Can Developmental be done Online?

A challenge in our profession is being able to integrate discrete components and results to create a stable vision of our work.  Over the years, various trends have impacted us and our classrooms; in the short term, many of these trends look good.  Most produce results that are initially positive.  Few trends have created long-term change.

The question is “Can Developmental be done Online?”  I’m taking this in the broadest sense — not just courses, but online in general.  Can the purposes of developmental mathematics be met by learning in an online environment?

Like education in general, we are in danger of being reduced to a finite set of skills or competencies.  We need to keep education as a separate goal from those in training programs — training adds competencies, while education creates capabilities.  Training is what we do when success is measured by how ready people are for identified jobs or behaviors; training is critical to our well-being both individually and collectively.  However, our survival depends on our adaptability and problem solving — and this speaks to education.

This distinction between training and education is critical if we are to answer the question “Can developmental be done Online?”.  Developmental mathematics, long defined in training concepts (skills), is far more of an educational endeavor.  As long as we focus on skills, our students leave our courses with the same basic capabilities as when they entered — in other words, generally ill-equipped for education.  Within a training program, a skill-focus makes sense; in an educational program, a skill-focus tends to defeat us.

The connection between these ideas and ‘online’ is indirect; online work is capable of dealing with either training or education.  I will conjecture, however, that increasing capabilities is more difficult to achieve in an online environment; not impossible — more difficult.  The movement from novice toward expert (in other words, education) is facilitated by varied supports — modeling, discussion, non-verbal cues, individual conversations, group support — which are easier to build in a face-to-face environment.

A parallel issue is “does online work for the population of community college students?”.   The Community College Research Center (Columbia University) has just released a research study based on a large (state-wide) dataset; see http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/adaptability-to-online-learning.pdf for details.  The findings are disturbing:

While all types of students in the study suffered decrements in performance in online courses, some struggled more than others to adapt: males, younger students, Black students, and students with lower grade point averages.  [abstract, pg 2]

I say disturbing because the ‘lower grade point averages’ points to a developmental population more than general, and because Black (ie, African American) students already have a statistical risk in developmental courses.

This study was limited to online courses, which might not reflect the entire nature of online learning.  However, I would point out that most non-course learning online is done in an individual-based structure — a person finds their resources, and uses them as best they can, sometimes with a little support (tutors, for example); this learning is less supported than many online courses, so I would not expect non-course learning to have better results.

There are environments that stretch the concept of online courses towards the non-course format — “MOOC”.  MOOCs offer the excitement of more equal access to educational opportunity with reduced cost, and policy makers are considering this as an alternative.  I have large concerns, however, relative to MOOCs offering any help to developmental students … either the focus is on skills (training) which won’t help students very much in education, or the focus is on education without adequate support for building capabilities (movement towards expert).

Our own local data about online courses in developmental math is not that promising; most commonly, the online courses have a lower pass rate than other methods.  It’s possible that this is part of an overall trend towards lower outcomes in online courses.

Online learning is here to stay, and will continue to evolve.  This does not mean that online courses are here to stay.  Perhaps we need to look at that format as an option for a limited group of students, perhaps even for limited purposes.  My own view is that developmental math can not be done successfully online for the population we serve; I have doubts about whether there is a significant sub-population for whom online courses is a reasonable choice for developmental math.

 Join Dev Math Revival on Facebook:

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.