Kaplan College Online is NOT the place to get an education.
Written: May 28 '04 (Updated May 28 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Reasonably priced, but not really when you consider the quality of your education.
Cons: Instructors can't really teach, way too much assessment, too many technical problems, way under-paid instructors.
The Bottom Line: Not recommended - too much assessment, too many technical problems, too little opportunity for teachers to teach.
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| jvandegr's Full Review: Kaplan College Online |
A brief note about distance education
With regard to quality of education, distance education is always a less-than-desirable substitute for traditional classroom education. Anyone who says otherwise is usually trying to sell you something. Of course, there are a few advantages of online education over traditional classrooms. Perhaps the most important is accessibility. Some students would be unable to be students were it not for online education. I’m not suggesting that online education doesn’t work at all. Students can sometimes get a basic education from online courses. However, taken as a whole, there really is no substitute for interacting with a professor and fellow students face-to-face.
So, as an experienced teacher, I do everything I can to bring the best of the traditional classroom setting into my online courses, while still taking into consideration the unique affordances of this medium. As an instructor at Kaplan College Online, there was almost no way for me to do so, because the curriculum is canned. I’ve taught online courses at several other colleges where I never experienced anything like this.
Canned curriculum at Kaplan College
At Kaplan College Online, I taught an introductory course called “Human Dynamics”. The entire course was canned, meaning the seminar topics, projects, quizzes, and even the grading scale are all constructed by The Man. Who is The Man? Who knows, but the whole thing reminded me of Orwell’s 1984. As an “instructor” (I felt more like a factory supervisor), I was only responsible for facilitating a one-hour live seminar each week, grading projects, and grading each individual’s participation. My first thought in response to this was, great! I’m teaching a lot of other courses at other colleges, so this canned curriculum will save me a lot of time. As it turns out, there is so much assessment in this course, and there were so many technical problems with the web interface, that my traditional classroom courses were less time-consuming to teach. What am I talking about – there is no teaching at Kaplan College Online. Facilitating a pre-determined seminar topic and grading canned projects is not teaching and should not be mistaken for such! Well, at least I assign students their final course grade, right? Wrong! Once again, this is done by The Man. Apparently, “the computer” just assigns each student a grade based on their total number of points. What if a student is on the lower end of a border between two grades, but obviously put in a serious effort during the entire semester? What if that student was hospitalized during the semester or had a death in the family or had other excusable circumstances that affected their performance in the course? As an instructor, I usually take these things into consideration when assigning the final grade. Do you think a computer can do that?
(Way too much) Assessment
The copious amount of assessment at Kaplan College warrants further discussion. Everything that any student does is graded. How many times you post to the message board each week, how many words are in each message board posting (effectively), how many times you say something in seminar, etc. etc. So, what happens if the topic of the week is not something you can contribute to very much? Down goes your participation score. In most traditional classroom seminars, this is not the case. Of course, this is not the only probably with too much assessment. If there ever was a fleeting moment for me to do something that resembled teaching at this school, I wouldn’t be able to because I was too busy counting message board postings and trying to evaluate just how worthy every posting was. It didn’t take me long before I reminded myself that I actually was not a character in the story 1984 and decided, screw it. When it came time to give a mid-quarter grade, I decided that every student who showed up for seminar, participated in the seminar, and contributed at least a couple postings to the message board each week, would get 100% for their participation grade only. Of course, most of their grade is determined by projects and quizzes, so giving everyone 100% for this small part of their grade is not a big deal, especially after only three weeks and especially if they were making a serious effort. Just like 1984, enter the thought-police! My supervisor actually went into my online grade sheet and changed everyone’s participation scores! I can just picture her sitting at her desk counting words in message board postings. At most institutions, this type of interference is strictly forbidden. The reality of the situation is that there is no accurate way to assess a student’s participation after only three weeks. Anyone who tells you otherwise lacks a fundamental understanding of teaching, educational theory, and basic statistics. A sample size of three is not large enough to assess anything.
We are experiencing technical difficulties - again
Technical problems were rampant while I was teaching at Kaplan College. None of my postings showed up on the message board the first week of class. This is pretty big deal when you’re the instructor! For the last two weeks of class, message board postings made by anyone didn’t show up for hours and sometimes for days. The live seminar interface occasionally crashed for some of my students, even though they were using new versions of Internet Explorer on Windows XP. I couldn’t post scores to the online grade sheet for almost the entire semester. Perhaps needless to say, my student were a little stressed about not being able to see their scores. When I contacted Kaplan College technical support, they informed me that it was an “ongoing problem” and wouldn’t say if or when they could fix it. My supervisor suggested the problem was my computer. I told her that I could guarantee that my clean-running, high-end graphics machine with the latest browser software and a DSL connection was not the problem. Kaplan relies on proprietary software for their courses, instead of using a well-designed and tested program like Blackboard and WebCT, and this is part of their problem.
I wasn’t the only one frustrated by this over-emphasis on assessment and all these technical problems. Several of my students informed me that they were not at all happy with Kaplan’s approach to online learning and were planning to withdraw from the school. It should be noted that these particular students worked hard, finished the course, and were generally very committed to their education.
Anything good to say?
You’re probably wondering if there is anything good about Kaplan College Online. My response is that there is nothing uniquely good about this school. I really enjoyed participating in the seminars, mostly because I had a good group of students that particular semester. Obviously, an online seminar is nothing unique to Kaplan College, so I can only give them so much credit for this. Unfortunately, there was nothing else positive about my experience, nor can I find anything positive about the school in general. The cost of tuition is reasonable compared to other online programs but you’re not getting much for your money.
Conclusions
How much does an instructor get paid to teach a typical course at Kaplan College Online? About $1500. This is on the low end of the adjunct faculty pay scale, relative to other colleges in the US. Does this have an effect on attracting quality faculty and faculty retention? You bet it does. It could be argued that Kaplan College Online is just one more in a long line of colleges that take advantage of adjunct instructors. However, in this case, the students are also being taken advantage of. Look elsewhere for your education – it shouldn’t be difficult to find something better.
Recommended:
No
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