The Resource Reallocation Function of Web Courselets （下）_计算机网络论文.docVIP

The Resource Reallocation Function of Web Courselets （下）_计算机网络论文 The Resource Reallocation Function of Web Courselets （下）_计算机网络论文 Socrates was not a Content Provider David Noble, who made the wry observation about Socrates quoted above, has led the protest against everything that Courselets stand for. His fiery rhetoric is always entertaining and sometimes on target. Along with others, he has performed a valuable service by pointing out the perils of post-Cottage education. Noble sees a future characterized by digital diploma mills, in which technology replaces expensive human beings wherever possible and turns the rest, inevitably, into wage slaves. Courselets do, in fact, create just such a possibility. From the faculty perspective, a stand-alone, self-grading course with content tailored to standards and accessible on a 24/7 basis definitely looks threatening. John Henry never beats the steam hammer. How does it look from the learners point of view? The idea of an educational system devoid of human interaction and confined to Courselets on a CRT is pretty grim. On the other hand, an educational system consisting primarily of large lecture courses and overworked Graduate Students isnt all that different. Besides, with market forces freely at work for the first time ever in American education, ineffective Courselets might be weeded out, allowing the superior ones to prevail.The upside for students is obviously convenience, and to some extent, quality. Industrially-produced learning resources can be more costly and sophisticated than cottage industry materials because the development expense can be amortized over a much greater number of students. Typical Courselets available today, for example, contain a significant number of items that are costly to produce, such as animations, or audio and video clips, which are beyond the means of a single faculty member or even most academic departments. However, critics of distance education, such as John Seely Brown and Paul