Joyce Hesselberth for The Chronicle
Sebastian Thrun gave up tenure at Stanford University after 160,000 students signed up for his free online version of the course “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.” The experience completely changed his perspective on education, he said, so he ditched teaching at Stanford and launched the private Web site Udacity, which offers online courses. “Having done this, I can’t teach at Stanford again,” Thrun said when he announced his decision this year. “You can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture to your 20 students, but I’ve taken the red pill and I’ve seen Wonderland.”
What exactly was the “Wonderland” that Thrun saw? He saw those phenomenal numbers signing up for his class, and it made him dizzy with delight. Anybody with a Twitter account or Facebook page can understand the feeling. The number of followers or friends can be a source of affirmation, proof that what you have to say is important.
I teach writing at a midsize public university in the dead center of flyover country. If 160,000 people signed up for an online course I was teaching, I’d probably take my shirt off, write 160K on my chest, and run around campus whoopin’ it up. But Thrun is driven by higher ideals, right? Well, the longer I live, the more I realize people everywhere are just as likely to be driven by ego as by higher ideals.
I don’t know Thrun, or what motivates him. I certainly support his right to quit teaching at Stanford (he’s still an untenured research professor there) and start his own business, um, altruistic educational venture. I wish him the best in Wonderland. But I’m from Smallville, where the majority of Americans get their education, and it’s a million miles from Wonderland.
The great majority of our students will never take Thrun’s course because, frankly, it would be over their heads. My concern is for them and the trickle-down effect that the furor over MOOC’s (massive open online courses) will have on their education. Although they are not the demographic that Thrun is targeting, students like them, who are average or struggling, are the ones who will suffer if this trend continues to grow. Ironically, although the move toward online education is being advanced by some of the nation’s most elite universities, in the end it will be the lower half of the student population that will be forced out of the traditional classroom, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Perhaps Thrun and others like him have made the classic mistake of valuing quantity over quality. Those huge numbers on their screens are clouding their judgment about what is wrong with our education system and what it will take to fix it. Like Wal-Mart, online education promises greater numbers: To hell with customer service and quality; we’ve got discounts!
Thrun isn’t the only one plunging headfirst into the digital pool. From U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on down to my son’s eighth-grade teacher, the push for technology is relentless. If you’re not on board, the sentiment goes, you’re falling behind.
We’ve got to question the motivations behind those moves. I’m sure online educators are motivated by the sight of an abundance of learners, but what are the chances that, over time, those numbers will lose their meaning? Is it possible that Thrun’s ecstatic experience with online teaching will eventually subside, that the huge numbers won’t provide the buzz they once did, and that all he will be left with is the money that can be made from his venture?
You might think I’m overreacting. Alarmists rise up every time technology takes a leap forward. But if you were to cast your mind 20, 30, 40 years ahead, it is not hard to imagine a day when a face-to-face education could be a privilege of the elite. The great masses would be educated online. Colleges would be first, but the change would eventually overtake secondary and primary education as well. This could happen because the move toward online education is driven by a holy trinity of interests: state and local governments that want to reduce education expenditures, school administrators forced to cut budgets, and technology companies looking to expand their markets.
It is unlikely that our higher ideals will be able to stop these forces.
“The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever,” read a recent Wired magazine headline about Thrun’s online class. Indeed, many universities are jumping on the MOOC bandwagon. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed they were also feeling the love when they joined forces this year to offer a variety of free courses online in a partnership they’re calling edX. These changes may be exciting for intellectually driven people in the United States and around the world who will finally have access to the lectures of elite thinkers, but the impact on the average American student is murkier. What those students need most isn’t to hear amazing ideas from brilliant teachers—those students need immediacy.
Teachers who practice immediacy call students by name, get to know them personally, and give the occasional pat on the back. As a college writing teacher with classes limited to 25 students, I’ve always prided myself on learning my students’ names within two weeks of the start of classes. I go over a list of their names and recall their faces. (My previous college provided me with a picture roster so I could get a head start.)
Immediacy also means that students receive customized instruction. Teachers are artists using all their senses, including intuition, to learn what makes each student tick, and using every tool, including tactile and other forms of nonverbal communication, to reel the student in.
Students also need a place for learning. Thrun and others are taking education out of the classroom and putting it on the students’ personal screens so they can learn on their own time in their own place. But has it ever occurred to them that the students with the greatest educational needs often don’t have a place conducive to learning at their disposal? For those students, a place of learning becomes a haven, an escape from the chaos that otherwise characterizes their lives. I know that because they’ve told me so. Place matters.
Online courses from teachers like Thrun can provide excellent learning opportunities for many people. And students certainly need to develop competency using digital tools, especially for research. But that’s not what average students need most. They need mentors and teachers who can skillfully guide them through the learning process.
Unfortunately, Thrun is only one of many superstar thinkers who are getting caught up in the pizazz of an immense digital audience. Giddy with their own potency (real or imagined), those thought leaders are adding fuel to the fire in the push toward online education.
But the delirium over MOOC’s suggests magical thinking. Exhausted and desperate for answers, we’re tempted to think that technology can save us. But it can’t. Wonderland isn’t the answer. The greatest things happening in education are occurring in classrooms around the world, as teachers look into the eyes of their students and find ways to bring learning to life.
It’s a sacred trust that we must not abdicate.
