UC-AFT Confronts UC's Push to Online Education

UC is  quickly advancing its pilot online instruction project due to the perception that it could bring the university a windfall of cash.  Unfortunately, this perception has not been diminished by the fact that UC has not been able to raise sufficient outside funds to support the program, and will now be required to use funding streams that could otherwise support severely underfunded undergraduate courses.

UC-AFT questions the assumption that online courses will be less expensive and therefore become revenue sources for the University.  We also do not believe that online courses as a platform will be able to maintain the quality of instruction expected by UC students.  We are committed to bringing these issues to the public to provide a counter point to the  University's mantra that increased access provided by online courses outweighs concerns about quality, cost, academic freedom, privacy, intellectual property rights and matriculation rates.

We believe that if courses are moved online, they will most likely be the classes currently taught by lecturers, and so we will use our collective bargaining power to make sure that this move to distance education is done in a fair and just way for our members.

UC-AFT is currently bargaining the Lecturer contract, and we are looking to do the following things to protect our members from potential adverse effects of UC's rapid adoption of online instruction:

1) make sure that no one loses a course or a job because classes are moved online:

2) regulate workload;

3) protect intellectual property;

4) ensure academic freedom; and

5) adjust the academic review process for merits and promotion.  

The list of posts below is from a variety of sources and they reflect a variety of perspectives on UC's online initiative. 

Online Teachings Disconnect Op-ed LA Times

Submitted by administrator on Wed, 09/28/2011 - 09:05
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This story was originally published in the L.A. Times op-ed section on September 28, 2011.

Online community college students more likely to fail, withdraw

Submitted by administrator on Wed, 08/03/2011 - 09:49
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This article was originally posted on the website, California Watch on July 20, 2011

As California's community colleges add more online classes to their offerings, a new report from the Community College Research Center has found that students are more likely to fail or withdraw from online courses than from traditional ones.

The report, which comes from the Teachers College at Columbia University and was written by Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars, recommends that colleges bolster support systems to increase students' success rates in these classes.

Online students dispute extra fees they paid

Submitted by administrator on Mon, 06/06/2011 - 14:08
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This article was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday June 3, 2011.

Hundreds of California community college students who pay extra fees to access online course content may be owed a refund for inappropriate charges if they can't download the material for future reference.

The problem came to light after a Foothill Community College student protested to administrators at the Los Altos campus that the $78 fee he had to pay a publishing company to join an online math class - on top of his $85 registration fee - was an unfair double charge.

If state regulators decide such fees are improper, the result could have far-reaching consequences for colleges that are increasingly turning to online classes as a cheaper alternative in an era of unprecedented budget cuts.

Academic Council voices concerns over online education pilot

Submitted by administrator on Tue, 05/17/2011 - 19:13
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This article was originally published in the Daily Californian on May 12, 2011.

 

As new specifics about the University of California's controversial push into online education continue to emerge, the chair of the Academic Senate sent a letter to UC President Mark Yudof last Friday detailing numerous faculty concerns about the directions of the online effort and advising that no new courses be developed until its concerns are addressed.

The Battle Over Online Education Continues

Submitted by administrator on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 10:31
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This post was originally published on May 3, 2011 on the blog, Changing Universities.

UCI undergrads get lots of online options

Submitted by administrator on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 10:27
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This post was originally published on the UC Irvine  website.

Summer school isn’t what it used to be.

The Online Witch Hunt--Bob Samuels

Submitted by administrator on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 12:56
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One of the risks of moving classes online is that the faculty can become subject to surveillance and political intimidation.  This threat has just become reality at the University of Missouri where an instructor has lost his job after a video of his class appeared to show him advocating violence in labor activism.  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/04/29/fallout_from_videos_of_labor_course_at_university_of_missouri  

According to the Inside Higher Ed story, the infamous Right-wing blogger, Andrew Breitbart, the same person who brought down ACORN and Shirley Sherrord, obtained the video from a student who copied it off of the university’s online course management system.  The video was then reedited, and although university officials acknowledged this manipulation, they still fired the instructors.

Conservative Activist Remixes Classroom Discussions to Attack Public Education

Submitted by administrator on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 00:00
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By Toby Higbie--Originally published on the blog Remaking The University on April 29, 2011

Videos 'Ripped' From Online-Course Footage Bring Threats to Instructors

Submitted by administrator on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 00:00
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By Peter Schmidt--This article was originally published in the Chronicle of Higher Education on April 28, 2011.

Why is UC Borrowing 7 Million to Fund the On-Line Education Pilot Project?

Submitted by administrator on Mon, 04/18/2011 - 00:00
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By Wendy Brown
Heller Professor of Political Science and Co-Chair, Berkeley Faculty Association
This post was originally published on the UC Berkeley Faculty Association website.  

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