No Back Row: Auditing a Class at MBA@UNC Delivered by 2tor
Over the past few weeks I’ve been allowed to sit in on M.B.A. classes being offered in an online-only program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. ...
It is unlike any online educational experience I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t involve "class capture" – the use of a camera focused on a professor lecturing in the front of the room. Nor does it involve self-paced “interactive” exercises where students read passages on their computer screen and answer questions (correctly) before being allowed to advance to the next chapter. And there is real communication, not only between the teacher and the students, but among the students themselves.
... UNC has created a virtual classroom that is more intimate than 90 percent of the seminars I’ve taught in or taken. That’s because a quarter of every student’s computer screen is a grid of the dozen other students in the class – in close-up!
Within minutes of signing into the class – and this particular class was “live” (referred to as synchronous) – I realized that each of us was sitting in a front-row seat. The professor was going to call on each of us. He could also capture and share our computer screen with the other students.
... I was expected to prepare for the live (synchronous) class by watching three hours of videotaped (asynchronous) material on my own time. ...
For me, these asynchronous classes were the biggest surprise of the Kenan-Flagler program. Instead of talking heads, they were more like highly produced Nightline or NOVA documentaries than lectures. They were a combination of field-produced segments, explanatory graphics and animations, and well-rehearsed stand-up pieces. And the results were remarkably engaging.
The most surprising aspect of my Kenan-Flagler audit was the sense of community that emerged from the computer screen. At the end of the 90-minute synchronous seminar, several students “stayed late” to ask the professor questions. And two students paired-off after that to grab a beer together – virtually.
Read more.
