Open Yale #3: A Course is a Course, of Course, of Course...

Two other shortcomings of the Open Yale initiative are the notions, promoted by Open Yale's marketing, that the video lectures plus ancillary materials constitute "courses," and that these courses represent anything near state-of-the-art in online delivery.

Some commentary has noted that Open Yale is really offering online courseware, not online courses per se. However, the Open Yale web site banner is labeled "OpenYalecourses," and the URL subcategory is "courses." One of the main choices in the menu bar is "Courses." The last sentence in their blurb states that "We hope these courses will be a resource for critical thinking, creative imagination, and intellectual exploration." There are "Featured Courses." Whatever these offerings really are, can it be any clearer how they are being marketed?

In reality, however, these offerings fall far short of being courses. Their instructional delivery component is a digitized version of the old correspondence model which lacks interpersonal interaction among learning participants. But since the Open Yale offerings also lack instructor feedback, assessment, mentoring, or guidance, they fall short of even a correspondence course.

This makes Open Yale's claim (as quoted in the Chronicle article) that "we've put everything online that we could" all the more puzzling (or arrogant, if one's feeling more cynical about it). As noted in previous posts, there are lectures which omit blackboard notes, powerpoint slides, student faces, or student questions, while including course-related administrivia. Clearly the Chronicle article author has bought into this model by labeling the result "as close to being there as online technology allows." But those of us who've worked in online education for any appreciable period are not fooled for a minute. State-of-the-art online courses have most or all of the above-mentioned qualities.

In the early and mid 1960's, there was an American television sitcom about a talking horse called Mr. Ed. (Those of you familiar with the show will recognize the echo of its theme song in the title of this posting.) The Open Yale lectures have nice-looking video and good-sounding audio; otherwise, the level of production values of the Open Yale courses are about on a par with what distance learning courses were doing about the time the Mr. Ed show was cancelled in 1966. The instructional design values are similarly behind the times. In fact, the current Open Yale courses might as well adapt their own version of the Mr. Ed theme song (click here for original lyrics), which might go something like this:

A course is a course
of course, of course
and no one can talk in a course, of course.
That is, of course,
when comes the course
from the famous Open Yale.

Go right to the source
and watch the course,
you'll hear the answers that you can endorse;
You're always on a steady course
watching Open Yale!

People yakkity yak a streak
and waste your time o' day.
But Open Yale will always speak
because it has something to say!

A course is a course,
of course, of course
The voices in these ones will never get hoarse.
You've never heard of a talking course?
Well listen to this,
"We are Open Yale"¦

I look forward to the days when Yale catches up with the rest of the online learning world.

(More thoughts on this in next post .)