Is on-line learning a new model of learning?

I read an article about Open Education Resources in the April 6 , 2010 e-version of the New York Times titled "An Open Mind" by Katie Hafner. (published in print April 18, 2010). On-line learning is of great interest and fast becoming a new means of disseminating knowledge. Using the Internet to take courses offered by prestigious universities is gaining popularity. Dr. Diamond has had 1.5 million views on a YouTube of her "Integrative Biology 131 (since 2005). From what Yale and MIT have collected the viewers are primarily independent learners, followed by students of the institution, and a less than 10% other educators makes up the balance. While the courses are free, there is no contract with the educational institution, no evaluation, to certification or acknowledgement that you have learned anything from taking a course. All you have is what you carry around upstairs in your head. Is this still a value to the learner? Does it have less value than in person lectures and classes? Is the interaction in the classroom with others very important or less important to the on-line learner? Are you missing out on learning modalities when you can't smell a science experiment? Are you shorting your audio learning when you cant ask a question or repeat a concept out loud? Can on-line classes have different teaching perspectives? Does the professor have a clear philosophy about teaching and does it work in on-line learning environment?

Ok my Saturday class was cancelled and it was raining so I watched all six, yes that was six , different lectures posted by the New York Times in it's Multimedia interactive link to the article. Six and one half hours all total.

1. Anatomy/ UC Berkeley by Dr. Marian C Diamond
2. Linear Algebra/MIT by Gilbert Strang
3. Finance/Yale by Robert Shiller
4. Genetics/UCLA by Robert B Goldberg
5. Physics/UC Berkeley by Richard Mueller
6. Psychology/Yale by Paul Bloom

Much to my surprise the philosophy of the professor was often made very clear to the learner.

Dr Diamond points out that she believed her students had to use their kinestic sense to learn. She felt her subject was learned better by kinestic involvement than by just reading some papers. She was big on writing things on the blackboard as anatomy is just a terms class. She clearly states her feelings about the learning value as something you will have with you for your lifetime. At the beginning of the class (of 762) she questioned her audience about what they knew, where their base of knowledge stood. She then wowed the class by pulling a brain out of a hatbox and holding it in her hand. This physical demonstration made the words about the little 3 pound grey matter being able to conceive the universe and (pauses) and be mad, sad and glad the next minute. Then in a defiant but quiet means she asked each class mate to introduce themselves to the next person for 2 minutes. I introduced myself to my cat, who wasn't interested. Clearly there are some minuses in the on-line learning modality. Professor Diamond used drawing, chalkboard, questions of the class via yes/no raise your hand style, and in the end used pictures to bring in real world visuals of the terms she had just taught. I can say I learned something about anatomy and the structural plane reference terms. But I learned more about the way to manage a class, use pauses in presentation, and the importance of assessing the learner.

In the algebra class, the Dr. Strang used a solid demonstration that walked you thru the thinking process right along with the professor. I knew the professor had to have worked this linear equation 10,000 times already in his lifetime. But he made it seem like he was discovering the solutions along with you for the first time. He called upon the class to imagine and picture and look for the big picture in working with the matrix. This professor had an exacting cadence in his lecture that verbalized every step from hypothesis thru problem solving. He challenged the class in the final minutes of lecture to to think about concepts. I felt the professor clearly knew his audience in the class were abstract conceptual thinkers, with logical math and spatial learning styles.

The class in Financial Markets was of most interest to me. This lecturer probably received the most criticism in the NTY comments about his delivery style. Yes it was a chore to listen to but when you did the work you got rewarded with an excellent lecture on the "technology" of financial instruments. I never viewed finance as a technology that is developing and the inventors of financial instruments make thinks that blow up just like scientists made experiments that blew up. Only difference with financial markets is there is no laboratory to acquire the lessons from mistakes, it's all real time. His teaching perspective was clearly one of transmission of an expert and a master of the subject. He tempered his class with liberal learning philosophies of moral values in the uses of intellectual property that could make most students multi millionaires and philantrophic responsibilities to society.

In the Genetics class, Dr Goldberg was a Duracell bunny running all around the room. He would have gone up the wall if he could. Unfortunately the slides overhead had to be blurred due to copyright blah blah blah. The class was genetics for non science majors. The professor used a live demonstration of DNA. Students were able to touch it , smell it and mix up their own concoctions of "sperm" DNA. His approach was Liberal learning approach and he went over some of the topics of ethics, legalities, moralities and evolutionary quandaries that face the ever changing body of science. He used some questioning technique that picked on a student to define a scientific term when the class was not geared to science majors. I think that demonstrated that you really do have to assess the prior base of knowledge if you are going in the developmental perspective.

In the Physics class, Dr. Muller started the class with an attention grabbing video of a meteor in a commercial for a Toyota truck. Then he pointed out all the elements present as well as the mistakes made by film. The professor was all over the room demonstrating and experimenting with physics toys. In the end he taught kinetic energy, heat, temperature, element's and drew comparisons to everyday experiences. The class was taught with a progressive philosophy. He emphasised the learners experiences with kinetic energy, temperature and how we interpret temperature. Class was a cross between a transmission perspective and developmental perspective. He used reflective observation of everyday and ordinary events to illustrate the concepts and theories.

By now I am getting tired and the last class was an intro to Psychology that was only 29 minutes long. This class made it clear that it would be reading and writing learning style approach. The professor planned to use expert lecturers as guests to support his areas of expertise.

Is online learning a new model of learning? While I can say I learned something today from the content that was taught. It really was like listening to Mozart with only one ear plug. Something was missing.