Welcome to Gravenhurst
OK, so on the one hand we have online education growing by leaps and zounds, until anyone who really wants to do a quality university degree can do so from the comfort and security of their parents’ basement. On the other hand, we have the quite natural desire of 18-year-olds to get out of said basement and hang out with each other. What can we do to help them?
Welcome to Gravenhurst, a small town in the heart of cottage country two hours north of Toronto. (I could equally well say “welcome to Bracebridge” or to Parry Sound or to any of a dozen other places, but I’ll stick to Gravenhurst for now.) Every summer, Gravenhurst is filled with vacationing urbanites who either own, rent, or visit the lakeside cottages around it. They buy stuff at its stores, they drink in its pubs, they keep its summer theater alive—and then they go home, usually around Labor Day.
Would it be possible to create a centralized campus for decentralized learning in a place like Gravenhurst? I.e., could someone build a few dorms and labs and a gym to give students the social zing of living in a college town, and just skip all that stuff about professors and lectures and what-not? Students would take courses online from any provider (or mix of providers) they wanted, and get their degree from the course provider (which could be a big-name school like Stanford, Oxford, or whatever). When it came time to dissect a frog or write an exam, though, they’d pay a small fee to their campus provider for facilities, supervision, or invigilation [1].
I think it makes sense from the town’s point of view: students would be arriving just as tourists left, and leaving as tourists arrived, so it would even out the town merchants’ cash flow. It might not appeal to students who crave the bright lights of the big city, but I think there are plenty of others who’d leap at the chance to be a five minute walk from boating, canoeing, hiking, and the rest of the great outdoors. (And of course you could set up a physical campus for virtual courses in a big city, too, it would just cost more, and you’d have a harder time getting the host city to think you were really important.)
So: is anyone already doing this? If so, I’d welcome pointers…
[1] I actually think that invigilation—i.e., exam supervision—is the key to this whole plan. Once online learning really matters, we’re going to see cheat-for-hire services appear (“Give me $50 and your login ID, I’ll write the calculus exam for you.”). Learning providers who want to maintain the value of their degrees or badges will need ways to prevent fraud, so there’ll be a need for people like notary publics (notaries public?) to provide such assurances.
I assume the premise here is that a barrier to online learning is 18 year olds want to leave home? Thinking back to when I was 18 I can agree with this.
My advice to an 18 year old with onilne learning as an option is to pick a place or series of places you would want to visit and plan around that. Gravenhurst might be such a location if you like cottage country but so could places in Europe, Australia, South East Asia, etc. I enjoyed the new experience of going to school two hours away from home (University of Western Ontario) but it lost its appeal after a few years. Having the opportunity to travel with a network of small remote bases that I could count on would have been an interesting offer. If there were an affiliated network of these around the globe that I could schedule time at and move between it would have been an attractive offer.
One such requirement of independence is a student being disaplined and engaged in their studies. I don’t believe that’s any different that going to a traditional University or College. Another topic of disucssion.
That’s a really interesting idea. Basically, you’d have a student-run university, with the actual campus facilities provided by a third party.
Getting a sizeable bunch of people who are self directed and driven to learn in the same place, while skipping on the typical “Feed me!” students might be pretty special.
I wonder if you’d even need the online courses, and if peer-certification could be possible. With a critical mass of students, you’d probably end up with enough high level students to guide the new arrivals, and it would be in the studen’t interest to keep the reputation of the certificate as high as possible (cf. IBM black team).
I know that the bulk of the actual learning I did during my degree mostly occurred when we got together with friends to work on a given topic (even if they were there mostly for the rubber duck factor), and that it’s hard to find people of your own level (complete beginners or expert) to study with locally, especially if your field of interest is particular.
I also wonder if you could have a research-only campus, that takes students only on successful approval of a research proposal. Perhaps the proposals could be reviewed by current students. Learning through doing, especially when the ideas originate with your, is the most rewarding
@Michael The global network of such places would be exceptional.
Interesting ideas – essentially, an opensource, self-organised university – Was this what you had in mind?
I’m not familiar with the details, but I think this is not unrelated to how some people home school their children. Most of the learning happens at home, but for certain things (lab work, standardized tests, etc), they use the resources of a local school.
Not sure, but this might be a useful topic for investigation.