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Classes without Classrooms Committee Meeting Transcript:
Forum 1: Logistics (e)

Richard Felnagle	Personally, I get kind of worried when I hear faculty talking, forgive me Joanna, I get worried when I hear people saying they're going to develop a course "for the Internet," or they're going to develop a course for "modem," or they're going to develop any course for a particular means of delivery. We get new options so fast around here it's kind of scary. For the Internet, you know, in five minutes it's going to be passé. It will be yesterday's news, and I think you're right...Fiber optics are going to blindside us, the telephone companies--they want to get into this. There'll be some whizbang thing here tomorrow that probably none of us are thinking about today...I think the desktop conferencing thing is going to make an impact...the see-you-see-me thing when that finally arrives...go ahead...
Unknown speaker	But the development is the difference. Otherwise, you're traditional, stand-up-in-front-of-the-class-and-lecture-to-your-group now quote works just well with your distance students and that's not so. You have to change the way you do your own delivery to your distance students because they don't have the advantage of saying 'excuse me, wait a minute, I don't understand that' or what have you. Or they may not have the communication base, or they may not be a good distance student learner. They may be taking the class because they have no other alternative. They are stuck in Mazula somewhere and that's the only way they're going to get your class. Now they need some special attention as far as the way you develop your curriculum...your lesson plan. And so just to make it the same...so I actually appreciate the idea she says she's going to develop for the Internet because it's not the same as the classroom. True/false?
Richard Felnagle	I'm not sure, I don't know. I think, if you're asking me what I think, I think teaching comes down to certain basic fundamental processes: One is the transmission of information. One is the opportunity for the student to get feedback. A student does an exercise, a lab, a report, whatever it is, and gets feedback, and there's some dynamics that go on. And I get nervous when I hear people developing a way of teaching a particular course that is dependent upon a technology. How many people in the district have developed programs in BASIC to be used in courses, and what's happened to them? They aren't here anymore. You see what I mean? Whereas, it seems to me that we should be thinking about the appropriate way to accomplish each one of those objectives. If we have some ideas, then, presumably, whatever technology comes along we can find a way of working. I'm wondering if we need to think always that transmittal of information always needs to be the classroom. I'm wondering if that isn't where this real revolution is coming. I don't think the classroom is ever going away, but I've some serious questions whether students are ever going to be sitting for 16 weeks in a classroom every again...Wouldn't it be enough to cut these classes to 8 weeks like we do in the summer and let them go on their own? What do we need 16 weeks for? Then what happens to your load? What happens to my load?
Unknown speaker	You know, whether it's 16 weeks or 8 is a whole different issue. That takes a different kind of course design. So I think we're getting pretty muddy when we start, you know, interchanging those things. We can do that. We do it in the summer time, we do that on a regular basis, but it doesn't have anything to do with the issue that you were talking about. Some things you could do better on a video and just give it to them and you can do something else during that class time. I truly believe that a class discussion...you can have an hour with thirty people, or you can split it into fifteen minutes in a teleconference session and only have a fourth of them at a time. You can get more out of the students because you get the ones who wouldn't talk if there were 30 in the room. I don't like the idea either of what you were saying of designing a class for just one thing because I've truly come to believe the more you mix the media, the more you can accomplish with different students and different topics.
Gil Gonzales	I guess one of the questions for me is talking about the teacher-student relationship...If students can access information of all kinds of places that aren't tied to where they're at locally, and maybe even also communicate with people synchronously/asynchronously, who are, I know there aren't many like them, but maybe know a little bit more about music theory at that one time, and just listed information that is somehow relevant based on getting tools that can do that in robotic ways, and manual ways, and all kind of stuff--does that change how the student views this activity that we're...either accomplish the base activity or what have you? Because the student is no longer reliant in the model we've talked to, perhaps, in some cases....
Unknown speaker	What I'm seeing is, we've been in a factory mode of education, and we're getting toward an individually orientated type of education where we're going toward what that audience wants and needs. Whether it's eight weeks, six weeks, sixteen weeks--some can do it in eight weeks--there's fast and slow learners. What our audience wants, I guess.
Richard Felnagle	I agree, this is a market-driven thing, and I think students want faster classes. I don't think given a free choice in the matter any student would want a class for 16 weeks. Honestly, you offer a choice, you can have 16, 12, 10, 8, or 4. What would you like? I bet 16 would be your last choice! And I think distance learning is empowering students; we're letting them tell us what they want...and University of Phoenix is not going to add longer classes. They're going with the shorter ones. I do not think the movement is toward 16 week classes. I think that's part of the dynamic of this whole thing that's going on.
Unknown speaker	Some may still hang on to them though. It's the same point that Betsy made...Yeah, they'll go for it, but there's going to be a huge selection factor against some of them. One of my students the other night said, "Geez, you want to shorten anatomy and physiology? I think what we need to do is double the length...can we take 201 over two semesters?" That's a request by one student, obviously. Yeah we could, and you'd be the only one that would enroll.
Jill Suydam	That's not true, I offered chemistry that way, One option was a semester and a half, and I got quite a few enrolled in it.
Jake Jacobson	I don't think we give anybody a chance to do a pretest, to sit down and say, "If I can tell you all I know about it, will you give me a degree tomorrow? If I know all the answers?" No, nobody will do that.
Richard Felnagle	It's more or less close to 4:00, maybe we should just go ahead and end here. This was, I thought, a very good discussion. I appreciate everybody participating. We did a good job of laying out some very significant questions here...We'll resume again in February. So again, thank you all very much!

URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/cwoc/forum1e.html