Posts from — September 2009

If you want a good primer on what HES is all about, give this article a read:

Turning a Chipper 100

It’s a shame that HES doesn’t get more attention.  It serves a very important and worthy purpose in the maze of options and initiatives at Harvard.  Give the article a read and broaden your understanding of the HES mission.

I’ve had a chance to read both Harvard Extension Dean Michael Shinagel’s book The Gates Unbarred as well as Ian Lamont’s review of it.  I agree with a lot of what Ian has to say about the book, but on one point I disagree with Ian in some fundamental ways: the role of distance education at Harvard, particularly in degree programs.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I took the majority of my coursework at Harvard Online.  Out of the 64 credits that I needed to graduate, I took fully 56 of those via the distance education option.  The other 8 hours I took on-campus, sitting in a classroom alongside the other HES students.

My own opinion is mixed on the subject but I have to disagree with Ian on one issue he seems to feel very strongly about: that taking a distance class is a fundamentally inferior experience than the in-class experience.

Ian’s own opinion seems pretty cut and dry:

The idea that email, prerecorded lectures, and asynchronous message board exchanges can completely replace being in a room with your professor and classmates is ridiculous, yet that’s exactly what the Extension School is promoting — particularly for the undergraduate ALB and graduate ALM in IT degrees, both of which can be earned with upwards of 90% distance education credit (i.e., as little as a single semester or two seven-week summer sessions on campus).

I’ll note that Harvard is hardly alone in this trend.  As I’ve noted before, other Ivy League schools offer entire engineering degrees that are indistinguishable from those offered on campus.  Columbia’s CVN program is one of them.  That program requires NO presence on campus and offers degrees in some pretty difficult disciplines.  Carnegie Mellon offers a Masters Degree in Software Engineering.  So it’s a given that different schools are experimenting with the appropriate role of distance education in the context of a degree program.  The opportunity is huge.  The ability to reach students worldwide is a significant incentive to get involved in this new learning paradigm.

But what of the actual experience?  What are you missing when you only have a limited sensory and interactive environment compared to a “live” classroom?

First, the one thing you give up is presence.  In the current modes of distance learning, the student is aware of the instructor, but the instructor isn’t aware of the student.

Second, you give up a certain degree of interactivity.  You can’t raise your hand and immediately query the instructor.  You also can’t be called upon by the instructor.

Finally, you give up a certain degree of cooperative education.  You can’t interact with your fellow students in as friction free a manner as you could when they are all right there with you in the classroom.

Those are all important aspects of education and it’s great if you can get them.

But what if you can’t?

Let’s look at some of the barriers to those same three aspects of classroom-driven “live” education.

Presence:

• Distance : you live in a different city (or a different country) from where the class is being taught.
• Scheduling : your particular life situation makes attending class at the required times an impossibility.
• Handicap : you have a particular impediment that makes actually being (or learning) in a classroom difficult or impossible.

Interactivity:

• Class size: some “live” classes are huge.  Getting the attention of the instructor is basically akin to being very very lucky.  You might
• Teaching Style: some Professors don’t like to answer questions in class or prefer to defer extended Q&A sessions to “office hours.”
• Time: with a limited amount of class time, the level of additional discourse on a particular topic can be greatly constrained.

Cooperative Education:

• Subject matter: some subjects don’t lend themselves well to cooperative education.  Programming is probably one of these.  Math probably isn’t either (distinct from a one-on-one tutoring environment).
• Competition: the other students might not be particularly motivated to help you learn (especially if they think you are their competition on the grading curve)
• Attention seekers: some students tend to dominate the class conversation without necessarily adding to the class discourse.

These are all ways in which a “live” class experience can fall short of the ideal when we consider the primary purpose of the course: the absorption and understanding of the subject matter being taught.  The subjective evidence seems to indicate that there is a very wide gap between the ideal classroom experience and the actual classroom experience.  (If you’ve ever had to sit through a lecture by a less-than-dynamic professor in a half-filled classroom in an environment that isn’t comfortable with a gaggle of uninterested (or uninteresting) students, you know what I mean.)

For all of the benefits of “live” classroom presentation, it has been my experience that a good lecturer is a rare find indeed.  Even rarer is a collection of students that is as engaged in the subject matter as a good professor.  Yet if a particular class falls short on both of those aspects, why aren’t we talking about how that comparatively poor experience is a hindrance to learning?

I would argue that replacing a poor “live” class with a good “distance” class would overcome a lot of the problems I just listed.  And that’s just the beginning.

Lets look at another problem of learning that is always at the forefront: access.  Most people equate access with cost, but in reality it’s a much more complex issue.  A single mother might be able to afford the cost of education, but not the cost of day-care for her family.  A father might be able to afford the cost of a class, but can’t take advantage of it because the class times conflict with his work schedule.

A heartless cynic might say that what needs to change is that person’s situation, rather than the mode of delivering the education.

But let’s look at another perspective: that of the handicapped person who is greatly limited in their ability to interact with others in a “live” classroom environment but nonetheless able to complete the coursework and pass the exams.

I would find it hard to believe that someone would consider their achievement a somewhat lesser experience because they weren’t able to participate fully in the same manner as more able-bodied students.  Is the degree of a paraplegic student a different achievement from their peers if they used assistave technology to complete their studies?

That’s why I’m less than convinced by arguments to roll back or slow the progress that distance education has made in bringing educational opportunity to the world.  If you read Shinagel’s book, it’s clear that there are a lot of hurdles that needed to be overcome to find a workable way forward.  A lot of innovative development was required to solve the problems of distance and participation.  I’m convinced that future developments will only narrow the distance between the in-class experience and the distance one. Several months ago, I was able to use a Cisco Telepresence system to interact with some colleagues in California.  To each other, it appeared as if we were siting across the desk from each other.  Given my experience with distance education, I could only imagine the possibilities  of using this technology for a college class.

In the future, it should be possible to meld the best elements of both to solve the problems we all face in getting the best education possible.  I’m convinced it can happen and the history of distance education at Harvard shows that the problems are solvable.  To do it, we’re going to have to reconsider what the important parts of a “Harvard” education really are and how we can preserve the best parts of that experience while looking forward to expanding the reach of that experience.

First, I’m going to apologize for taking so long to write this up.  Things have been crazy for a while in my life.  For one thing, it’s felt very good to be done with school.  I’ve been catching up on a lot of things that I didn’t have the time to enjoy while I was working towards my degree.

For one thing, I needed to do a lot of cleanup around my house.  I had tons of books and papers to file and it took me quite a bit of time to get everything straightened up.  If you’ve ever had to clean out a garage, that’s what my office was like.

For another thing, I picked up a new hobby: Crossfit.  I regret to say that whatever level of fitness I had before starting my studies, it was distinctly less once I finished.  True to form, I picked a program that is probably the most challenging type of fitness program you can find.

Anyhow, I promised you a recap of the rest of my graduation day.

Afternoon Exercises

One thing that most people aren’t prepared for is the sheer volume of people present at graduation.  Once the morning exercises are over, the task at hand is to find your guests and get over to wherever they are going to actually hand you your degree.  For the ALB candidates, that’s the Loeb Theatre.

Finding my family and guests was a challenge.  Before we separated for the morning exercises, I told them to meet me in front of the CVS right across the street from Johnston Gate.  That’s on the way to the Loeb Theatre and a convenient landmark.

It was a good thing I told them before the morning exercises too because my battery died from all of the pictures I took with my Blackberry to upload to Facebook.

Once we walked over to the theatre, things were a little more relaxed.  A nice selection of sandwiches and drinks were set up for people to enjoy while we set ourselves up for the ceremony.  I was absolutely famished.

Somewhere along the line, they hustled all of our guests into the theatre and we were the only ones left in the hall.  It can be a little strange to be surrounded by a mass of people in dark flowing robes.  The Loeb Theatre lobby isn’t the most spacious venue and I’ll admit to feeling a bit claustrophobic in those surroundings.  I’m sure being packed into Tercentenary Theatre for most of the morning didn’t help.

That’s when we were surprised by a nice gift from the school: a Harvard Extension shield lapel pin.  We lined up in our graduation order and pinned those onto our gowns as we waited to march into the auditorium.

Unless you’ve ever been on stage, it can be hard to imagine the feeling of being the object of attention in a ceremony like this.  As we were walking to our designated seats in a line and the music was playing, I couldn’t help feeling a curious mix of anxiety and pride.  I had made it.  I was finished.  Nothing was going to come between me and that degree.  Yet I feared that something unknowable and unforeseen was stalking me.  Perhaps it was the knowledge that I’d tried twice before to complete a degree, only to have some life obstacle block my way.  I can’t be sure.  What I can tell you is that I became acutely aware of my own fears all along the way from the very beginning that I wouldn’t finish.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to feel that way.  Lots of us had to modify or otherwise compromise our schedules to stay on track.  My plans had me graduating in 2008 but I had to delay that by one year to ensure I would meet my goal to graduate cum laude and with the coursework I wanted.

The Commencement Speaker

All of these thoughts were going through my mind when the person seated next to me started to nervously thumb what looked like a set of prepared remarks.  As it so happens, Ryan Slattery, our graduation speaker, was seated directly to my right.

When he was called upon to present those remarks, I felt a sense that maybe I should have made an attempt to convey to the audience and the other graduates what my own journey had meant to me and how the struggle to balance a professional life and an academic endeavor had altered my own perspective of what I could achieve.  I felt like I should have tried to at least offer my own words for consideration.  I felt a quick pang of regret.  All I could do was hope Ryan’s address would capture some of my feelings and that he would deliver it with a tone that would engage the audience.

As it turns out, Ryan was an actor on his way to graduate film school at UCLA, a very selective program.  He probably had more time in front of an audience than any other person in that room.  We couldn’t have been luckier in choosing a speaker.

And so Ryan delivered a graduation speech that was full of feeling and a sense of the sacrifice that drove all of us forward.  Here are some highlights from his speech:

Usually, Commencement speeches focus on these grand journeys ahead – and let there be no doubt this will be the case for everyone here – but I think it is appropriate to speak of the diverse and surely winding roads that have brought us all together today.

…

Our program is often called ” a second chance at a first-class education.”

…

Each and every degree conferred today has meaning beyond the print on the paper.  Each represents the journey of its recipient.  It is a symbol of missed anniversaries, baseball games, and dinners with the kids; of long flights and train rides; of rising the the challenge of a second chance; of fulfilling the pride of loved ones now gone.  There is simply not enough room on the degree to write about what it really means, but the stories of sacrifice of each and every degree recipient, most of which will probably go untold, make today more special than anyone can imagine.

As I listened to him speak, I was happy they chose him to give the speech.  His experience was similar to my own.  He felt the same sense that he should make the most of this opportunity and push as far as he could.  He understood that the way forward was often difficult and the right path through unclear.

In the end, after all of the awards were handed out and we began to line up to walk across the stage and receive the degree, I was struck by a curious coincidence.  When I first traveled to Cambridge, the first person I spoke to about the degree program was Mark Ouchida, one of the advisers.  Now, there just off-stage alongside me, was Mark.  We greeted each other with the sense that he was both the first person I met at Harvard and the last person I would speak to before I finally graduated.  Right then, I knew everything would be fine.

As my name was called, I walked past my own advisor, Suzanne Spreadbury, who had called me forth.  I made my way across the stage to the Dean, Michael Shinagel, who handed me the red envelope containing that precious piece of paper.  His only words to me:

Big Smile!

And with that, we turned toward the camera, paused for a photo, and I joined the ranks of Harvard Alumni.