A Glimpse of the Future?
Interesting account of an online graduate program—would this work for you?
“The online-only program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School uses a proprietary technology platform developed by [the education company] 2tor. What I saw of it truly surprised me. UNC has created a virtual classroom that is more intimate than 90 percent of the seminars I’ve taught in or taken. That’s because a quarter of every student’s computer screen is a grid of the dozen other students in the class – in close-up!
Within minutes of signing into the class—and this particular class was ‘live’ (referred to as synchronous) – I realized that each of us was sitting in a front-row seat. The professor was going to call on each of us. He could also capture and share our computer screen with the other students. Which meant that all 12 of the students in the class were going to contribute. There was no perusing Facebook, no e-mailing, and no shopping during this 90-minute class.
Although it may be hard to believe, there was closer intimacy in this virtual classroom than in most of the dozen-person seminars I’ve experienced in law school. Perhaps it was the close-up of each person’s face in the upper quadrant of the screen. But I got a sense that each student knew that he or she was expected to contribute to the class discussion. And that shared expectation raised the bar for all.” Read more here.
What do you think—is this what the future of professional education looks like?