If you have been to college, then you know that some professors were great. When you left the classroom you were energized, excited with new found knowledge and some imparted wisdom. The world was yours to conquer and you could hardly wait to engage your professor and fellow students yet once again in the exchange of ideas.

Then there were the professors who were “OK” or worse. You could hardly wait until class was over and you could be set free from the prison that bound you and your fellow sufferers. OK, so the professor knew the material, but the professor knew nothing about breathing life into the teaching process or how to make it engaging.

Additional Factors
Same college, same campus, different professors equals different experience. This happens on campus so it is safe to assume that it would happen online as well. The question is what can you, who ever you are, do about. The answer will be different if you are a dean at a college, an online learning administrator, instructional designer, or the paying customer.

Not to make things too complicated, but then you need to factor in whether or not this is a “traditional” college or university with faculty who are tenured; or is it a “for-profit” university without tenured faculty. Perhaps it depends on how the whole online learning program is structured.

The Answers?

• Paying Customer – Research and ask questions. Look for answers on the Web, or in Blogs. Here is a word of caution, for every positive review I have read about a product online there are always some negative ones too. What worries me is when I see more negative ones than positive ones. No matter where you go, you most likely may have “one of those professors”. Every school, college, university has them, it’s just that some can deal with the problem easier than others.
• Traditional Universities – If you have tenured faculty who act like prima a donnas, good luck! It is not impossible, just more difficult. The consultant’s approach needs to be used, selling the faculty on making improvements with suggestions from the instructional designer. I am sitting here thinking about how a writer may put out a great book (content) that becomes a movie, but the move studio hires marketers to advertise the movie (packaging). Imagine if Michael Crichton wrote the book, produced the movie, and did the advertising campaign. I think this answers the question and was directed at the professors who may read this segment.
• For-profits – Generally these colleges have more control over the content and how it is presented and have performance standards. Basically it goes like this, “we have these standards and you will meet these standards and if you do not want to you do not have to teach here, you can teach some where else”. That is assuming the school does have standards and quality faculty.
• Other – (You can provide additional answers or comment on what has been written. Please remember, this is a blog entry not a treatise or graduate level paper on this topic.) [ An aside - I am sorry but life is just too short and time just goes faster and faster for me.]

Things To Ponder
OK, so traditional universities have great faculty, great programs, and have nice pictures of buildings and students sitting on grass on their websites. They may not be able to corral the occasionally uninteresting professor, but they (the school) have a reputation that they want to uphold.

For-profit online universities can have more control over the content and packaging and has more leverage dealing with the uninspired teacher, but do they have a reputation? What kind of reputation is it? Believe me, some do not have a good reputation and students don’t find out until they start to apply for jobs and need to get another degree from another university. To be fair, there are traditional universities that one should be careful of too.

A Tip
Here’s a brilliant idea that “popped” into my head. After you have researched some schools that you think you would like to attend, ssk someone in your HR department what they think of candidates that apply for a job from the schools you are considering. Would they pass over it? Send it along? Or no immediate negative or positive reaction.

In Closing,
As an insider in the industry I can tell you that there are people who work at different types of universities and colleges and they do care, some more so than others, but they do care.

The Author

I have two questions for you.

1. What do you want to know about online learning?

2. What do you know about online learning and want to share?

That’s it for now. I know blogs are supposed to be updated on a regular basis, but I may let these questions hang a bit until I see a response. Then again I may not, I am truly undecided about it right now. The point is let’s have fun while we learn and share.

The Author