Working with teams of faculty, colleges are starting to change how big-lecture courses are delivered – taking advantage of instructional technology and freeing up educators for more quality interactions with students.
More than 150 large-scale course redesigns have occurred with help from the National Center for Academic Transformation, reducing costs by an average of 37 percent, said the center’s president and CEO, Carol Twigg, on Thursday. At the same time, student and faculty satisfaction has gone up, and student learning outcomes have improved in 72 percent of the courses (while remaining flat in the rest), she said.
In some cases faculty – the biggest expense on campus – can oversee twice as many students without working any harder, because sophisticated software can present much of the basic material and even grade tests when appropriate, Ms. Twigg said.
Such uses of technology aren’t widespread enough yet to transform college pricing, says Terry Hartle, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education. Ideas like free online courses also “have potential, but you can’t place a bet on them yet,” he says.
