I do however think that China took a very risky chance introducing TVU's so quickly after television broadcasting began to develop. However this chance clearly paid off and there statistics back up the success of TVU's. " During the period from 1960 to 1966, more than 8,000 students graduated from the Beijing Television University and over 50,000 students finished single-course studies through its teaching programmes." (Yuhui). The success of TVU's increased and reamined popular as "In I975, the enrolment rate in China's higher education was less than 2 per cent, whereas in ninety-two other developing countries the rate was over 4 per cent.”(Yuhui).
I was also surprised to see how quickly new courses are added to China's E-learning facility.
"Enrolled all-subject students have totalled over 1 million, and all-subject graduates have amounted to more than 500,000.","By 1990, about sixty new types of multi-media course will be developed."(Yuhui). This just shows the impact of how New Media has developed and is continuing to develop to cater for more and more courses online. Increasing and adding more courses means that a wider group of students have the opportunity to study through E-learning. However one downside that I did notice was the percentage of how many people successfully graduated from E-learning degrees. It was quite low, which is a worry. But like all methods of education some don't work as well for some people as others. You just have to find your preferred method.
But are these TVU's good or bad? Again Yuhui higlights advantages and disadvantages of E-learning. One of the most positive aspects I noticed was that these E-learning courses are fairly cheap, which meant that more money could be spent on better resources rather than spending money on things that aren't as important. According to this Article it is clear that TVU's are highly successful and effective in China but I don't think they would necessarily work in all countries and for all subjects. Personally I think that I would not like to learn things this way. Maybe if I had been brought up with the whole concept of E-learning online then I would be more acceptable to try it and give it a go, especially if friends or other people I know were learning or had experienced learning in this way. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are constant debates about the lack of face to face interaction due to the high polopularity of the internet, and once again this is just another way of limiting discussion in 'meatspace'. It's nice to have some difference in your degree like an online module, but I feel the idea of an entire degree course being online just limits interaction and experiences that you would encounter in 'meatspace' (perhaps i'm just being old fashioned). Especially as you have to go out and work in 'meatspace' after you have graduated, many graduates might struggle to interact with other colleagues, as they haven't built up these skills during their degree as they were reliant upon the online learning.
http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/Technology/broadcast/tv-02.html
"The success of TVU's increased and reamined popular as "In I975, the enrolment rate in China's higher education was less than 2 per cent, whereas in ninety-two other developing countries the rate was over 4 per cent.”(Yuhui)."
ReplyDeleteDoesn't that seem to imply that China was less successful? Or do you understand this to mean that TVUs kept students out of the standard university system -because they were catered for by TVUs? Either way, you need to explain things a little more.
As an O.U. Graduate, I can agree that it's not socially comparable to studying together with colleagues (my first degree was in London -without a Campus, and my research degree was in Stirling, which has a lovely campus and I shared an office with several other postgrads). However, the -very public- quality of the O.U. course was superior to anything else available in my field at the time.