Online Learning!!! Has the Promise Been Met? Does It Meet the Market Test? Where Does It Fit After Covid? What Does Online Instruction Get Right & Wrong? Dr. Shannon Smith of Michigan Virtual Joins

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Technology is disrupting the market for education just as it has disrupted the market for news. We do not yet know how the industry will shake out, but a few points can be made with confidence. Online education offers tremendous savings both in terms of money and of time. Online education will also increase the quality of education for many but not all courses, especially as investment in complementary technologies increases. The for-profit universities have already moved heavily into online education and the non-profits are poised to follow. What is less clear is who will be delivering the online content of the future, how knowledge will be assessed, and how learning will be credentialed. We should also not count the old model out. Having never observed an alternative, we may not yet fully appreciate the old model’s strengths. The Oxford model weathered previous technological storms, not the least of which was the printed book. Nevertheless, the disruption potential is peaking now. This paragraph comes from a 2012 article in the Journal Cato Unbound.  The title of the article is "Why Online Education Works."  The article's author is Alex Tabarrok.  You can read the full article here: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/11/12/alex-tabarrok/why-online-education-works/ Dr. Shannon Smith of Michigan Virtual joins Zac and Don.  The three discuss the last ten years of online education.  They discuss whether online education over the past decade has met the promises that Mr. Tabarrok wrote about.  They also reflect on online education during the pandemic and current models of online instruction.