_18:46
Has anyone ever thought of putting some sort of system together to allow college classes on video? I find it surprisingly odd if someone hasn’t. Of course we’ve all seen video’s that can teach us and we’ve maybe even seen a class or two taught on a video, but not a full system - not even half of a system.
Why wouldn’t this be one of the first things to think about when VHS came out? Now we have DVD’s and who knows what next. The amount of classes that a single DVD could hold would be amazing.
One teacher could teach only one lesson and reach millions of students. If that’s not enough to excite a college - think about how much money they could pull in. With one teacher they spend alot less money and even have smaller campuses.
So what about interaction? Sure - why not ask this question. With all the is going on with technology I don’t see it being a problem having the DVD also hooked up through the Internet. Write a little script that pulls feed from a particular site(s) and have professors on the other end - there to answer your questions from their home, work, maybe even plane, or their cottage house in Colorado.
The benefits of this would be students being able to see visually something instead of having to read so much. How many times have you been tired and couldn’t stay awake to read? Now think about how many times you have been just as tired and stayed up to watch a movie with some friends.
I’ll agree with you that there are many flaws in my above thoughts but that’s because it hasn’t been put through hours of brainstorming and diagramming. Toss this idea around and improve them - make the work and integrate technology into our everyday lives in a useful way.
Maybe this is a personal project I might look into. A huge one by far but if this isn’t already done then it could help many people - including myself.
What are your thoughts? Would this work? Why or why not? What could we add or do differently?
posted on December 5, 2001 | 6:42 PM EST
Add to the discussion.
Hmmm…. Interesting. I think the first thing that I would do is find out if it has already been done.
At work, when we switched banks, we had to go through this online training thing. It included us at our computers with about 20 other people on a huge conference call. The leader led us through an example of our new software, and answered any questions we had.
Is this the kind of thing that you are thinking of? I think that the idea of DVDs is great.
Thats why I need a BIG white board in my room.
They already have something similar to this at GVSU. One teacher can teach a class at several of the campuses/classrooms at a time, over live video. Is that what you are thinking of?
Both of those are things I was talking about and NO, I haven’t check indepth to see if this is done. I was looking at it in more of a DVD sence were you would rent it and watch it just like a Blockbuster movie.
One of the add on’s would be an interactive link to a live teacher or group (if need be) or even a live person in that field.
You wouldn’t always be able to interact with this person but there would be set times where alot of people could pop on and discuss subjects at hand. Kinda like that do on AOL or Netscape or various websites - having stars come talk to people in chat rooms from the hours of X and Y.
This would be the same thing (as an addition to the movie).
It’s probably not coming across exactly the way I might have it in my head but either way there is always room to expand this section of technology.
I had heard of an online project, something to the extent of “university.com” or the like, that would make ivy-league-quality courses available online. For a fee that was, of course, a lot higher than a video rental fee.
Pragmatically, one of the big problems with DVD’ing college courses is, well, alright, students can reap the benefits, but what about professors? Where’s their work-week going to come from? Discussion sessions, then off to work on research? Good in theory, but how is the University that employs them going to get funding to back them when no tuition is coming in to their coffers?
On a more conspiracy-theorist slant, the problem with that sort of educational scheme is that higher education then becomes both affordable and available to (basically) anybody that has a VCR/DVD player.
When education becomes available to the everybody on a (kind of) equal basis, our exclusionary system of higher education vanishes - long-held institutions are rendered essentially useless, and so is their privileged country-club mentality. Then we have no more lower classes to discriminate against.
Then everybody starts to shy away from industrial and manual-labor type jobs, in favor of white-collar gigs that having a degree affords them (admit it - after you get your sheepskin, are you going to run straight to a factory and apply? Didn’t think so). What happens to industry then? The economy?
(Just playing devil’s advocate. Shout back.)
Joel Says:
Hmmm…. Interesting. I think the first thing that I would do is find out if it has already been done.
At work, when we switched banks, we had to go through this online training thing. It included us at our computers with about 20 other people on a huge conference call. The leader led us through an example of our new software, and answered any questions we had.
Is this the kind of thing that you are thinking of? I think that the idea of DVDs is great.
Thats why I need a BIG white board in my room.