TV Courses Raise Many Academic Concerns

The Winnipeg Free Press has again run a story advertising the
benefits of university courses on television (14 September 1994,
2 September 1995).  Although valuable for promoting telecourses
to students unable to attend regular classes, such one-sided
stories fail to address a number of concerns about telecourses.

1.  Telecourses may not provide as valuable a learning
experience as time spent in classes.  Each year faculty at the
University of Winnipeg are evaluated on such qualities as
encouraging participation of students and being sensitive to
student learning.  These qualities, which are related to how
positively students feel about university and how much they
learn, could be compromised by inappropriate use of TV classes.

2.  Widespread use of TV classes will reduce interactions among
students, both in and out of class.  What will especially suffer
are the out-of-class interactions that research shows to contribute
so much to the growth and development of university students. 
Students in courses with technical material (e.g., sciences), for
example, do better if they study with other students.

3.  Some students require supportive environments in order to
succeed at university.  There is evidence of excessively high
failure and drop-out rates in telecourses.  Crushing the hopes of
challenged students because of an inadequate mode of instruction
is undesirable for students, the university, and the province.

4.  Badly needed resources may be wasted on unsound and
faddish projects that offer false hopes of financial economies. 
This year the University of Winnipeg diverted $500,000 from the
operating budget for capital developments that include
components of the telecourses.  The administration's priorities
seem strange given understaffed and inadequately funded
classrooms and laboratories.  TV classes themselves are more
expensive to operate than are traditional classes, further straining
limited resources (unless the administration forces large numbers
of regular students to take telecourses).

5.  Academic concerns are not adequately protected by the
current way in which telecourses are operated.  Last year the
University of Winnipeg Senate, which has authority on academic
matters, rejected a motion to operate telecourses outside the
Faculty of Arts and Science because of legitimate academic
concerns.  The Senior Administration nonetheless went ahead
and implemented the rejected organizational structure, thereby
failing to balance academic concerns and commercial interests.

Financial issues are clearly the number one priority for
politicians and increasingly for the senior administrators who are
their servants in our public institutions, which is probably one
reason that the supposed innovation of telecourses is now being
promoted.  But speculative and short-term financial savings
should not prevent us from implementing change in a thoughtful
manner and should not blind us to the possible long-term costs
of inadequate forms of higher education.

Jim Clark
Winnipeg