MOOCs and Books, Ctd.

Thomas Friedman continued his love affair with MOOCs this week. Some of us "may think this MOOCs revolution is hyped," he wrote. But we're wrong, because one Harvard professor who is about to teach the first Humanities MOOC on edX was asked to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game in South Korea. No, I'm not making that up.

Friedman is confusing celebrity and fame with being an effective teacher. Since this professor's lectures have been seen on TV and online, he is now famous in places like South Korea and China. I am all for this--I'd love a world in which professors who lecture on justice are routinely as popular as "Hollywood movie stars and N.B.A. players."

My question for Friedman would be this: did Carl Sagan revolutionize teaching? He was a learned scholar, and his "Cosmos" programs were seen probably by millions (maybe even "billions and billions"?), and he achieved celebrity and pop culture fame. But his success at popularizing science did not change the way we learn.

Moreover, Friedman really does not seem to understand the difference between MOOCs and online education (or using online resources in traditional classes). The key word in the acronym is "massive." These courses purport to be able to do for tens (even hundreds) of thousands of students what college and university classes do for dozens or at most hundreds now.

But he blithely slides into a discussion of the "blended model" in which online lectures are "combined with teacher-led classroom experience." There is simply no way this can be done in a MOOC. There can be no meaningful "teacher-led classroom experience" that is also "massive."

Friedman actually says "we have to get beyond the current system of information and delivery--the professorial 'sage on a stage.'" I had to read that twice to be sure he really said that--MOOCs are the ultimate "sage on a stage" experience. Those 20 million Chinese views he earlier extolled were pure "sage on a stage." The MOOC is almost exclusively a means of information delivery. Yet Friedman seems utterly unaware of the contradiction.

What MOOCs promise (at least as represented in Friedman's fevered prose) is ultimately impossible. Their massive nature precludes it. He says, for example, that all that matters now is that you "can prove you mastered the competency." How does a MOOC do this? If the competency is critical thinking, no professor, even with assistants, can judge that in a MOOC. So what are MOOCs moving toward? Peer grading. So the people who decide whether you have "mastered the competency" are also people who are in the process of mastering the competency themselves. In what other area would anyone accept such a proposition?

Peer evaluation can be a good teaching tool. In our Historiography and Research Methods course here at Wofford, we do a peer evaluation exercise. But the actual grade is not assigned by another student. The professor grades both the essay under peer review and the review itself. Having done this many times, I can assure you that students cannot competently grade each other--certainly not without oversight. Many times a student will "correct" something that is not wrong or offer terrible advice that would make the essay worse rather than better. Only someone who has mastered the competency already is in a position to judge those things.

Friedman makes an obligatory nod to the "huge value in the residential college experience and the teacher-student and student-student interactions it facilitates." But, he continues, they cannot survive without "blending in technology." That just shows how little Friedman understands current realities. That's being done all the time--but NOT in MOOC style. (A tool like Moodle, e.g., allows for posting PDFs and videos to an online syllabus, as well as online discussion, and is used widely at Wofford College right now).

The real problem is what Friedman thinks technology can do. Technology, he says, can "improve education outcomes in measurable ways at lower costs."

That's the fantasy at the heart of MOOC mania. The very things that create that "huge value" are not "measurable," and cannot come at "lower costs." As I wrote in my previous MOOC post, the mirage is the same old one: a quick, cheap technological fix.

Friedman says "We still need more research on what works." While more research and more data is always good, I disagree. We know what works: dedicated teachers, low student-faculty ratios, experts who give concrete individual feedback on student work. We know these things work. They just don't come cheap.

If American society were determined to provide better educational opportunities to more people, it could do so without a single MOOC. There are thousands upon thousands of unemployed or underemployed PhDs out there, ready, willing, and able to give students the individual attention they need to thrive. But that does not come at "lower costs."  It is time to face the fact that in American higher education, we want the quick pay-off and we want it cheaply. This is the short-term corporate mindset come to education. We could simply make a choice to invest in more colleges, to increase the government funding given to state universities. Instead, as a nation, we have been disinvesting in higher education. We lack the will to put the money into it. MOOCs foster the illusion that we can have our cake and eat it too.

One footnote on the benefits of the old ways of doing things: I read Friedman's column the old-fashioned way. In print. Right along side it on the page was another op-ed by David Toscana entitled "The Country That Stopped Reading," about the education system in Mexico. One sentence struck me: "In our schools, children are being taught what is easy to teach rather than what they need to learn." That is the danger of MOOCs--that we will let the technology drive what we teach. As Toscana says, "it’s not about pedagogical theories and new techniques that look for shortcuts. The educational machine does not need fine-tuning; it needs a complete change of direction. It needs to make students read, read and read."

Does anyone think MOOCs will do that?

The Perverse, Anti-democratic Logic of Antonin Scalia

This past week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the Voting Rights Act. The nearly 50 year old landmark legislation is under challenge by those who claim that its work is effectively done. The challengers argue there is no need for states (and other areas) with a history of discriminatory tactics to be under any special burden to show that proposed changes in voting practices will not be discriminatory.

Some of the "questions" from Justices John Roberts and Antonin Scalia have received a lot of attention: Roberts for falsely claiming that Massachusetts had the worst record of racial disparity in voter registration, and Scalia for despicably calling the continuation of the current provisions of the Voting Rights Act the "perpetuation of a racial entitlement."

Scalai made another less obviously loathesome, but just as disturbing, statement. With stunning arrogance, he claimed that the unanimous vote in the Senate in 2006 to reauthorize the act is precisely why it needs to be ruled unconstutional. Pointing to the widespread support for the law, he said: "Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this." (It never seems to occur to him that we might have a political consensus that we need it.)

Scalia evidently not only believes that he has the ability to read the minds of the Framers of the Constitution, but also believes he can read the minds of today's legislators. Those 98 senators (and by extension the 390 members of the House) who voted for it did so not out of conviction, but because there was no benefit in voting against it: "I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act."

What a bizarre argument: the Court must step in and rule the law unconstitutional because Congress won't vote against it. The law, it seems, is too popular, and that's why it needs to go.

As I've written before, Scalia does not make a constitutional argument: he decides on a politically preferable outcome and figures out how to achieve that result, with no concern for consistency or principle.

What is particularly sickening about Scalia's approach to this question is that, on a superficial level, it echoes the arguments for Court decisions in civil rights cases like Brown v. Board of Education. Because local and state governments had systematically disenfranchised black voters, the political process in those places had in fact become a "racial entitlement"--for whites. That made it impossible for the political system to produce a just and constitutional outcome because that local political consensus (among whites) effectively prohibited political participation by black members of the community. As long as that was true, there was no "benefit" to legislators to vote to end Jim Crow. It was thus necessary for the Court to step in and rectify that situation by ruling against segregation.

Scalia, in what strikes me as a disgustingly cynical inversion, now argues that our current mechanism for insuring the right to vote is a similar flaw in our system: it creates, Lord help us, a situation in which elected representatives see no advantage in opposing the means of insuring the right to vote. 

That is exactly what it was meant to do. A well-functioning democracy requires that its citizens have equal access to the ballot box. When all members of society have that access, they can protect their own rights through the democratic process. That was the purpose of the Voting Rights Act--and that result is what Scalia finds objectionable.

Yes, Justice Scalia, no senator sees benefit in voting against legislation that protects the most basic right of a citizen in a democracy. But no, it is not a problem. It is a solution.

That Scalia equates the evidence of the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act with the evidence of the effectiveness of Jim Crow tells us all we need to know about his approach to this question. That a member of the Court today could espouse such views is evidence of how far we still have to go to achieve the "color-blind" society Scalia would like to pretend we've already achieved.

Presidents and Precedents

Today is the federal holiday for Washington's Birthday, which we now refer to generically as Presidents' Day. There are many reasons to honor the first president, if only because of the many positive precedents he set--eschewing any form of address that smacked of royalty, e.g., or not running for a third term. The latter is particularly important, because had he done so and won (which he likely would have), he would have died in office in 1799, meaning that the new United States would have had the example of a president holding onto the office until death, instead of voluntarily stepping aside.

In that same light, there was another precedent set by his less-revered successor, that perhaps deserves our notice on Presidents' Day. Few historians would place John Adams up there with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt in the pantheon. But he did at least one thing that should not go unremarked: he gave up power, not because he wanted to, but because the voters wanted him to.

Adams ran for re-election in 1800 and lost the hotly contested campaign to his vice-president, Thomas Jefferson. Throughout the contest, the two sides had predicted calamity if the other prevailed. Abigail Adams believed that "the peace, safety, and security" of the nation depended on her husband's re-election. If he were not returned to office, she wrote, "I am mortally certain we shall never have another" election.

Yet, when the votes went against Adams, he accepted the verdict. Perhaps the near-simultaneous death of his son Charles helped put his electoral defeat into perspective. Rather than plotting how he might remain in office, or how he might later re-gain power, Adams moved on: "The only question remaining with me is what shall I do with myself?" No unquenchable thirst for power consumed him: "I must go out on a morning and evening and fodder my cattle, I believe, and take a walk every afternoon to Penn's Hill--pother in my garden among the fruit trees and cucumbers and plant a potato yard with my own hand."

This precedent is among the most under-appreciated in our history. Yes, Washington chose not to run a third time and gave up power. But Adams had tried to remain in power. He hoped that the garden he would be tending the next four years was the United States. It was not his will to return to Massachusetts in March 1801. He believed in all sincerity that the voters were wrong. But when the vote went against him, he accepted it and went home.

This unquestioning respect for process should have our admiration and emulation. In an age in which far too many people believe that the definition of a "bad process" is one that produces a result they do not like, Adams shows us that respect for process transcends our personal desires, beliefs, and ambitions.

As Pope Benedict showed last week, sometimes the best example to set is not grasping for power, or desperately clinging to it, but the graceful relinquishment of it.

Another Measure of the Change ...

The opening paragraph from a New York Times article this past Tuesday:

WASHINGTON — With studies suggesting that long lines at the polls cost Democrats hundreds of thousands of votes in November, party leaders are beginning a push to make voting and voter registration easier, setting up a likely new conflict with Republicans over a deeply polarizing issue.

Whether or not there should be long lines for voting--lines so long that hundreds of thousands of people were dissuaded from voting--is now a "deeply polarizing issue."

If there's one thing that ought to beyond partisanship, it is that we should not have undue burdens on exercising the right to vote. People should not have to choose between voting and going to work, picking up their kids from school, or caring for their loved ones.

It isn't. We now have a political party that is so desperate to win that it is willing to do anything--save making themselves appealing to a majority of voters--to make that happen. If that means making voting so burdensome that hundreds of thousands of people are unable to do so, they say "so be it."

We've been hearing a lot about GOP "re-branding" lately. No party, no group of people, can "re-brand" just by using different words and smiling a lot. Once you reveal who you really are, people know. Changing that negative view requires changing substance, not just appearances.

If Republicans really want to "re-brand," a good start would be to get on the right side of this basic American value. They need to stop trying to make it harder to vote. Then they can start trying to get those people to vote for them.

MOOCs and Books

What if we developed a technology that enabled an expert in a field of study to reach not dozens or even hundreds of learners but tens or even hundreds of thousands of learners?

That question was purposefully posed so as to make it sound profound in its potential possibilities. But if you think about it for a second, it's actually kind of dumb. We have done this, many times. Gutenberg did it with the printing press. Edwin Howard Armstrong (the true father of the radio) did it. So did the pioneers of TV and the internet. There's nothing fundamentally new about the idea.

Nonetheless, last week Thomas Friedman wrote one of his typically breathless columns on the promise of the new education technology tool called MOOCs (massive open online courses). Teasing Thomas Friedman about this tendency is shooting fish in a barrel, and he is right to see potential benefits from these courses, but as usual he goes overboard. In Friedman's view, MOOCs have the "potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world's biggest problems."

The historian in me views such proclamations with deep skepticism. The same potential was seen in radio in the 1920s:

Starting in 1921, broadcasting licences were held by universities in Utah, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (Casey, 2008, p. 46). By 1925, 171 licences had been granted (Farley, 1952, p. 18). In addition, K-12 education systems in Ohio and Wisconsin were developing “schools of the air”, that would provide curriculum for use within traditional schools and distance education programs (Reid, 1942, p. 118; Williams & Nicholas, 2004, p. 111).

Enthusiasts believed that not only would radio provide a new delivery vehicle for education, it would transform how everyone taught and learned: "the new medium of radio was seen as aiding in the promotion and implementations of new, promising educational theories for teachers and students alike."

How many of us today see radio as having prompted a revolution in education?

No doubt radio was sometimes put to good educational use (as the article quoted above argues). But a revolution? I don't think so.

In the 1950s, there was similar enthusiasm for the potential of television to educate the masses, and again, TV has been put to some good educational use. But did TV revolutionize education? Hardly.

The key trait in all of these reflexive embraces of technology is the perennial American desire for a cheap technological quick fix to our problems. The North American British colonies were founded during the Scientific Revolution and flourished during the Enlightenment. Americans love technology, and for good reason. Technology has been very good to Americans. Where we lose our way is when we see it as a panacea, or as an end rather than a means.

The simple fact of education is this: it is hard. It is hard for teachers, it is hard for learners. It requires work. It is labor-intensive. There are no short-cuts. No new technologies, no trendy new techniques from self-styled educational innovators ever have or ever will alter those facts.

In the end, a MOOC is an information delivery vehicle. So is a book. It is entirely possible for an individual with enough motivation to self-educate by going to a library and reading. But how many people actually do that? Precious few. Most of us need structure, incentives, and perhaps most of all, someone with expertise (i.e., greater knowledge and experience than ourselves) to hold us accountable for the quality of the work we produce.

Friedman uncritically quotes a Princeton professor who says his online version of one of his courses produced thousands of questions and comments, compared to the "few penetrating questions" produced in his actual classroom. "Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I had in a career of teaching," he says. His teaching improved as a result, he says.

That's great. But I have a question that wasn't answered by Friedman. Did each of those thousands of students get their questions answered?

The answer of course is "no."

So who really benefits from this, if the students do not get answers to their questions?

The professor writes: "Although it was impossible for me to read even a fraction of the pages of students' comments as they engaged with one another, the software allowed me to take note of those that generated the most discussion."

As is so often the case with exciting new ideas that purport to be all about the students, the benefit here goes to the professor, not the students. His ego is stroked, he gets lots of "feedback" on his ideas. And maybe the student learns a little something too. Whatever.

The professor openly admits he never reads even a fraction of the student comments, but he dismisses that as something of no importance. Why? Because now, the technology itself determines what matters. Note how the professor has shifted his emphasis--what matters now are not the "few penetrating questions" he used to get in the old-fashioned physical classroom but the most common questions or comments from the MOOC--as relayed to him by software. Since no software will ever be able to identify a "penetrating question," we just can't afford to worry about them. No doubt there were penetrating questions in those thousands of comments, but the professor never read, much less answered, them.

This, we are told, is a positive revolution in education.

There is no doubt value in the quantification of student reactions to class material. We get it all the time in traditional classes. If the vast majority of students do badly on a given exam question, I learn that either the question was not very good or my explanation of the relevant material was lacking. I know I need to improve something. That's good feedback.

It is not, however, necessarily the case that the most discussed point is the most important point. (Many students are remarkably skilled at driving discussion to areas of little or no significance.) That's where the judgment and expertise of the teacher comes in--we have the responsibility to know what is essential and what is marginal. In this case, the teacher has outsourced that job to the students via quantitative data-gathering software.

This, we are told, is a positive revolution in education.

Anyone who has spent time as a teacher knows that the best question is rarely the most common question. That one student who asks that great penetrating question brings value to the whole class, potentially--but not if no one (including the professor) ever hears it. In MOOCs, that's more likely than not.

This, we are told, is a positive revolution in education.

MOOCs can never truly replicate real teaching. Thousands of people listening to a lecture online will no doubt gain something from it. But when there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in a "course," there is no true feedback from the teacher. That person is no different from an author of a book. The material produced by the teacher may have great value, but that's where the influence ends. The students, like readers, are effectively on their own.

Just as I'd like to see more books made more available to more people who want to read them, I want people with no other educational options to have MOOCs. I'm sure the most determined students among them will gain real advantages from them.

Friedman promotes MOOCs as a solution to the very real problem of providing education widely and inexpensively. But no thinking person should be fooled that MOOCs constitute "education" any more than simply having a library makes for a college.

The Joni Mitchell Fallacy

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

One of the worst characteristics of modern journalism is the "both sides" reflex. If there is a political problem, we need to acknowledge the way "both sides" have something to do with it.

But sometimes it simply isn't so.

Last week, James B. Stewart, writing in the New York Times about the budget talks, gave us one of the more egregious and demonstrably false examples of this tendency:

What dismayed all the experts I spoke to was that the hostile tone was obscuring the fact that both sides agreed on the two most fundamental issues; the debt ceiling needs to be raised and a government default avoided, and the long-term deficit needs to be addressed through some combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

This is not a description of what "both sides" believe. It is a description of President Obama's position. 

We do not have an agreement because that is NOT the position of the Republican Party. The position of the Republican Party is that the deficit should be reduced with spending cuts only and with no tax increases, and that the threat of reaching the debt ceiling and causing default is a good way of getting what they want.

The Republican position for the last two years has been that we should not raise the debt ceiling without cutting spending--even if that means government cannot pay all of its bills. South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney said just last week that the government could merely pay Social Security benefits and interest on the debt: “Whether or not we keep the national parks open is not what people think of when they hear default,” said Mulvaney. “It’s certainly not what the markets think.”

Translation: as long as the banks and AARP members get paid, default is no big deal.

This past week, the House GOP recognized that its position was politically untenable and approved a three-month extension of the debt ceiling. But if it truly believed that the threat of default was unthinkable, it would never have created these debt ceiling showdowns. The House could have raised--or even better, abolished--the debt ceiling. If it truly believed in the need for spending cuts and tax increases, it could have gotten that deal from the president at several points in the past. When that deal was on the table, they said "no." Their entire negotiating posture is this: we prefer default to not getting our way on spending.

In reality, this is not a case of "both sides." We Americans want to believe that both of our political parties are, deep down, made up primarily of reasonable people. There are still reasonable people in the Republican Party, but they are being bullied by Tea Party extremists and purists. 

Perhaps John Boehner's decision to accept the so-called "fiscal cliff" deal (and its tax increase on incomes over $400,000) and the recent three-month debt ceiling extension represent an end to the Tea Party's dictation to the allegedly responsible leadership, but I doubt it. We'll know better in about three months.

One Measure of the Change Over These Four Years

Consider this paragraph from an AP story:

Obama is already asking lawmakers for a lot as he starts his second term. He needs their votes to increase the nation's borrowing limit and approve billions of dollars to keep the government running.

Think about that a moment. According to a news story--not an opinion piece, but an ostensibly "objective" news story--this is "a lot." Expecting the Congress to do what had always been routine until Barack Obama became president is now "a lot."

One could do worse if looking for a single factoid to illustrate how dysfunctional our politics has become.