Ellen Schrecker’s object lesson in Forbes this month is an example of what not to do on the cheap: replace full-time instructors with technology and claim that doing so is always more efficient. According to Schrecker, the passing rates for students at Cal State Bakersfield dropped like a stone when the campus tried to just substitute technology for instruction. The National Center on Academic Transformation (NCAT) has promoted a careful “course redesign” process, but it has to be careful, not convenient.
I’ve been trying to figure out what to call the relationship between Bakersfield and NCAT’s process. NKitty doesn’t work since Bakersfield as described by Schrecker isn’t NCAT Lite but the anti-NCAT. N-Dog? Suggest something more clever in comments!
Fascinating. Sounds like they bought the same pig in a poke that some of our educationalists go for. It seems to me that people who don’t know how computers work are the ones most likely to see them as the magical solution to everything.
Now I think I know what program they are talking about. Our college uses it, and it seems to work OK. But we use it with skilled tenured faculty so it costs more, not less, than what was being done before. The payoff is if it increases retention, but only time will tell if that happens. No magic yet.