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The Ohio State University Marching Band (TBDBITL)

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This is from the link-through on Steinmetz "heavily promoting" MOOC aka Eclipse aka Skynet:

There are now excellent 100 percent online courses available to students that provide substitutes for our traditional
large-lecture format courses. Included among these courses are the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) that have been created at some of the nation’s premier institutions. Many of these courses are excellent and provide high-quality learning experiences for students interested in a subject matter like psychology; some of these courses have been less effective, amounting to little more than videotaped presentations of standard lectures. There is significant pressure being exerted at our institutions of higher education to find more affordable means to deliver instruction, and online instructional experiences are increasingly being examined as alternatives to more traditional methods. With ever-increasing tuition and mounting student debt, this pressure will not disappear anytime soon. Our universities and colleges are adapting to these changes.
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Scary stuff.
 
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BayBuck said:
This is from the link-through on Steinmetz "heavily promoting" MOOC aka Eclipse aka Skynet:



Scary stuff.
Click to expand...
Tell me. AP classes have been greatly expanded, but the grading of the tests that actually grant the credit remains outside the jurisdiction of the schools and instructors thus keeping the number of college credits low. So in Kentucky and other states, students are released during the school day to take courses at nearby colleges. I've had six or seven in my freshman comp courses the last three years. Now KY is putting pressure on state schools to create more MOOCs to the point that much of the core curriculum - which has really been hammered the last ten years - will be reduced to a handful of courses.

College is fast becoming Vo-Ed.
 
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BayBuck said:
This is from the link-through on Steinmetz "heavily promoting" MOOC aka Eclipse aka Skynet:



Scary stuff.
Click to expand...

I actually took a two class sequence through Corsera in general chemistry and organic chemistry through a professor at Rice for an investment project in which I'm involved . I found it incredibly useful, free and probably better than anything that I could have taken locally. I don't think it, in any way, substitutes for a real college education (and shouldn't), but for my particular situation (took all my natural science classes in physics and astronomy in college) of needing to know some basic organic chemistry fundamentals, it was perfect.
 
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To be clear, I was being sarcastic about that being "scary": I just didn't understand why Steinmetz's dry, academic talk about MOOCs was being linked to this web of supposed conflicts-of-interest that supposedly ties in with the author's preferred bogeyman. "MOOC" is not some monolithic global initiative to turn higher education into The Matrix; MOOCs are just big (er, massive) open online classes, and in this instance Steinmetz devoted about a paragraph of his piece to them. So I'm not including him in my conspiracy theory.
 
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BayBuck said:
To be clear, I was being sarcastic about that being "scary": I just didn't understand why Steinmetz's dry, academic talk about MOOCs was being linked to this web of supposed conflicts-of-interest that supposedly ties in with the author's preferred bogeyman. "MOOC" is not some monolithic global initiative to turn higher education into The Matrix; MOOCs are just big (er, massive) open online classes, and in this instance Steinmetz devoted about a paragraph of his piece to them. So I'm not including him in my conspiracy theory.
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MOOCs are WAY beyond a free chance to study coalition politics with George Schultz at Princeton. KY wants to essentially put the first two years of college into MOOCs. I can't imagine that other states aren't pushing the same thing. e.g. Rick Perry wants to turn aTm into a depository of servers - Phoenix University at College Station.

As someone who feels that there is an immense value in the core curriculum, in student interaction, in face-to-face communication, it is the death knell of the philosophy, arts, literature and writing courses at most colleges.
 
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cincibuck said:
Tell me. AP classes have been greatly expanded, but the grading of the tests that actually grant the credit remains outside the jurisdiction of the schools and instructors thus keeping the number of college credits low. So in Kentucky and other states, students are released during the school day to take courses at nearby colleges. I've had six or seven in my freshman comp courses the last three years. Now KY is putting pressure on state schools to create more MOOCs to the point that much of the core curriculum - which has really been hammered the last ten years - will be reduced to a handful of courses.

College is fast becoming Vo-Ed.
Click to expand...

But I bet the quality is no different.
I've taken those "core curriculum" courses in traditional settings at both major 4yr Uni and Comm College... the quality isn't better. 4yr hires "lecturers" for most of those classes anyway. Everyone, including the "lecturer", knows it's a bs class as well. Even in the sciences, Calc1-3 is almost always taught by a Grad student. Physics and Chem will involve an actual Professor -- but in a setting of 150+ students at a lecture. For any direct contact (labs, office hours, recitation), it's again Grad students.
One of the requirements I took at 4yr was supposed to meet a "Cultural Awareness" requirement. The "lecturer" had never left the country... I've lived (for 6mo or more) in 4 different countries. My wife is a foreign national from one of those. I've learned the language to a decent level. I got *nothing* out of that course except checking a box on a piece of paper for a lot money. And I guess artificially inflating my GPA.

I haven't looked much at stuff like coursera (though I've used various stuff as supplementary material for computer programming), but a friend did send me a link to a Yale course on Greek History. It was just the lectures, but I got very engrossed in it and watched it all as I had free time. I got far more out of that than I ever did out of Psych, Int'l Relations, Engl101, Philosophy, MicroEcon, etc. bs courses. All I learned is that Econ really is "bs in; bs out". Classic case of the cart before the horse. No amount of superimposing mathematics on top of bs will fix that if the principles are just assumptions with no basis in reality.

Just for record... the Yale online "course". The professor is exceptionally Eurocentric but I'd expect no less from a passionate expert on Greek history.
http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205

Oh and he's an Ohio State alum =)
 
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kujirakira said:
But I bet the quality is no different.
I've taken those "core curriculum" courses in traditional settings at both major 4yr Uni and Comm College... the quality isn't better. 4yr hires "lecturers" for most of those classes anyway. Everyone, including the "lecturer", knows it's a bs class as well. Even in the sciences, Calc1-3 is almost always taught by a Grad student. Physics and Chem will involve an actual Professor -- but in a setting of 150+ students at a lecture. For any direct contact (labs, office hours, recitation), it's again Grad students.
One of the requirements I took at 4yr was supposed to meet a "Cultural Awareness" requirement. The "lecturer" had never left the country... I've lived (for 6mo or more) in 4 different countries. My wife is a foreign national from one of those. I've learned the language to a decent level. I got *nothing* out of that course except checking a box on a piece of paper for a lot money.

I haven't looked much at stuff like coursera (though I've used various stuff as supplementary material for computer programming), but a friend did send me a link to a Yale course on Greek History. It was just the lectures, but I got very engrossed in it and watched it all as I had free time. I got far more out of that than I ever did out of Psych, Int'l Relations, Engl101, Philosophy, MicroEcon, etc. bs courses. All I learned is that Econ really is "bs in; bs out". Classic case of the cart before the horse. No amount of superimposing mathematics on top of bs will fix that if the principles are just assumptions with no basis in reality.

Just for record... the Yale online "course". The professor is exceptionally Eurocentric but I'd expect no less from a passionate expert on Greek history.
http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205
Click to expand...
Wait a minute.........can we expect an "online" marching band? Never mind the neck straps.......the 90 degree turns and the "Script" will be a bitch. Just sayin'. :smash: :hoke: :vrabel:
 
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cincibuck said:
MOOCs are WAY beyond a free chance to study coalition politics with George Schultz at Princeton. KY wants to essentially put the first two years of college into MOOCs. I can't imagine that other states aren't pushing the same thing. e.g. Rick Perry wants to turn aTm into a depository of servers - Phoenix University at College Station.

As someone who feels that there is an immense value in the core curriculum, in student interaction, in face-to-face communication, it is the death knell of the philosophy, arts, literature and writing courses at most colleges.
Click to expand...

I think the Death Knell happened when they abandoned what University was and just made it High School In Perpetuity.
Maybe it never existed as I imagine, but when I see old movies and read about previous generations... University was more about individualized study. You had lectures for various courses... grades were centered almost entirely on tests and major projects (essay, report, etc.).
Today any syllabus will show about half of the grade being determined by homework and such bs as "class participation". What does "class participation" mean in a Philosophy course? In my case it mostly meant a shouting match every Thursday between the Atheist fundamentalists and the Xian fundamentalists... and trying to get a word in edgewise w/o getting pigeonholed into either camp.
And do I really need to do 100 problems of matrix algebra if I'm comfortable taking the test after 20? How does doing 80 more problems as busy work demonstrate my competency in the material? Quantity is not Quality.

If anything, I think there's a chance for this stuff to return to what University used to be, embrace technology, and reduce overhead costs all at once. More responsibility on the student to ensure they're getting what they need (the resources are there, less busy work if you don't need it). More focus on lectures, reading material, and testing competency with tests.
The only downside is that there will be less job opportunity for certain majors to participate in the pyramid scheme that a lot of degrees are. But that opportunity is already scant. How many history majors find a job related to history? And would a course by a random history major be half as good as the lecture material from .. say.. the aforementioned Yale professor? My educated guess backed by experience in the system is that it wouldn't.
 
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pianobuck46 said:
Wait a minute.........can we expect an "online" marching band? Never mind the neck straps.......the 90 degree turns and the "Script" will be a bitch. Just sayin'. :smash: :hoke: :vrabel:
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Even back in 2000, most HS shows were done on the computer and set to music first.
Every year before our season started, after the weeklong Freshman and Fall Camps, play us the show in the theater with a terrible midi rendition of the score and the formations from a sort of 3D google earth perspective.
 
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Moving on...

http://thelantern.com/2014/08/ohio-state-begins-band-director-search/

A search committee of students, faculty, staff and alumni will be brought together “in coming weeks,” with the new director expected to be named within four to six months, according to an OSU press release.
College of Arts and Sciences executive dean and vice provost David Manderscheid chose Arts and Humanities divisional dean Mark Shanda to chair the committee.
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What is Shanda's connection to MOOC? :paranoid:
 
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