An Australian study confirms what any idiot would expect — encourage students to go online, and they won’t come to class. (Of course, if you allow them to use laptops in class, they’re not really coming to class either.) But this professor I’ve quoted in the headline, Jane Mears at the University of Western Sydney, says something very important that I’ve been trying to get at on this blog.
One of the many cynical, stupid things online advocates say is that We’ve got to meet students where they are, tailor education to them and their preferences… And who wouldn’t prefer to phone their education in? (A lot of professors, it turns out, prefer phoning their teaching in too.) But as Mears points out, education (as the word e-ducation itself implies) is about leading (she says dragging, which is also fine) people out of where they are, influencing them, enticing them into a certain mode of discourse and reflection, changing them. Online isn’t shaking up higher education. It’s killing it.
Or, as the article’s headline puts it:
ONLINE STUDY KILLS UNI LIFE