Internet Learning Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2012 | Page 5

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Internet Learning

For a millennium, the classroom was the sole domain of one professor. The digital
classroom is by nature more communal. This means educational theorists; instructional
designers, assessment professionals, and others can now look at an online classroom and clearly
see where students are succeeding and where they are failing. For the first time in a thousand
years, the classroom can be looked at by a number of people using data not opinion.
Before it was not clear how a professor’s teaching could be measured. But with the
digital classroom the focus has turned from teaching, which is ephemeral and subjective, to
learning, which can be measured in a more rigorous way. The focus of the traditional classroom
was on the success of a professor as teacher. The digital classroom now focuses us on how
successful the learning environment is. As Robert Barr puts it; “A paradigm shift is taking hold
in American higher education. In its briefest form, the paradigm that has governed our colleges is
this: A college is an institution that exists to provide instruction. Subtly but profoundly we are
shifting to a new paradigm: A college is an institution that exists to produce learning. This shift
changes everything” (Barr and Tagg 1995).
When the industrial revolution took place there was the move from individual craftsman
to factory worker. When this happened the whole concept of work changed. The craftsman no
longer worked in his own shop and now he now had to commute to work. The concept of time
changed as now a team had to begin and end at the same time. There was the change from lone
craftsman to worker who was part of a larger team. The craftsman was totally in control of the
artistic process from beginning to end. The craftsman could stop and start work when they felt
like it because they depended on no one else. In the “dark satanic mills” of Blake’s verse we find
people running to keep up with the speed of the loom and powered shuttlecocks. What does this
analogy mean for the future of the professorate?
The change from professor as craftsman to professor as team member is in part a direct
result of the digital revolution. Once there is a digital record of the class this record can show us
where learning is taking place and where the experience can be improved. When the classroom
leaves a physical artifact, this is no longer something that can only be understood by the
professor. The physical artifact or digital record can we worked on by team of experts and
learning theorist who can use the data to learn. This fundamentally changes the image of the
professor as craftsman and changes his status to the member of a team who works to improve
student learning. This shift from lone professor to learning team is a fundamental change in the
nature of University.
If we were to take a look at how one online for-profit university uses data to improve the
educational experience of students we can see what is possible. At the American Public
University System there are more than 100,000 students and 2000 professors 100% online. This
gives the university a large chunk of data to see how learning is progressing. The university uses
analytics to analyze the number of drops, number of withdrawals, and number of failures classby-class, program-by–program, and school-by-school. They then compare these numbers to
university averages, school averages, and program averages. For example, the failure rate in
Arabic I may be much higher than in the course History of Popular Culture but that does not
indicate the second class is successful and the first one is not. However if we were to look at say
History 101 and found that in one section taught by one professor the number of drops,
withdrawals, and failing grades was triple the rest of the program this would be a starting point
for a discussion about the class. A rigorous teacher is not necessary a bad teacher but we must
keep in mind the goal of the class is student learning. If that is not taking place it is the
responsibility of the university to ask “Why?” In addition, the American Public University