Online/Distance Learning

[Donald]

Wondering who on here has under taken online/distance learning photography courses and what your experiences of them have been.

I've always been a passionate advocate of learning and when I took early retirement at the end of last year, I said that I wanted to continue my own learning. I didn't think that assessed academic study was what I wanted to do (had enough of that in years past) and thought about more leisurely learning just for fun. However .....

As some of you know, the past 2 - 3 years have been a bit of a rollercoaster for me in many respects, culminating with the far too early death of my wife on December 31st 2014. So the past year in particular has been challenging. But I'm now able to look at and think about a future. My future.

And part of that has been to start getting excited about the idea of stretching myself through academic study. In particular, I'm looking at the Bachelor of Arts Degree in Photography offered by the England-based Open College of the Arts (www.oca.ac.uk).

Assume I'm motivated to sign-up. What I want to hear about is what's not good (if anything) about online/distance learning (never done it before) and what are the challenges and pitfalls of studying in this way. In other words, what's your experience been like? Do you think it's a good or bad idea?

[Max von MeiselMaus]

If you mean generally, rather than a photo course, I can chip in here. I have both studied and taught distance learning courses. I learned with Birkbeck and taught with the Open University. I might therefore have a biased view, as both organisations have perfected the art of distance learning. I suspect many other courses don't do it so well. So, bear that in mind when reading this.

The main advantage is that you can study and continue with the rest of your life. This means one can continue to work and earn a living whilst studying. This puts it within reach of a far wider group of people; those who couldn't afford to put life on hold whilst they study.

Also, for older students, it means that you aren't thrown into a pool of teens and twenties, for a degree, which can feel alienating. However, this only matters if you aren't comfortable with teens and twenties. If you are, you will always be a slight outsider (unless it is the sort of course that attracts mature students) but not a complete outcast. You make of it what you do.

However, there are many disadvantages. One is that it can be isolating. You can sometimes feel stranded and as though you are struggling along on your own. A good provider should know this and have plentiful tutor support and opportunities for peer support, via tutor group forums, for example. However, it isn't the same as chatting with fellow students on a daily basis. Also, I suspect many (most?) distance learning providers haven't got adequate provision for support, so, you will need to work harder to keep in touch. If you can, chose a course that has online tutor support and occasional face-to-face tutorials. They can really lift the spirits.

A second big disadvantage is that you need to be motivated and organised to keep going with work in the face of all the distractions of life. It can be difficult to juggle a busy day and a study assignment. It can also be difficult to keep the love going without the constant push of day-to-day contact with people doing the same thing.

I have rather too much to say on this so, if there are particular question, might be better to state them and will have a go at answering, rather than writing a thesis here.

On balance, in your situation, I would be inclined to recommend looking at face-to-face courses, if you have any in your area. That will give you structure, social contact, common goals, all those useful things that work provides and retirement sometimes doesn't. But that does depend on what you have available in your area.

Good luck with it. It is a great challenge.

[Andrew1]

Donald, I read the Handbook. That's quite the commitment to both budget and time which I'm sure you've gone over the details on. At 2 full days a week it would take me about 10 years to get through it.

My input on this would be to check out this business (yes it is) very well. There are all kinds of distance ed companies opening up all over the place and like any other business, they are not all created equal. The faceless ones on the internet are even more suspect no matter what their credentials or how long they've been around. In the companies we used at work there were very few full-time employees and the instructors/evaluators were simply on contract and paid for by the session. Easily dismantled. References from past students would be the best source of information but I doubt you'd get access to that type of information unless it's vetted ahead of time by them. On-line reviews are a good place to start for both the good and bad viewpoints of actual users.

If all appears as you hope and it's something you really want to do I would say jump right in and give it a try. My own personal concern would be that things change to our own situations. I would check out ahead of time if the whole thing can be discontinued if I wish or if there are a basic number of courses or dollars(pounds) that have to be committed too. Also ask if there is a set route that needs to be followed because if it starts out at the very basic level you may find you are much more knowledgeable than what they offer in the beginning. You may be required to complete courses in sequence that will set you back £6000 before you get into anything new and challenging.

Glad you're excited. Good luck.

[Mike Buckley]

I took early retirement at the end of last year

I somehow missed that. Congratulations!

[Donald]

Extremely helpful contributions, directing my thinking into some areas to which I had not given full attention. Thank you.

[IzzieK]

I like both responses so far. This will be an interesting thread if you continue to ask questions. Thanks for starting this.

[Donald]

I like both responses so far. This will be an interesting thread if you continue to ask questions.

Indeed, Izzie. And on that very point......

Picking up from what Max has written and appreciating that every course and every tutor will be different, I am wondering, in the broadest of terms, what one should reasonably expect of an online/distant tutor? Max refers to 'plentiful tutor support'. I suppose I am wondering how one judges/defines that.

Should, for example, the tutor be available to me 'on demand', or will it more likely be a case of coming together online at pre-defined times? I know I can ask these questions of the tutor, but am wondering if there is such a thing as a general rule-of-thumb for these things?

[DanK]

Donald,

Unlike Max, I have never taught online, but I have been involved in my university's discussions of online learning, and I have had to supervise a fair number of individual students online, typically when doctoral students have other circumstances that lead them to leave campus after completing coursework but before completing their other work.

Based on this more limited experience, I agree with Max that one issue is isolation. This is not just a social issue. Much of the productive interaction between student and teacher is not linear and asynchronous. In class, sometimes one student will raise a question or make an assertion that takes the entire group in an unexpected but valuable direction. Online courses will sometimes try to capture some of this, for example, by having threaded discussion forums, but I don't think it is quite the same.

A second problem that I have routinely with doctoral students is that when conceptual issues become sufficiently complex, asynchronous communication--e-mail, in my case--can become horribly inefficient. Things often spiral out of control and diverge rather than converge. There are all sorts of things that happen in real conversations that head this off. I'm currently working remotely with a doctoral student who is confronting a problem that is somewhat difficult methodologically and very difficult in terms of interpretation. We communicate frequently by e-mail and memo, but we complement that with skype conversations almost every week.

All that said, my own view is that as long as you don't consider online teaching to be like conventional teaching, it can be very valuable. I think it is most helpful in cases where you are trying to learn discrete skills and where the underlying conceptual material is not particularly obscure. Photography might be one such case. I did use online training for some postprocessing skills, and I found it quite helpful.

Re this:

Should, for example, the tutor be available to me 'on demand', or will it more likely be a case of coming together online at pre-defined times?

I don't think there is any common answer to this. It is done in all manner of ways. For example, in many cases, the communication is asynchronous--you post, later someone answers--but there are also courses that have "virtual office hours," when a live human is actually sitting somewhere waiting for people to connect. If they do have something like the latter, you might also ask how it is done. For example, is it like a chat board, or do you use software like BlueJeans or skype to have a video connection with a person? Assuming that they have assignments, I would ask what they typically are, how they are graded, and what type and amount of feedback you will get. Some online courses use small tasks that can be graded by computer--it's cheap--while others have experts evaluating more substantial projects or tasks.

Dan

[Max von MeiselMaus]

OK, bear in mind again that I taught and learned on excellent courses.

Your tutor should be available on demand. You should have at least email/forum access to them, with a response expected within 48 hours. The OU also has telephone access, with the tutor stipulating when they can and can't be contacted by phone (so, not after 8pm, for example, as we have a life!). Ideally, you should also have occasional face-to-face tutorial access (the OU degree modules have four tutorials per year. The Birkbeck one I think was two full day seminars per year, with tutorial time within that).

Also, tutor feedback on your work should be thorough, not just a grade. Having said that, there was an OU photography leisure course and one of the major complaints was the lack of tutor feedback on work. However, the OU listens, I suspect that course was either modified or abandoned. You can't learn well without in-depth tutor feedback.

These are all reasonable demands that established providers can meet. If the course you are considering can not offer this, I would look for another course.

ETA: Interesting thing. Looks as though the OU really have taken the feedback to heart and have developed a new short course with the RPS. No good to you, but good on the OU. They really are a first class organisation.

http://www.rps.org/online-courses

[Mike Buckley]

Dan's post gave me an idea: If you have never participated in any formal online training, consider finding a single course that interests you, whether it's about a post-processing skill, personal finance, art history or whatever. It can be provided by any company. When you immerse yourself in that course, you'll likely learn a lot about the intangibles already discussed and whether they positively or adversely affect you. Making a commitment to one course instead of an entire program would limit your investment in time and perhaps money to help you determine whether an entire program would be a good fit for you.

[Max von MeiselMaus]

I think the short course intro idea is a good one. However, not with any provider as a bad provider will put you off distance learning for life. I have heard that people can just be given the course materials and told to get on with it. Very demoralising. But, if you find a short course with a reputable provider, could be a way to dip your toe in the water.

[Clactonian]

Donald, I'm so sorry to learn of the loss of your wife.
On my retirement some three years back I enrolled on the OCA course after a fair amount of research, having concluded that it was the best for me. It turned out to be an expensive mistake.
Firstly the timing was unfortunate in that it coincided with the failing health of both my elderly parents with consequent demands upon me as the only son, and culminating in their deaths either side of Christmas 2014.
Secondly I just could not relate to my tutor or him to me. He was relatively young and appeared to be a career academic going straight from University into lecturing without much in the way of life experience in between. A purist landscaper who considered a shot of a hedge and unkempt field the ultimate in the art. The theoretical side of photography I also found extremely tedious and again just a forum for academics.
The two conspired in my decision to right off several hundred pounds and drop out of the course, although I retain the course notes and a mountain of books that were recommended as essential reading.
I eventually joined a couple of camera clubs and have learnt far more and gained many more like minded friends with minimal investment.
If I could rewind the clock I think I would enrol on one or two residential courses run by experienced professional photographers. Hands on, face to face, and a chance to learn and share experiences with like minded other 'students'.

[Manfred M]

Donald - I have been following this thread with some interest as I dove into taking some advanced photography courses, taught in the traditional way, at the local community college. My online experience from a formal education standpoint is virtually nil; all of my formal education involved lecture halls, tutorials and lab work. Much of my learning also involved "teamwork", i.e. collaboration of one or more other students. A group of four photography students make it a lot easier; the photographer, the subject(s) and a couple of assistants to adjust the lights and hold the reflectors. Kind of hard to do that by yourself.

The flip side is the question. are you planning to do this to get the degree or are you looking to improve your skills. If it is purely the degree path, I suspect the option you are looking at might work, but I think I would probably still look at enrolling at a bricks & mortar institution, because of all of the other advantages. If you are looking to improve your skills, I would probably go the workshop route. Working hands on with an expert in the field is going to go a lot further for someone of your skills than any university level course.

My biggest issue with the formal approach is that I often knew more about some of the subject matter than the professors did. I had to bite my tongue from time to time when they said something that I knew was incorrect.

[Max von MeiselMaus]

Mike, you raise an interesting point. What course suits also depends on what it is you want to learn. If you want the theoretical and art history side, an "academic" course would suit. However, that would seem irrelevant to someone who wants to know more about how to use their camera well, where a more practically-based course would be a better match.

However, a tutor with no teaching skills is a sad, sad thing to see. There are plenty of those in bricks and mortar universities, where research excellence is more important than practical training skills. However, absolutely no excuse for someone teaching an online course. Except poor recruitment and training practices on the part of the provider. That sounds like a black mark against OCA (who, I confess, I had not heard of).

[Manfred M]

Max you raise some interesting points. Universities are probably the only place a person is allowed to teach without ever having learned anything about teaching, other than perhaps their own memories as they worked their way through the education system. I fully admit, some of the professors I had at university were some of the worst teachers I have ever encountered, but they did have truly impressive academic credentials. Our tutors were grad students, who in theory should have been a bit closer to us undergrads, but just like the profs, they were a real mixed bag.

That is of course where the bricks and mortar universities shine because the students end up organizing into groups that end up working things out among themselves, in spite of the incompetencies inherent in the system. That is something that is sorely lacking in much of the on-line system. I know a number of universities here use a hybrid on-line system where audio / video links to the lectures are handled at a well equipped local conference area and local students are all together during the lectures. I know several people that did their MBAs that way and they found the system worked quite well.

[Max von MeiselMaus]

Yup, that was my experience in my universities too; lecturers who are excellent researchers in their field, but crap at teaching. I hope it is now changing. Certainly, when I joined the OU about ten years ago (possibly more), there was a VERY thorough induction programme to teach the teachers, covering stuff like how to give motivating feedback, mark an assignment in a useful way, provide support to distance learners etc. Most of this was via distance learning (and quite rightly, seeing as we would be teaching our subjects that way), but we also had online and face-to-face workshop support. I doubt the bricks and mortar universities have caught up to that extent, but it does provide a model of excellence that other educational establishments would do well to copy.

So, swings and roundabouts in a number of ways when looking at distance learning versus bricks-and-mortar.

[Donald]

Except poor recruitment and training practices on the part of the provider. That sounds like a black mark against OCA (who, I confess, I had not heard of).

Coming from a professional culture of external quality assurance and inspection, I was keen to see what inspection reports said about the OCA. I must admit I'm impressed.

One thing I do know how to do is read the published inspection reports (the body inspected always gets a much fuller document, but that remains unpublished). You've got to understand the language of inspectorates and assess what's not included in a report as much as what is.

As I say, I was impressed by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) report published in May 2014. In particular, the very positive remarks about the quality of tutors and tutoring was encouraging.

However, I do note Mike's comments above, so shall remain healthily sceptical until proof of quality is evident to me.

[Clactonian]

However, I do note Mike's comments above, so shall remain healthily sceptical until proof of quality is evident to me.

To be absolutely fair Donald, I think I am better prepared now to undertake the course than I was immediately after my retirement when, family problems aside, I jumped too quickly into finding a substitute for work.
Yes the attitude of some of the tutors was a particular disappointment but apart from the philosophical side of photography, the course looked promising.
I can't remember if you use a mac or a pc Donald, if the former them Mac Journal is a great piece of software for putting together your Learning Log and Scrivener brilliant for your 'thesis'.

[Donald]

To be absolutely fair Donald, I think I am better prepared now to undertake the course than I was immediately after my retirement when, family problems aside, I jumped too quickly into finding a substitute for work.
Yes the attitude of some of the tutors was a particular disappointment but apart from the philosophical side of photography, the course looked promising.

Thanks for that, Mike. That is helpful.

can't remember if you use a mac or a pc Donald, if the former them Mac Journal is a great piece of software for putting together your Learning Log and Scrivener brilliant for your 'thesis'.

'fraid I'm one of those who sold my soul to the PC world.

[Donald]

This has been an excellent discussion. Thanks to all who have contributed. And please don't feel you have to stop if you want to join in.

This, for me, is the CiC forum at its best.

I think my conclusion is that I'm signing up for the first of the BA (Hons) modules. If that doesn't work out then, yes, I will have spent some money, but I can withdraw at that point. If I like the feel of the experience, then I can buy into other modules, all building up towards gaining enough credits for the degree.

Thank you again for such constructive online discussion.