Forbes: Online College Classes Should Have No More Than 12 Students
date：2020-07-02 18:26author：小编source：Forbesviews：
Twelve. That’s how many students should be in an online undergraduate class, according to research from two professors.
It’s an easy number to understand, a single dozen. But it’s a big, big problem for the current and future of online higher education.
The research is from Dr. Lawrence Tomei, a professor of education at Robert Morris University and Douglas Nelson, Director of the MBA program and professor at Seton Hill University. Their research was published last September, a follow up to a 2006 study and aimed at establishing maximum class sizes for various modes of teaching: in class, online and hybrid, which is a mix of online and in person. The pair also looked for those numbers in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral courses and programs.
The findings are showstoppers.
Tomei and Nelson say that, as mentioned, online undergraduate classes should have no more than 12 students. In person, on campus classes should be no larger than 18 students and hybrid models should be only 17 students. Undergrad classes should likewise have an upper limit of 18, while graduate classes should have no more than 14 students and doctoral classes should be just nine or fewer students, though Tomei advised more research around that doctoral level finding.
Tomei and Nelson arrived at those numbers after more than a year of study across colleges and course disciplines and from the view of the teacher, what it actually took to teach the classes. Dr. Tomei says they measured, “actual delivery of instruction,” tracked how long it takes to assess and give exams and do things such as provide “counseling and advisement” for students.
There should be fewer students in an online class because, Tomei says, “Teaching online, and I know there are literally hundreds of thousands of k-12 teachers who would now agree, takes a heck of a lot more work than teaching in a classroom.”
The “biggest reason” that it takes more time and more work to teach online is that, “work was higher and was much more difficult in assessment, online than in classroom, a lot more challenge in assessing online students,” Tomei said. “If you want to do anything online with authentic assessments like writing, essays, projects, it’s much more challenging online. It takes more hours and you can get to fewer students, the same with counseling and advisement,” he said.
Dr. Tomei also said the research showed that it also takes more time to prepare for an online class than one in person. “It’s not just taking your materials that you’ve used for 15 years and slapping them into a site, there’s a lot more to it than that.”
College classes sizes in the teens may be ideal, but they are not too realistic because – money. Every tuition-paying rear end you can put in front of one professor is margin, added revenue. For years, that’s been the clear appeal of online college – the ability to put many, many students in classes with the same teacher, boosting profit.
In fact, the formula of cheap teachers, repeated course content and massive class size is an ATM machine. So much so that many colleges exist entirely around that model, churning out online degrees from heavily advertised programs that are managed instead of taught.
It’s unlikely that the big, online cash-cow colleges will care about this study showing that their online classes are way too large to be taught well. Quality instruction from empowered, adequately compensated teachers is not their business model.
Nonetheless, having a class size number, knowing that 12 is the largest recommended size for online undergrad classes, will arm students to make better choices about where they study and what their tuition dollars are actually providing. Every online student and every prospective online student should be firing off e-mails to their instructors and advisors asking how big their online classes are, then act accordingly.
Whether that happens or not, the real pressure to reduce class sizes will probably come from teachers. And that is where the Tomei and Nelson research will find eager ears. By studying “faculty load,” pulling apart actual work, the duo has armed faculty for future contract and payment negotiations.
“I think certainly the university and college administrations ought to be looking at this [research]. It will give them a better feel for contractual revisions that need to be made because of this move to online teaching – need to look at class sizes, prep time – how long does it take for a faculty member to get ready to teach online, it’s different,” Dr. Tomei said.
It is. And if that takes hold, if teachers negotiate better compensation for teaching online, or if colleges begin to reduce the size of classes in their online offerings, that would interrupt a founding premise of online learning – the idea that scale and reach of teaching online would reduce its cost. It would also undermine the idea that online education is a democratizer of education, a mission-centered, altruistic outreach of colleges. Just watch how quickly schools reconsider that mission when the costs go up.
Actually, the idea that online education would be cheaper because it could be bigger was never true. There have always been substantial hidden costs in teaching online, at least if you try to do it well. But capping online class sizes at 12 – heck, even at 24 – would destroy the fiscal value of being online in the first place. Since colleges classes ought to be focused on educational value instead of fiscal, that would be a good thing.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2020/06/28/online-college-classes-should-have-no-more-than-12-students/#5b4de8623179
It’s an easy number to understand, a single dozen. But it’s a big, big problem for the current and future of online higher education.
The research is from Dr. Lawrence Tomei, a professor of education at Robert Morris University and Douglas Nelson, Director of the MBA program and professor at Seton Hill University. Their research was published last September, a follow up to a 2006 study and aimed at establishing maximum class sizes for various modes of teaching: in class, online and hybrid, which is a mix of online and in person. The pair also looked for those numbers in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral courses and programs.
The findings are showstoppers.
Tomei and Nelson say that, as mentioned, online undergraduate classes should have no more than 12 students. In person, on campus classes should be no larger than 18 students and hybrid models should be only 17 students. Undergrad classes should likewise have an upper limit of 18, while graduate classes should have no more than 14 students and doctoral classes should be just nine or fewer students, though Tomei advised more research around that doctoral level finding.
Tomei and Nelson arrived at those numbers after more than a year of study across colleges and course disciplines and from the view of the teacher, what it actually took to teach the classes. Dr. Tomei says they measured, “actual delivery of instruction,” tracked how long it takes to assess and give exams and do things such as provide “counseling and advisement” for students.
There should be fewer students in an online class because, Tomei says, “Teaching online, and I know there are literally hundreds of thousands of k-12 teachers who would now agree, takes a heck of a lot more work than teaching in a classroom.”
The “biggest reason” that it takes more time and more work to teach online is that, “work was higher and was much more difficult in assessment, online than in classroom, a lot more challenge in assessing online students,” Tomei said. “If you want to do anything online with authentic assessments like writing, essays, projects, it’s much more challenging online. It takes more hours and you can get to fewer students, the same with counseling and advisement,” he said.
Dr. Tomei also said the research showed that it also takes more time to prepare for an online class than one in person. “It’s not just taking your materials that you’ve used for 15 years and slapping them into a site, there’s a lot more to it than that.”
College classes sizes in the teens may be ideal, but they are not too realistic because – money. Every tuition-paying rear end you can put in front of one professor is margin, added revenue. For years, that’s been the clear appeal of online college – the ability to put many, many students in classes with the same teacher, boosting profit.
In fact, the formula of cheap teachers, repeated course content and massive class size is an ATM machine. So much so that many colleges exist entirely around that model, churning out online degrees from heavily advertised programs that are managed instead of taught.
It’s unlikely that the big, online cash-cow colleges will care about this study showing that their online classes are way too large to be taught well. Quality instruction from empowered, adequately compensated teachers is not their business model.
Nonetheless, having a class size number, knowing that 12 is the largest recommended size for online undergrad classes, will arm students to make better choices about where they study and what their tuition dollars are actually providing. Every online student and every prospective online student should be firing off e-mails to their instructors and advisors asking how big their online classes are, then act accordingly.
Whether that happens or not, the real pressure to reduce class sizes will probably come from teachers. And that is where the Tomei and Nelson research will find eager ears. By studying “faculty load,” pulling apart actual work, the duo has armed faculty for future contract and payment negotiations.
“I think certainly the university and college administrations ought to be looking at this [research]. It will give them a better feel for contractual revisions that need to be made because of this move to online teaching – need to look at class sizes, prep time – how long does it take for a faculty member to get ready to teach online, it’s different,” Dr. Tomei said.
It is. And if that takes hold, if teachers negotiate better compensation for teaching online, or if colleges begin to reduce the size of classes in their online offerings, that would interrupt a founding premise of online learning – the idea that scale and reach of teaching online would reduce its cost. It would also undermine the idea that online education is a democratizer of education, a mission-centered, altruistic outreach of colleges. Just watch how quickly schools reconsider that mission when the costs go up.
Actually, the idea that online education would be cheaper because it could be bigger was never true. There have always been substantial hidden costs in teaching online, at least if you try to do it well. But capping online class sizes at 12 – heck, even at 24 – would destroy the fiscal value of being online in the first place. Since colleges classes ought to be focused on educational value instead of fiscal, that would be a good thing.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2020/06/28/online-college-classes-should-have-no-more-than-12-students/#5b4de8623179
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