Today's CVE class was interesting, a lecturer from Fife who lectures down south through the internet gave us a lecture over the internet.
I'll give you a second to catch your breath after that. The guy advocates "distance learning", which is the use of communication technologies (including the internet) to facilitate teaching. This in turn means that he needs only visit his university three times a year. He never needs to meet his students until graduation. This is an interesting concept, and the portion of the lecture that pertained to this concept was rather good.
The lecture went on (and on) about various internet sites devoted to the empowerment of the average person. YouTube, for instance, where one can upload a video for anyone to see, and Bebo, where friends can leave messages. there were a few site mentioned that I hadn't heard of. I really enjoyed this part of the lecture.
Nextly, though, the lecturer talked about the course he was teaching. He himself admitted that it was curriculum free, and that this was a problem for some people. He told us that the course introduced many of the web (2.0) 's tools for the sharing of information and communication (he had "4 Cs") and that the coursework was research based, with no firm structure. Sounds good, but what do you learn? It sounded to me like you would come away having learned how to use web tools that were outdated by the time you had finished your course, and that apart from that, you would have a degree that was a bit of an "IT engineer's" qualification.
Yes, I came away with that low an opinion of this degree. IT engineers, those who call themseves such, have succeeded in giving computers and programmers a bad name, one which we are only just beginning to lose. They are the people who have self taught computer skills, and demand high pay for simple tasks, because of the fear of computers. This fear is evapourating due to web 2.0, and this guy is teaching a degree in web 2.0 so that we can have web 2.0 experts. Surely it's web 2.0 that needs to be simpler, not professional. Of the people, for the people, by the people. Bah!
Use web 2.0 as a tool for teaching- good idea
Teach the use of web 2.0 as a tool- bad idea.
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3 comments:
I think I had quite a different idea about what the 'content' of the degrees offered by Ultraversity actually implies... In particular I don't think the technology is the point of the degree at all - its just the delivery method.
But I think in trying to cover the ground that he did, Kevin sacrificed going into more detail on what particular projects entailed...
ps Fair comments though!
:)
I guess the most obvious point to make is that Ultraversity offers BA degrees (Bachelor of Arts) rather than BSc. (Bachelor of Science, like our CGT course). (Check out the Ultraversity website).
In that way, an Ultraversity degree could never pass off as any kind of serious technology qualification. I think the point is that it's more about your general ability to adopt the mechanisms and approach required to make effective personal, independent use of sources of learning (presumably whether technological or otherwise).
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