Info 202 Fall 2011

Online schools: Are they worth more, less, or the same as a traditional schools?

If you believe that online
learning is the future and are in favor of the idea you’re likely to agree with
this editorial from Sign
on San Diego.  This article focuses on secondary level
education, but the same arguments are applied to the college and university
levels.  If you’re someone who
takes a more skeptical view of online learning, you may agree more with the
evaluation of online schools at The
Sauce.  This article highlights
the Obama administration’s policies and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s
position on virtual learning. 
There’s also some suggestion that outsourcing core school functions to
for-profit businesses may be problematic.

This is a hot debate in education circles here in the United
States.  Whether you are for or
against online learning, the outsourcing trend is becoming more
commonplace.  There are purely
operational and administrative functions such as transportation, food service, janitorial,
payroll, and registrar that many private businesses serve without much
criticism or controversy.  However,
there is entrenched disagreement on the topic of academics being implemented as
a service by for profit businesses.  This difference seems to get at the heart of what a school
is, how we identify, categorize, classify and distinguish a formal learning
institution from the more informal acquisition of knowledge and skills. 

Just as the distinction between libraries, archives, and
museums is being blurred by increasing malleability and flexibility of
information, so is the distinction between institutional formalized learning and
informal personalized learning.  
Perhaps this is part of the reason why people object so vehemently to
schools outsourcing core academic functions through virtual schooling.  Nobody seems to to make a fuss if the
lunch service is provided by an outside vendor, but when the content and
delivery of instruction is outsourced the school may be on shaky ground. 
Can a school be school by organizing an array of educational and
administrative services without actually providing any of those services
internally?   It does
appear that the trends are pushing more towards that distributed and
decentralized vision of education.  
Clearly, the coordination of this type of school relies on the
interoperability of systems, the standardized structuring of information, and
the use of business intelligence to make decisions regarding individual
functions as well as connections between those functions.

NB- If you’re not so
interested in schools but more interested in outsourcing with a services model,
some food for thought is Go It Alone!
by Bruce Judson, a former internet entrepreneur turned professor at Yale
University.  The premise of the
book is that entrepreneurs can be most successful by focusing on what they do
best and outsourcing absolutely everything else using technology applications
and service providers.