Maeroff, Gene I. (2003). A Classroom of One: How Online Learning is Changing Our Schools and Colleges. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pp. xiv + 306
$26.95 ISBN1-4039-6085-2
Reviewed by John Rothfork
Northern Arizona University
February 14, 2004
Gene Maeroff was the founding director of the Hechinger Institute at Columbia University’s Teacher College. He stepped down in May 2003. Maeroff is the author of a dozen books on public schools and policy; books with titles like The Guide to Suburban Public Schools (1975) and School Building for School Change (1993). Founded in 1996, the Institute’s mission is to provide “fair, accurate and insightful reporting about education” <http://www.tc.edu/hechinger/general.htm>. In A Classroom of One Maeroff hopes to provide a fair and accurate report of distance learning. Unfortunately, this aim led Maeroff to produce a work that is largely historical, without being thorough, and a work that is timid in its insights about how online education affects or may affect higher education. Ironically, the traditional academic design of the book illustrates its resistance to the subject of how the Internet is changing American culture. Maeroff offers a breezy narrative about a hundred or more university distance education programs. Wouldn’t it make sense to offer readers the urls for the programs and sites that Maeroff discusses, either in the text or in an appendix, or even to divide the book into a reference section and a policy discussion? The urls would be for universities, which are not ephemeral sites likely to vanish in a few months. Clearly, such organization would suggest a different, hands-on, audience. For example, Maeroff mentions that prospective distance students at San Diego State University “could scroll through pages that allowed them to evaluate themselves as potential students in the program, visiting web pages with such titles as ‘Are Distance Learning Courses for Me?’” (p. 97). This obviously interests anyone who develops or teaches Web courses. So where is the url? It is not difficult to search the SDSU Webiste to find it <http://www.cod.edu/dept/CIL/CIL_Surv.htm>. But it is curious to discover that a book dedicated to distance education, with a dust jacket that illustrates a computer screen, never mentions a single url in the text. Instead, the book offers a gossipy discussion aimed at school and university administrators who will be amazed to learn that NYUonline spent “what some insiders estimated was up to $1 million per course to develop” fewer than 10 courses (p. 123; see “Debating the Demise of NYUonline,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 Dec. 01: http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i16/16a03101.htm), that Cornell University “committed $36 million” to its online venture (128; see http://www.ecornell.com/advantage/about.jsp), and that Columbia University spent “almost $30 million” on a portal that is largely about branding and advertising (131; see “Report form Columbia University’s Senate Sharply Criticizes Spending for Online Venture,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 April 02: http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002042501u.htm). Maeroff’s hesitation about offering insight into how online education is likely to change the university follows from his decision to cover developments in secondary as well as post-secondary education. Maeroff offers little depth of insight, but he does succeed in offering a partial history of distance education – if one can call events of the last ten years or less a history. Maeroff reports his major findings in the preface, suggesting that distance education works best for “mature adult learners” interested in career education and predicting that in the coming years “online courses will edge closer to the mainstream … so that eventually few distinctions will be made between courses taken online, courses taken in the classroom, and courses that incorporate attributes of both settings” (xii-xii).
Method: Maeroff identifies typical faculty concerns about distance education, saying “that success depends on acting in ways that encourage and assist faculty to alter habits and attitudes that have sustained them for their careers” (p. 17). It is easy to misread that sentence thinking that it supports the policy of faculty control for developing and teaching distance courses. But the key word in the sentence is alter. The question then is who has the authority to make such changes? I doubt that Maeroff has read postmodern writers like Michel Foucault or Thomas Kuhn who stress that such changes are negotiated among various professions in an extremely hard to perceive process. In contrast, Maeroff expects the university administration, the government, and the economy to determine how distance education will affect higher education; and these are the entities he seeks to describe.
Faculty: Maeroff explains that putting a course online can take up to “500 percent longer … than to prepare a course to teach in person” (p. 34) and consequently suggests that administrators are misguided who “harbor vague hopes that somehow online courses will eventually lead to lower per-student costs and larger per-student revenues” (p. 113). Faculty must also consider new technical skills. “The layout, illustration, and colors that appear on the monitor screen, the ways that links are displayed, the manner that lessons incorporate sound and video, the arrangements by which students move through the lesson, the instructions they receive for navigating the site, the decisions about how to incorporate electronic bulletin boards and chat rooms—all of these [and many more decisions] must be considered in designing a course for online delivery” (p. 34). Because few senior university faculty possess such skills, Maeroff explains that e-learning “offers the possibility of disaggregating content, design, and instruction” (p. 35). The common pattern relies on a faculty member to develop course content, which is then “packaged” by course designers expert in Web design, graphic arts, usability studies, and other support areas. Finally, the course is delivered (rather than taught) by a facilitator (rather than a teacher). Course facilitators are often adjuncts possessing an M.A. in the relevant field who are paid around $2,000 per course (see http://www.adjunctnation.com/members/jobs/compstudy/). The short-lived U.S. Open University “paid associate faculty in the range of $600 to $1,000 per credit-hour for their work” (p. 38).
The adjunct model was adopted from the evolution of the community college. Maeroff frequently mentions Rio Salado Community College suggesting that it is a model because of some of its innovative programs (pp. 125-6). One of the eleven Maricopa Community Colleges in Phoenix, Arizona, Rio Salado is a “college without walls” that offers 300 Web courses <http://www.rio.maricopa.edu/ci/college_desc.shtml> to 20,000 students <http://www.rio.maricopa.edu/atAGlance.shtml>. Rio Salado employs 26 full time faculty <http://www.riosalado.edu/ci/faculty/> and “over 700 adjunct instructors each semester” <http://www.riosalado.edu/ci/faculty_services/>. Instead of making a judgment on this alteration of faculty roles, Maeroff repeatedly points out that “part-time and adjunct faculty teach at least one-third of all undergraduate course hours” (p. 65, p. 242). Maeroff also explains hiring policy at the University of Phoenix where instructors tend to be “people who were part of the workaday world and taught on the side. Such staffing also enabled the huge university to avoid building a faculty of full-time tenured professors over whom their control would be diminished and for whom the jobs would be permanent” (p. 147).
This reminded me of teaching in Malaysia. In the 1980s, the brightest Malay students were offered scholarships to Western universities. Students in the next tier were offered scholarships to the few universities in the country (see http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/my.html). The University Maryland had a contract to teach students in the third tier using American faculty brought to Malaysia. It wasn’t alone. Central Texas College, Indiana University, and other American schools also had contracts. At the time I wondered why the country preferred to import American teachers rather than invest in their own universities. The autocratic rule of the long time prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2059518.stm), total censorship that made books rare objects, and the climate of fundamentalist Islam, gave me clues to the answer. The last thing Mahathir wanted was to foster an intellectual class that he would have trouble controlling. Always seeking the neutral ground, Maeroff dulls the edge of similar concerns in America with his typical administrative eye for money and overt power. He suggests that “online learning eventually could lessen the need for traditionally prepared PhDs with their relatively low teaching loads and built-in time for research and writing. More academic positions in the future could involve less prestige, lower pay, and little time for reflection and scholarly activities. Such is the trend as part-time, nontenure appointments proliferate” (p. 190).
“Relatively low teaching loads”; relative to what? The answer is relative to secondary school teachers and the ever dwindling number of full-time community college teachers, who are increasingly administrators overseeing dozens of adjuncts. Maeroff is oblivious of the social processes that postmodern writers suggest negotiate such standards. He expects them to be individually decided and set by government and administrative authorities, and to be set generally by the invisible hand of the capitalist economy. Maeroff does point out that “online courses, with their inclination to use instructors as facilitators, mentors, and coaches, could lead to a devaluation of faculty research” but his background and interest suggest that Maeroff knows little about the immense culture of research science that is a very large part of American higher education (p. 232). Maeroff’s background and interest is in public schools. Elsewhere in the book, Maeroff implies that teaching should be considered as important as research. Education is not this monolithic. There is little validity in treating education as the same from the elementary to the graduate level. There are distinctions between secondary education and cutting-edge science research that influence pedagogical methods. It may be true that “the best teachers in colleges and universities get plaques and commendations, but their teaching skills alone seldom win them promotion or tenure” (p. 26). But the implication that university faculty, in a hundred different disciplines, should be promoted on teacher education criteria developed (at least in part) from the Teacher’s College of Columbia University is hardly neutral. Early in the book (p. 15), Maeroff quotes Stanley N. Katz’s predictable view from Princeton on distance education (Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 June 2001). Professor Katz opines that “too much of what is now being called distance education at most institutions is not an educational idea; it is a business idea.” This hints at the problem with Maeroff’s method: it offers little cultural or rhetorical nuance as it seeks to define the business of distance education. Near the end of the book, Maeroff suggests that “all of education could benefit from reorienting itself toward [considering] students as customers” (p. 274).
Portals: Like other topics, Maeroff’s discussion of portals and collaboration among schools is scattered throughout his book. Portals offer a kind of umbrella for associated services to be offered under a brand name. Many such ventures, including Columbia University’s Fathom project, have not fared well (see the promise of April 2000 at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb000410-1.htm and the explanation of its failure in Jan. 2003 at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030113-2.htm. Such portals suggest that the surfer needs guidance. They imply that the material under their umbrella has been examined and approved by experts. Apart from questions about the authority to make such judgments, this attitude is simply too stodgy and condescending to appeal to many who wander the Net. A much more successful model of how portals can work is offered by the eArmyU (http://earmyu.com; also see “Army’s Huge Distance Education Effort Wins Many Supporters in Its First Year,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 Feb 2000: http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i22/22a03301.htm). The success of this program is due less to Web wizardry than to the fact that the Army pays all the bills “giving each enrollee a laptop, printer, Internet access, e-mail account, 24-hour technical support, books, and a waiver of all tuition and fees” (p. 11). Enrolling 12,000 GIs in its first year, eArmyU hopes to have 80,000 students by 2005 (p. 235). The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) that includes 16 states <http://www.sreb.org/programs/acm/acmindex.asp>, The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) that includes 15 states <http://www.wiche.edu/>, and the Western Governors (virtual) University <http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/index.html>, offer other models in which the cost of tuition is one of the driving forces. Maeroff reports that the “SREB promoted the idea among its member institutions of not charging online students out-of-state tuition rates as long as they resided in one of the member states” (p. 235). Like paying state sales tax for e-commerce purchases, sorting out where students live in order to calculate tuition rates seems senseless to most of those who are shopping for educational programs on the Internet. Many schools, including mine (Northern Arizona University), have already adopted a three-tier system that places distance education tuition between in-state and out-of-state rates <http://www.distance.nau.edu/Services/tuition.aspx>. On the community college level, Pennsylvania has unified its schools through the Pennsylvania Virtual Community College Consortium (PaVCC; http://www.pavcc.org/index.shtml). Again Maeroff is too timid when he suggests that “online courses demand new ways to deal with funding formulas, attendance and time requirements for courses [especially at the secondary level], residency rules, eligibility for financial aid, the mandated size of library collections, standards for academic credit, student-teacher ratios, and pay scales” (p. 175).
Teaching online: Maeroff scatters many of his points about distance teaching throughout the book. For example, it is obvious that “the majority of faculty want someone to help them gain” a facility to develop and teach online courses. This was the finding of a survey of 590 college and university IT (instructional technology) managers who said it was “the single most important IT issue confronting their campuses” (p. 94). After learning how to teach an online course, faculty are likely to be dismayed to discover that they need to “respond daily to students who submit questions and comments via e-mail, bulletin boards, and chat rooms”; daily often includes weekends and holidays. Maeroff likes to say that online education is “a 24/7 proposition” for faculty as well as students (p. 191, p. 45). Perhaps some professors don’t mind spending everyday in front of a monitor. Still, it is a losing dedication because “one obstacle to faculty involving themselves more extensively in learning the ins and outs of online courses has been the slowness with which the academy has recognized such tasks as worthy of consideration in evaluation procedures leading to promotion and tenure” (p. 243). Department chairs and administrators above that level are unlikely to have taken a Web course, much less developed or taught one. Consequently, they know little about the creativity and work involved in producing and teaching Web courses. Indeed, their interest is likely to be in employing adjuncts “who are paid less and lack the academic credentials of the average faculty member.” After courses are developed, some administrators may hope to simply “dispense with regular faculty in online courses” (p. 238). Even the value of developing online courses can be undercut. WebCT and other commercial vendors who offer online course platforms collaborate with book publishers to offer ready-made online course content <http://www.webct.com/content/viewpage?name=content_showcase>. The result may be that e-learning tends “to involve more and more adjunct faculty and to use e-courses that institutions purchased from others” (p. 184). Maeroff reports that severe critics, such as the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) “consider virtual learning nothing more than a scheme to eliminate much of the teaching faculty” (p. 240; see the AAUP’s “Statement on Distance Education: http://www.aaup.org/statements/Redbook/StDistEd.HTM).
Maeroff worries that “the best-know institutions now have the opportunity to attach their well-know names, what the business world calls ‘branding,’ to courses that they can offer in all parts of the United States and even abroad” (p. 150). So far this has not been a problem. Rio Salado has probably lost very few students to Columbia or to Penn State. Regional and price differences remain important considerations for many e-learning students. Ironically, after “disaggregating content, design, and instruction,” the University of Phoenix “discovered that online courses, done properly, cost more than in-person education.” Maeroff explains that “done properly” includes limiting Web courses to “fewer than a dozen students as compared with at least 15 in a classroom course” (p. 205).
Is it worth it? The question is jejune or myopic. Computer technology, including the Internet, is rapidly transforming every area of American life. It is impossible for education to be immune from involvement. The National Technological University <http://www.elearners.com/college/ntu/> is a portal for technology studies recently bought by Sylvan Learning Systems <http://www.distance-educator.com/ dnews/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=4548>. Maeroff reports the results of an NTU survey of its students, who, he explains, “were, on average, 39 years old and almost all had gotten their undergraduate degrees the old-fashioned way, in classrooms.” The results: “only 7 percent thought that distance learning was not as effective as classroom learning. Sixty-two percent felt the experience was about the same as in a classroom, and 31 percent deemed distance learning more effective than the classroom” (p. 165). Early in the book, Maeroff writes that “cyber learning has electronic dialogue at its heart” (p. 61). He is thinking of the classroom, of teachers and students, perhaps in the context of secondary education. I would change the context for higher education, especially for graduate education and science research. I think the key word is community or perhaps professional community. When I taught humanities courses at an isolated science school (New Mexico Tech), there was never anyone to talk to about my strange interests in Confucianism, American pragmatism, or Asian post-colonial literature. When I created a homepage and made a few of my essays available on the Internet, I began communicating with other scholars around the world who shared an interest in the same topic. My online graduate courses in professional and technical writing work much the same way. In developing the program, we initially thought that the courses would appeal to professionals in nearby Phoenix. Like others in our field, we found that a link at STC (Society for Technical Communication) brings us to the attention of a few people around the country and around the world who are interested in the topic of professional and technical writing.
When I taught large sections of sophomore literature courses in Texas, the few interested and committed students would question me before or after class because the local etiquette forbad them from showing such interest during class. Thus I was surprised, when I began teaching these classes online, to find that many students expressed an appreciation for the chance to express themselves about the course content without worrying about being heckled by their peers. Unfortunately, Maeroff is not concerned about scholarship, research, or communities that are not planned, structured, and controlled by institutional authority. Another reviewer wrote that A Classroom of One “poses myriad questions about educational governance, faculty, and institutional responsibility” (from the dust jacket). The problem is that these administrative questions lack the context that make them engaging for the people involved in e-learning at various schools. From the opposite direction, the questions lack the statistical and historical associations that characterize sound administrative studies. As my many allusions to the Chronicle of Higher Education suggest, Maeroff’s book offers a kind of summary of recent articles on e-learning that either appeared or might have appeared there.
About the Reviewer
John Rothfork
English Department
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
John.Rothfork@nau.edu
John Rothfork teaches online courses in a graduate certificate program in professional and technical writing at Northern Arizona University. His Website is at http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/jgr6/.
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