US: Michigan Columnist Disses Distance Learning

Posted April 7th, 2006 by Heidi Bakk-Hansen

Guy Prints Out Single Net Course, Decides Whole Thing is For the Birds

By Heidi Bakk-Hansen, OWL Institute (Blog Commentary)

4/7/06

I just found the following column, and couldn't reprint without a bit of commentary. Although it makes some sense to me--this whole throwing up the hands thing when it comes to new technology--that doesn't mean that someone should be putting out this kind of thinking without some acknowledgement, at least, of the narrowness of this sort of opinion, having been based on a single experience.

Here's the link to the article:

Internet Education is Like Learning to Fly by Mail

and the text:

I was thinking of taking a college course on the Internet. A lot of schools are offering them these days. Some seem to be legitimate colleges and others say you can earn your doctorate in two weeks without leaving your living room.

After some research, I eliminated the seedier institutions and narrowed my interest down to a law degree from Harvard and a course in brain surgery from Johns Hopkins. Then, after one experience with distance learning, I soured on the idea.

It happened when I discovered that there was an RV resort like ours close by that had a fully equipped woodworking shop. That park is owned by the same people who own ours so we are allowed to use their facilities including the woodshop.

After using the place for a few small projects, I decided to turn a wooden bowl on one of their lathes. One of the other woodworkers told me about a lumber store in the neighborhood that sells all manner of hardwoods. It is the sort of place where you are tempted to take out a second mortgage on your house and buy 100 board feet of everything. I restrained myself and bought a small plank of walnut that I could divide and glue up into a good-sized block for turning.

Then, because it has been a few years since I have used a lathe, I decided I had better bone up on the procedures. I had done most of my previous work on a lathe my father had in the 1930s and on an even older all-wooden model I had bought at an auction. I figured that lathes probably had changed a bit since. I checked several books out of the library and found a good bit of information, but not the kind of detail I wanted. So, I went onto the Internet and searched for instruction in woodturning. That's where I lost my faith in electronic education.

There was what seemed like the ideal course, a tutorial on turning a simple wooden bowl. It had step-by-step photographs running down one side and a running commentary on the other. There were seven separate lessons, they were free and I downloaded all of them at once.

I then decided I had better print the thing out. After all, I didn't want to lug my computer to the workshop. The other guys would laugh at me. But, I could stuff a few pages of the lesson in my pocket and sneak a look whenever I needed help.

That's when the trouble started. The copy I had downloaded was clear and legible, but only half the text printed sentences would end abruptly on one line and they would be talking about something else entirely on the next. When I tried to reduce the size of the font, the printing just got smaller but no more complete.

With a little experimentation, I discovered that I could shrink the photographs and make room for more text. That way, however, the photos became so indistinct that I couldn't tell what was going on.

There were other problems. One was that the seven lessons were not numbered or otherwise identified. There was no way of telling which came before which except by trying to follow the steps in the text and that was so skimpy that it was almost impossible to tell whether the demonstrator was using a scraper or a gouge. By now, the pictures had gotten so small, they were no help.

In addition, the author may have been a great wood-turner, but he was a very poor writer. I kept trying to edit his copy and found I was losing the gist of the lessons. In the end, I gave up, put the tutorial away, took the books back to the library and went ahead with what I remembered.

As it turned out, lathes hadn't changed that much since I had used one last and the technique came back to me like that of riding a bicycle. But, the experience left me with the conviction that if I ever returned to class, I wanted it to be in a real school where I could get at the teacher.

[Bruce D. Callander spent 33 years writing and editing for Air Force Times. He now is a freelance writer who lives in Cheboygan.]

My first thought after reading this was, gee, wonder how many people who tried a telephone in the old days, and didn't like having to ring through the operator, simply gave up on the technology. Or school. Ever tried a class and had a crappy teacher? Did that lead you to give up on the institution altogether?

I have no doubt that some people do try things one time, have a bad experience, and then write it off forever and ever. But one would hope that those people would at least admit their haste in rejection. Especially those given the soapbox of a newspaper column, for instance. You kind of expect more (one would hope) from someone given the honor of newspaper space.

You'd also think that someone who is a writer and editor might realize that this person, the one who developed the course, has obviously made an error in their style and formatting, since he pointed out as well that the guy was a bad writer. (Making the assumption that someone reading the course would stick to the computer screen is not something one should do, but certainly it's a common mistake.) This is hardly a reason to toss the baby out with the bathwater. Would you refuse to take another class on car mechanics if the textbook was poorly written or organized?

In any case, I should acknowledge myself that there is a screaming need out there for a site which will compile listings of free online courses, and most importantly, rate them, evaluate them, and otherwise help out all those folks out there who don't want to find out the hard way that all online learning is not created equal.

That is our goal here at the OWL Institute--to eventually provide this sort of service. (You can help by making a donation or buying our ISP service.)

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