Tag: distance education

Final OMDE 606 Reflections

Final OMDE 606 Reflections

Posted on by Joanne Deitsch

Like every other semester of the MDE program, it seems like I’m registering for my class, blink my eyes and the course is over. This semester was no different.

In my past life as an IT professional, I learned that computers, since they are designed & created by infallible people, do not always behave as expected. During pre-week, I was under the incorrect impression that this course would reveal the immutable secrets of cost analysis. But cost drivers, just like computers, are not always easy to capture and explain. It should have come as no surprise to me that costing, a methodology created by infallible people, does not lend itself to easy execution or yield perfect results.

The projects and discussions did help me gain a better understanding of cost analysis. Again, Greville Rumble’s text and visit were invaluable resources. As to the final project, my group started strong and kept going strong. Meeting attendance was high, there were great conversations throughout and everyone was persistent in getting the deliverables together.

A final thought is from a CNBC article I found online during the course of the project. The American Bar Association has approved a blended law program offered by William Mitchell College of Law in Michigan (Landsman, 2015). While other programs have offered online offerings, this is the first online offering that has been approved by the bar (Landsman, 2015). Half of the program is in the classroom and half online (Landsman, 2015).

The motivation? One that is very common to any DE practitioner, increasing access and revenue:

“We were thinking of new ways to expand access to legal education. We saw technology becoming increasingly important to the practice of law,” [Greg Duhl] said. “With the decline of lawyers and law students, we were looking for new avenues to attract students” (Landsman, 2015, para. 5).

This quote confirms that the skills I am learning as part of MDE are skills that will be demand in the coming years.

REFERENCES

Landsman, S. (2015, April 5). Digital cracks the final frontier: Law school [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/id/102528663

Distance Education Challenges

Distance Education Challenges

Posted on by Joanne Deitsch

Picture Courtesy of The Open University of Isreal

I found some of the insights from the Guri-Rosenbilt video very interesting.

The first was that teaching was the primary focus of conventional education until the 19th century (Guri-Rosenblit, 2008). Ironic since today research is the culminating activity to obtain advanced degrees, not teaching. However, the timing for the rise of research makes a lot of sense as positivism emerged in the 19th century (Harasim, 2011). Positivism was responsible for the development of theories that ask “why?” or “how?” and then seeks to answer those questions through evidence based study, drawing on empirical data and verifiable facts (Harasim, 2011).

The second insight was an interesting contradiction. Guri-Rosenbilt (2008) talks of how Distance Teaching are expanding from their local area to the global market and that English is the language of the academic instruction and research. A fact which is not really based on language statistics – there are more Chinese and Spanish speakers than English speakers (https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size).

REFERENCES

Guri-Rosenblit, S. (2008). Challenges Facing Distance Education in the 21st Century: Implications for setting the research agenda. Paper presented at the 5th EDEN Research Workshop, Paris. Retrieved from mms://vod-dun.u-strasbg.fr/vod/2008/1020_eden/20081020_eden_guri.wmv

Harasim, L. (2011). Learning theory and online technologies. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Social Discount Rate

Social Discount Rate

Posted on by Joanne Deitsch

Reading the course notes about social discount rate was confusing to me. So I went back to the Rumble text to seek more clarity: “The social discount rate acts in must the same way as the opportunity cost in private enterprise. An opportunity cost is the value of that which must be given up to acquire or achieve something” (Rumble, 1997).

Approach for including the opportunity cost in deprecation per Rumble (1997):

  1. Determine the replacement value of the item
  2. Determine the useful life of the item
  3. Divide the replacement value of the item by the number of years of life to obtain the cost of depreciation for each year of use
  4. Multiply the undepreciated portion by the interest rate to obtain the opportunity cost of having resources invested in the undepreciated portion of the item
  5. Add the annual cost of the depreciation and the annual interest foregone on the remaining investment to obtain the annual cost

So I went back to the example from the course notes to double check how this works using Rumble’s approach. The course example is a computer that cost $2000 and is depreciated over 5 years. The simple depreciation is $2000/5 = $400.

  1. Determine the replacement value of the item: $2000
  2. Determine the useful life of the item: 5 years
  3. Divide the replacement value of the item by the number of years of life to obtain the cost of depreciation for each year of use: $2000/5 = $400
  4. Multiply the undepreciated portion by the interest rate to obtain the opportunity cost of having resources invested in the undepreciated portion of the item:
    Year 1: ($1600 *.05) = $80
    Year 2: ($1200 * .05) = $60
    Year 3: ($800 * .05) = $40
    Year 4: ($400 * .05) = $20
    Year 5: ($0 * .05) = $0
  5. Add the annual cost of the depreciation and the annual interest foregone on the remaining investment to obtain the annual cost
    Year 1: ($1600 *.05) = $400 + $80 = $480
    Year 2: ($1200 * .05) = $400 + $60 = $460
    Year 3: ($800 * .05) = $400 + $40 = $440
    Year 4: ($400 * .05) = $4000 + $20 = $420
    Year 5: ($0 * .05) = $400 + $0 = $400

Going back to the Rumble definition, the total social discount rate or the amount that is given up by the organization in order to own the computer is $2200. This does not jibe with the course notes which has the total at $2,415.

 

REFERENCES

Rumble, G. (1997). The costs and economics of open and distance learning [Adobe Digital Editions Version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com