Takeaways From the CIC Evaluation Report for First Course Iteration

(Continued from the previous post)

The takeaways listed on page 6 of the CIC report demonstrate a lack of awareness concerning trends and the current state of online and “non traditional” students. A few examples follow.

First, the report makes the astonishing claim that many instructors realize that a large number of today’s students are not “traditional.”  They are older, work full time and have family commitments, for example.  Thus these students have different needs, including convenient access and flexibility, things that online instruction provides.  How can any study of this type miss the fact that the number of  “non traditional” students has been a growing into a majority for decades?  Failure to address this demographic shift in students has led institutions to experience decreasing new enrollments and lower graduation rates, a reality that at least in part stimulated the study in the first place.

The report also opines that online courses require different outcome metrics from standard (read: physical classroom) courses.  This, it argues, is because online courses offer different ways of engaging with the course and require different preparation tools for both students and faculty. To be blunt, this takeaway should be thrown away.  Regardless of mode, courses should require only a single set of outcomes. Higher education must give up the outdated myth that online education is “special,” and that it requires different courses, different faculty, and even different academic units in order to function.  Student learning is student learning.  Student outcomes are student outcomes.  Or at least they should be. If they aren’t, the problem does not lie with technology, but with those who refuse to acknowledge reality and use a tired litany of excuses to avoid it.

Another conclusion is that instructors need to rethink pedagogical        approaches and become more deliberate and intentional about what they want accomplish in their courses. This takeaway is an embarrassment. Does it take the threat of extinction to motivate humanities instructors to think about what should be happening in their courses?  This is an indictment of the current lack of innovation and motivation that characterizes classroom instruction, especially in the humanities, in the United States.

One last takeaway that merits criticism is the need for rethinking current humanities curricula and course offerings to better meet the needs of the students in a world that is constantly in flux. In other words, we need to make the humanities relevant.  No kidding. The argument that the humanities stand on their own is clearly outdated.  Employment statistics support this point of view.  There is a difference between the importance of the humanities and their relevance.  Without immediate attention, both will become, well, history.

The preliminary conclusion in the report is that “online learning can be an appropriate format for delivering upper division humanities classes (p. 5 of 54).”  This conclusion is mostly true.  The only edit that needs to be made is that the modal “can” has to be replaced with “must.”  The humanities have fallen behind mainstream higher education in infusing the curriculum, and those who develop and disseminate it, with technology.  And that is a low bar, compared with the rest of our society.  In short, we need to stop talking about the desirability and possibility of making happen something that we all know must happen and just do it.