Comments on: The Null Hypothesis and Online Education

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:16:44 +0000

Yep and the big cost is delayed output. We should be looking for ways to minimize the years of school needed for a student to cover a certain range of material. This mostly involves asking the students to learn more.

By: Sam Mikes

Sam Mikes — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:18:40 +0000

There are more opportunities for networking in a physical classroom — but is a classroom the most cost-effective way to provide networking opportunities? Do classrooms provide the optimal amount of networking, or more than is really necessary?

I recently attended the 15-year reunion of my elite, technical undergraduate institution. I was able to get “enough” networking done in those two days to satisfy me. Obviously I was building on relationships forged over four years, but did I really need *four* years to build that foundation, or would three have been enough?

By: Nicholas Poggioli

Nicholas Poggioli — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 03:11:56 +0000

Since you mentioned slashing costs as the best way to improve cost-effectiveness, I’m curious what you thought of the cost discussion in Timothy Taylor’s post (that costs may be equal for classroom and e-learning) and in Daniel Lemire’s post linked to from Taylor’s post (that classroom is more cost effective only when you can nearly match classroom capacity and enrolled students).

I also think an important part of the discussion needs to be networking opportunities afforded to classroom-based students and not to e-learning students. From my time in higher education, it seems campuses serve as loci of networking, and if educational outcomes are the same for classroom and e-learning, then this might tip the scales toward classroom based instruction from a future employment perspective.