Nursing junior Lauren Brox hasn't gone to her philosophy and logic of nursing class once this semester. Nonetheless, she predicted an "extremely easy A" in the course.

"I haven't even read a single assignment we're supposed to so far," she said.

Brox has never gone to class because the course isn't taking place in a classroom. She's taking the course over the Internet through the OU Health Sciences Center.

Four years after students clicked their way through the first online course at OU, students remain divided on the quality of Internet education. Some students scoff at the idea that anything can be learned without physically going to class.

Other students and instructors defend online learning for its convenience and insist it opens doors for students unable to take traditional courses.

Experts say online courses are more rigorous than traditional courses, as long as they are set up properly.

Don Lake, director of distributed learning at the Los Angeles County Office of Education and secretary of the board of the United States Distance Learning Association, said online courses mirror the usefulness of technology itself. Lake said he thinks applying the traditional classroom model to an Internet course is about as effective as going online with a dial-up modem on Windows 3.0., meaning there is little to no chance of interactivity or even a connection between students and the subject.

"I've seen it many, many times in higher education where a teacher just dumps his or her lecture notes into a PowerPoint presentation and says 'Here's the online course,'" Lake said. "That may have worked in the infancy of online learning, eight or so years ago, but it doesn't work anymore."

An "easy A"?

Stories similar to Brox's have made students like Eric Sieg, computer science sophomore, skeptical about the effectiveness of online courses. Sieg said he had considered taking some online courses while he was in the military but decided against it.

"The praise I kept hearing from friends is 'It's so easy. I do nada and make like one comment a week for an easy A,'" Sieg said. "Which is great for an A, I guess, but didn't really help much with classes where I would actually really need to know the subject matter when done."

Karen Cozart, director of the College of Arts and Sciences online program, called it an "absolute fallacy" that OU's online courses are easy As.

"We work hard with the faculty to make sure they are academically rigorous," said Cozart, who is also teaching a library and information resources course over the Internet.

Like traditional classes, online courses vary in their requirements, depending on the college's curriculum and the professor's own preferences. Participation in online courses is usually done through quizzes and exams, plus research papers and other assignments. Most courses require that the student purchase a textbook, though some use material and links provided on an instructor's own customized Web site.

Concepts like "office hours" to talk to the professor are obsolete in online courses, as students and instructors interact through e-mail and message boards.

Open-Book Policy

Though some online courses require the students to take their exams on campus, most allow the students to take them online with their textbook and notes in reach.

Tests are usually timed, Cozart said, so students have to know the material well enough to answer questions quickly, which limits them from looking up answers in their books.

Open-book tests don't necessarily lead to inferior learning, said Mark Grabe, professor of psychology at the University of North Dakota and author of the books, "Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning" and "Integrating the Internet for Meaningful Learning."

Memorization should not be the primary goal of learning, Grabe said, and it is possible to test a student's knowledge through practical application of the subject.

"If you assume that learning translates as the ability to 'apply' knowledge and that assessment will involve tasks that are extensions of information or examples provided in the textbook, performance on such tasks should still differentiate students who have access to the textbook," Grabe said.

Sandy McLean, who teaches understanding music online, said cutting corners or even cheating is not a new phenomenon caused by online classes.

"[Professors] are concerned that students will cheat, but honestly you can't control that in the classroom if students are determined to do it," McLean said. "They find ways. If they would put that energy into studying, they might not need to."

The Teaching Technology

Lake recommends a "hybrid model" that pulls students together as much as possible. Students should be actively engaged in discussion forums, starting the first week of class with a personal introduction to the other students.

Arts and sciences professor Laura Gibbs called the Internet a "highly stimulating learning environment" and said that for online courses to be effective and challenging, instructors need expertise not only in the course's subject, but in Internet technology. Gibbs has been teaching online classes exclusively since fall 2002.

"When you are teaching a classroom-based course and just using the Internet to supplement your classroom-based activities, technology is not such a big issue," Gibbs said. "But when your only interaction with the students is taking place online, then the technology is vitally important."

Online courses also allow advanced students to explore topics further by following the links to supplementary learning material and give students who might have reading and writing deficits the remedial help they need, creating a flexible environment Gibbs believes lets students at all levels to learn more.

Gibbs also said she gives more quizzes in her online courses than she did in the classroom. She said students can use quizzes as a learning tool because they get immediate feedback by seeing the score and their errors as soon as they finish.

McLean, whose husband, Matthew McLean, is also a music instructor at OU, said she appreciates being able to teach from home while looking after the couple's young sons, 3-year-old Edan and 10-month-old Duncan.

It's a situation that benefits her and her students alike, she said. She doesn't have to take home quizzes or papers that risk destruction by a toddler.

McLean, who is also writing her own dissertation, said teaching a music course over the Internet has its pluses and minuses. She said her online students are more likely to become familiar with the content of their textbooks than the sound of music. She said she doubts that the average student actually checks out the audio and video materials she would play for them if they were in the classroom. However, McLean doesn't feel this is necessarily a negative point for a course that deals primarily with the history of music rather than the instruction of it.

In addition to her online music class at OU, McLean also teaches voice lessons at Cameron University in Lawton and Langston University in Guthrie.

"There are days when I wish I could do it online," she said.
hello there & you too