taking Stanford's ai class with local teachers acting as TAs and adding a few supplements + classroom interaction.

I like that model, especially since you can break geographical boundaries and get the best instructors into places where it would be impractical to get them otherwise (e.g. the remote village in a developing country). You can also break time boundaries, by taking classes when they suit you, instead of when they're offered, and it allows future classes to learn from teachers who may no longer be living. It is impossible to take a physics course taught by Albert Einstein or a business class taught by Steve Jobs, but with new methods of education, this would be possible.

dstein642• 15 years ago

> And even if that weren't the case, unions have every right to fight for the interests of workers, and should do so at every available opportunity.

Doing so may come at the expense of students. For example, while it may be in the best interest of workers to prevent online learning, there are benefits to students from online learning.

Additionally, there are instances where actions that are seemingly in the workers' best short-term interest are not in their best long-term interest. For example, the prevention of online learning at a school may benefit workers in the short-term, but in the long-term may drive students to other schools that offer online learning.

gavinlynch• 15 years ago

Weird. Every single learning program I have been a part of that helped me towards my current profession was long-distance... I taught myself how to program on the Internet and turned it into a career that pays for every single aspect of my life. Why can't that work at a university? You can learn anything from anywhere, why let physical boundaries limit you. I learned about half I know from distance (books, web): opera, classical music, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, et cetera. I'm not really sure what you mean, and can't relate to your viewpoint.

Relatedly, I honestly don't understand how people fetishize educational institutions but it seems very common. Perhaps I am a bit more sensitive than others, never having been to a 4 year university, but I always thought it was all about learning. When did preserving the institutions of education become more important than actual education?

~ Immensely Prideful Autodidact

argv_empty• 15 years ago

Most students seem to benefit from having an expert on hand to answer their questions and evaluate their work.

JabavuAdams• 15 years ago

The problem is that most teachers are not particularly skilled. A lot of curricula are not that good.

So, really the question is something like "are you one of the best 1000 teachers in North America?"

If not, you're gone in 10 years, and that's a good thing (for students).

EDIT> I've been thinking about this a lot recently. It's a huge problem for society. Software is leverage. We don't need as many people working, but we still structure our society so that people need to work. More and more technology means that if you're not one of the best in your field you don't matter. So, how do you eat?

rshm• 15 years ago

I think it us unfair to see the education system only from economic standpoint. Every one regardless whether they are poor are reach needs to have access to education. Technology bridges the gap caused by economic status by offering classes to mass audience (Stanford) as well as for people who cannot attend class because they are in some other part of world.

IMO, the competition needs to be based on quality. If institutions offer a quality education, people will recognize that and choose that instead of online system.

Over the time both class room based as well as technology based classrooms are bound to get better.

amartya916• 15 years ago

"If institutions offer a quality education, people will recognize that and choose that instead of online system."

Absolutely on the dot.

As an aside, there are intangibles associated with actually going to a University, e.g. interacting with people in person (serendipitous learning), that online classes cannot undermine.

I see online classes as a excellent supplement to what's being taught in class and in cases where in-class learning is not an option for an individual (monetary, time or location based constraints). It is such an exciting time to be around; we can witness exactly how social networking and online education can interplay vis-a-vis in-person, in-class learning.

zzzeek• 15 years ago

If all hands-on education can be replaced with distance learning, the unions would not be a problem. We don't need teachers anymore, we don't need the union, they're gone - doesn't matter what they want.

But clearly that's not the case. The teacher's union still has something their employers want. Hence it's reasonable that they'd get collective bargaining power over a decision that will probably cost them lots of jobs in the long and not-so-long runs.

jeffreymcmanus5• 15 years ago

> We don't need teachers anymore

This is a common fantasy among technologists (and a common fear of teachers) when confronted with educational technology. But it won't happen in our lifetimes. It will not be possible to replace teachers with technology until we discover true artificial intelligence.

Educational technology, correctly applied, can be a force multiplier for teachers. So it may mean we can teach more students with fewer teachers. But it also means that access to education will increase (which may cause demand for education to increase).

One way or another, someone will always need to be available to answer students' questions. Books, videos, and clever programs running in web browsers simply can't do that.

tlb• 15 years ago

Many people learn with no teacher at all. From books, for example. Teachers are helpful, but certainly not necessary for learning.

ThePawnBreak• 15 years ago

> One way or another, someone will always need to be available to answer students' questions. Books, videos, and clever programs running in web browsers simply can't do that.

Can't we use a model similar to Stack Overflow for answering students' questions? Most questions are bound to repeat, so I don't think there would be so many questions for the experts to answer after a while.

TruthPrevails• 15 years ago

Bad move. A step backward for humanity. All efforts should be made to make knowledge available easily and on large scale.

kellyreid• 15 years ago

how dare people want to learn stuff.

eskt• 15 years ago

Just another example of teachers and schools finding ways to screw over the people they are supposedly trying to help. The schools are cutting classes making it harder for students to graduate on time, and then teachers are looking to shoot down a potential solution.

The unions in the University of California system are just ridiculous. For example, during 2008 the worker unions who tend to the schools thought it would be a good idea to protest at my graduation. Are you kidding me? Stop hurting the students. End of story.

chairface• 15 years ago

I understand the sentiment of your first paragraph, but the thing about your graduation is a complete non sequitur. The quality of your graduation ceremony has nothing to do with the quality of your education, and protesting there doesn't hurt anything but your feelings.

willpower1013• 15 years ago

Also they aren't really blocking online classes. The title is just a little fluffy. They are simply stopping implementation of online classes that would change any teacher's employment for the next 3 years. They can still create online classes and teachers can still choose to teach online and hybrid classes.

Anyway, they cited a case of laying off two developmental math teachers and replacing them with supervised computer testing. LOL. Even here in the south I don't know many dev classes that are any different. And the teachers all don't really care anyway.

smackfu2• 15 years ago

A manufacturing union would aim to block jobs being moved offshore. Why wouldn't a teacher's union do the same? Just because "management" is the public / government?

epicureanideal• 15 years ago

This is great news! No competition from these dinosaurs!

tokenadult• 15 years ago

Who matters in education, the learners or the people who get paychecks from schools? As one of the most eminent economists of education has written, "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985).

If learners have power to shop, because funding flows to learners rather than to institutions, all the change we need to provide better education will happen through the usual process of learners shopping for what works. Until learners have power to shop, there is little prospect for meaningful improvement in education. Public choice theory

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html

http://perspicuity.net/sd/pub-choice.html

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/publicchoice.htm

http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/pdf%20links/Booklet....

in political science predicts that interest groups who gain a paycheck from the current system will fight harder to protect the current system from change than will voters in general who might benefit from changes in policy. So it takes a rare degree of political leadership by elected officials, or rather unusual coalitions of voters, to change a system that provides employment to as many employed people as the current education system does.

nickik4• 15 years ago

Econtalk is part of econlib. Its a nice podcast that talks about this problem alot. Here are some nice ones that are relevant. There are many more that talk about public choice.

Public Choice:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/don_boudreaux_o_3.h...

Teachers:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/08/hanushek_on_tea.htm...

nickik4• 15 years ago

P.S. Here a old TV show by Milton Friedman on Schools (RIP). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLVIrmG6Ysk (There is always a documentery first and then the last third of it is disscution between friedman and others, thats probebly the most intressting part)

itsjaredc• 15 years ago

The dangers of factions slap us in the face every day. (See Federalist 10, James Madison, 1787 AD.) Someone save us.

jeffreymcmanus5• 15 years ago

The headline is deceptive here since the "teacher's union" doesn't actually represent professors, and professors don't actually prioritize teaching in the first place. This concerns lecturers, who have always had a very tenuous position in the UC hierarchy (since lecturers don't get tenure). It's quite unlikely that lecturers would go on strike over online learning; if they did, it's likely that UC would simply replace them with graduate TAs.

djcapelis• 15 years ago

For whatever its worth, there is a position class called "Lecturer with Security of Employment" that allows essentially a tenure system for select lecturers. Typically, a lecturer must have at least a PhD to be considered for something like this, it's for people who want to focus on teaching but don't want any research duties.

jeffreymcmanus5• 15 years ago

That position is used very rarely by UC. In the dozen or so departments I worked in during my time working in UCSB's administration, I can remember one or two lecturers with SOE -- it would generally be used to attract or retain a superstar lecturer, but it's not the default. (Tenured positions in general are much harder to come by than they once were, particularly in the humanities.)

jwm• 15 years ago

People here may be interested in this.

"Creativity in Mathematics, pt. 1 of 3, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) and the Moore Method" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLVTV-vXJBg

I think its relevant in the current debate of the different learning styles: Physical presence lecturing, Long-distance lecturing, Class participation, Team problem solving, Individual problem solving, Individual rote learning.

If anyone has any studies comparing the end result problem solving ability of students who have gone through all the different combinations of the above learning styles, I would love to see them.

nickik4• 15 years ago

Its always the same some trie to stop it others embrace it. Examples:

-Radio people start podcasting

-Jurnalist start bloging

-Muscians putting up there stuff for free.

-Programmers started doing opensource

-Sientists move away from publishing in journals

More will follow.

The field of education is way behind. But its started allready in the lower levels Khanacademy and in the higher levels universitys like stanford and mit.

Nice future.

endtime• 15 years ago

Every time someone tries to manipulate the government into legislating them out of obsolescence, I am equal parts amused and disgusted.

University of California teachers’ union aims to block online classes

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