The Chronicle of Higher Education reported today that David Parry, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, will be allowing anyone to participate in weekly online discussions in his graduate-level class. In an earlier post, we argued that open access to course materials without professorial interaction and the presence of an academic framework the material is not particularly valuable. Prof. Parry recognized that making lecture materials available online was not enough, and decided he would supplement posted course materials with a weekly video-chat.

While Parry’s decision to donate his time is commendable, the problems we had discussed in our earlier post remain unsolved. First, Parry himself isn’t sure if he will be able to attract a large enough number of students to participate meaningfully in the high-level discussion group. Second, the only way to ensure knowledge is effectively absorbed is via assessments, a component that cannot be integrated into the open courseware model. Thus, while we wholeheartedly commend Prof. Parry’s efforts, it remains clear that this approach offers little hope for the future of open education because it is both not scalable (Prof. Parry is so far the only professor willing to donate his time) and only enriches the pedagogical experience in a superficial way.

Further Reading:

Professor Parry’s blog post about his course

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education