Internet Is Killing Education

nanomvp

17th November 2007 - 05:55 PM

I remember myself and other students pulling "all-nighters" to do difficult homework problem sets. We had no internet to help us back then, with pre-solved packages that you can get by Googling the problem. These days any homework problem in any subject is easily solved by an internet search with guaranteed loss of opportunity of digesting the solution by being forced to think through the homework yourself.

The meaning of assigning homework is clearly approaching meaninglessness, and exams are now a way of 'weeding out' the few who truly understand the subject. Such roles have practically not been used since the days of ancient Chinese civil examinations. Homework used to be a way to keep students on the subject in between exams. Now the internet effectively kills this duty.

One way out is to make assignments based on topics so obscure they cannot be found effectively on the Internet. But it can be argued this would detract from the real, practical topics of the subject (which would be adequately canvassed by the Internet).

As education becomes more dominated by Internet rather than books, I see education worldwide as going down the drain. It is a pity, since if some quality control is exercised over what goes on the Internet (a little like censorship), it may help at least control the quality of widely dispersed information. Of course, even this is lacking, since Internet is about freedom of speech, even if that speech is weakly based on data or complete nonsense or salesmanship.

I see danger for the teaching and textbook profession, sadly, as students will become more and more accustomed to more sophisticated multimedia presentations and applets on the Internet than classical-style lectures. I see also more and more researchers of younger and younger age working on research projects (with internet assistance, pretty much like everyone else, of course) and their credentials are of course getting worse and worse.

The meaning of credentials becomes useless if it effectively means "Hey I can surf the Internet"

As you read this post, think to yourself, "can I not use the Internet, but my head, to get the reliable information that I want or need?"

AlphaNumeric

17th November 2007 - 06:59 PM

QUOTE (nanomvp+Nov 17 2007, 06:55 PM)

These days any homework problem in any subject is easily solved by an internet search with guaranteed loss of opportunity of digesting the solution by being forced to think through the homework yourself.

No offence, but that's crap. Easy homework questions can be answered like that. Questions which didn't need thought to start with. "State the formula for..." "What year did ..." "Who said..." "What is the boiling point of ....". Those are things which don't need thought, they need repetitive learning.

It is possible to get homework questions which are more inventive than just putting in x=4 and t=1 for a well known formula. Though I can't speak for other universities and subjects, the maths homework provided by Cambridge is very resistent to the Google and Wikipedia effect. Now don't get me wrong, I used to use the internet alot when doing those homeworks but it would almost never provide me with the answer. It would provide me with a foot in the door. A question would be something like "State Cauchy's theorem and apply it to .... where ... is ...". Google or Wiki would give me Cauchy's theorem but if I didn't understand it's meaning and methodology behind it, I couldn't answer the question and even if Google or Wiki provided me with the meaning, I still had to do the question. A single question might need 3 hours of work. 5 minutes online and then 2hr and 55 minutes of thinking, attempts and work.

Credentials which were half useless to start with will become more useless. The ones which had something to them will be largely immune to the increased use of the internet.

magpies

17th November 2007 - 08:01 PM

The interent is the education lol your right in one respect schools can not keep up with what a person can learn on the interent thus education systems are lacking what a smart person with interenet can do... If schools stay in text books for to long the school systems themselfs will become out dated soon enoth. I dont honestly see how people can study for years + on a subject in school without useing the interent and expect to come out with a better understanding of the subject then a student with it. It gives you the ability to talk with people from around the world on said subject and find new information on it something a school based on text books alone cant do.

I'm honestly kinda worried about 5 years from now how people who dont/cant use the interent will find jobs at all because they will be so far behind in knowledge ect...

AlphaNumeric

17th November 2007 - 10:10 PM

QUOTE (magpies+Nov 17 2007, 09:01 PM)

I dont honestly see how people can study for years + on a subject in school without useing the interent and expect to come out with a better understanding of the subject then a student with it. It gives you the ability to talk with people from around the world on said subject and find new information on it something a school based on text books alone cant do.

It's perfectly doable, though admittedly you are depriving yourself of a good resource of information and discourse. Clearly, in the days before the internet, it was possible to learn a fantastic amount of information during a degree and postgraduate courses, that much is clear. If you wanted discussion, you could find it in friends, societies, academics. Libraries contain more information on a given topic than you're ever going to be able to read, so it's not like the internet is the first information source to be 'bigger than we are'. How many people here came online after exhausting their libraries? None, I'd wager. However, the internet does provide us with more tailored information.

Libraries don't contain all books and are not updated with information as quickly as websites and online catelogues are. This helps in the fact you don't have to sift through so much information by hand to find what you want, but in general it's not that the information wasn't accessible before, it just wasn't literally at your fingertips.

It takes me about an hour to walk across campus, look up the location of a particular paper in a particular physics journal, wander around the library to find it's shelf, then it's book, then it's page, go photocopy the pages (which never look as nice as print outs), put everything back and then get back to my office. Compare that to 3 minutes using the ArXiv.org search engine and clicking 'print'. Nicer copy and much much easier.

Gehn

17th November 2007 - 11:09 PM

In my opinion, the internet has been a great boon toward education. Knowledge is easily accesable now. Take Wikipedia, for instance. I've almost learned more from that than I have at school!

Sure, it can be distracting sometimes, but you're only looking at the bad side of it. Knowledge is being spread world wide, and you no longer need to go to the library if you need to know something. In fact, if anything, the internet has made me even more studius. It's incredible boring just to browse through a stupid testbook, and no one wants to spend ours at the library, desperately looking for hard - to - find innformation. On the internet, you can use interactive animations - not just educational, but fun as well! It takes seconds to find out what you want, and as AlphaNumeric pointed out, it doesn't give you the answers to eduucation directly.

To sum up, I have the same conclusion as AlphaNumeric, replacing "cr@p" with "sh!t".

- Gehn

paul h

18th November 2007 - 12:04 AM

2 cents worth from the un-educated. (me) about the internet.

I have learned far more from the Internet than I did in school.
But I also know the difference between an education and knowledge. (big difference) Hey, I'm a smart guy but, I missed out on the education part. but I gain knowledge every day now. Thanks to the internet. My biggest problem in school was memorizing names and dates, I could have cared less who said what, when. What I did remember was what they meant, to me that was the important part. But that wouldn't get you the grade. Hell, I'd be dangerous if I had gotten an education too. I've learned allot from you guys in the past 2 or 3 months, that should be worth something in favor of the internet. While I have been here I have managed to get a few great comments from you guys in the form of feedback and I even got a plate of Brownies. So you see an internet education is not so bad after all. (well better than nothing) nothing was the only choice before the internet if you had missed out on school, that is.. Now I do understand that this thread is more about those still in school but that's my 2 cents worth.

nanomvp

18th November 2007 - 02:22 AM

Alphanumeric: I hope you are right (that what I say is *&^!), but I am finding for example physics and chemistry homework solutions at college level pretty easily. Maybe post-baccalaureate is still deep enough to be impenetrable by Internet. But I am afraid even the most obscure topics conceivable will eventually be covered by the Internet.

Magpies, Gehn, Paul H: That is exactly the point. Everybody will eventually use the Internet. It is cheaper and easier than books.Of course opening books compared to surfing, there is a tremendous difference.

It's true, already being knowledgable makes Internet use a necessary productivity tool. Bt now the basic education knowledge base is being posted on the Internet. It is faster than the newest edition of a college textbook can come out. At the very least, there will be an expectation that these textbooks will become e-books (like a collection of hundreds of related web pages).

If this is the way things are going to be, at the very least let's have some quality control (paper-style editing).

"Can I not use the Internet, but my head, to get the reliable information that I want or need?"

AlphaNumeric

18th November 2007 - 09:57 AM

QUOTE (nanomvp+Nov 18 2007, 03:22 AM)

but I am finding for example physics and chemistry homework solutions at college level pretty easily. Maybe post-baccalaureate is still deep enough to be impenetrable by Internet.

So did I. A level is, quite frankly, a farce. Any complexity is sucked out of the topic on the grounds of being discriminatory to various groups (ie 'stupid people') and so little or no abstract thought is required, it's all just stating definitions and putting numbers into formula. We have computer programs which do that. You can literally train monkeys to do it!

Things do get better when you get to university, though there's a huge difference between universities. I went to Cambridge and I'm now doing physics postgrad at another top 10 university and even the difference there is huge. 4 of the 7 people I share an office with went to Oxbridge and we cringe at some of the undergrad questions we have to mark. An example sheet will be 4 questions making use of just definitions and formula, no real thought. Students, even the bad ones who don't do well, spend less than 2 hours on a sheet. I used to spend days on a sheet at Cambridge! If I could do some of the later questions in 2 hours I was either very lucky or very wrong! The syllabi are roughly the same, but the difference in the depth of learning is huge.

An example you might be more familiar with is the STEP exams for Cambridge and Warwick in maths. They only require A Level knowledge and are only given to people expecting high A's and whom Cambridge (and to a lesser extent, Warwick) deem capable of doing well in their maths degree. The majority of people who sit the exams fail. They don't need more than A Level knowledge but they do need abstract thought. Every year the questions are totally different, unlike A Level where they just change the numbers but the methods never change.

So it is possible to test for greater understanding even when it comes to 'simpler' stuff like A Level. Unfortunately, until you get to post-18 education you're generally stuck in the "Everyone gets the same" method of education, which is a good thing by and large. Trust me, use the free time you have now to get learning about university level material. You'll look back in 3 years time and wish you had.

El_Machinae

18th November 2007 - 06:59 PM

I'm a 'continuing education' student (in that, I continue to take courses while I follow my career). I do this because I believe that the future will require this type of mindset and will advantage those who've pursued continuing education.

The internet is responsible for roughly 40% of my continuing education in the last couple years. My education consists mainly of: purchased textbooks that I study myself, attending the local school, and online courses. Each of those has a place.

But the internet has been a huge boon. On top of that, I am able to read many, many peer-reviewed journals (or at least their abstracts) with great convenience. This has drastically sped up my ability to learn.

UC Berkeley has audio recordings of many of their courses on iTunes.
MIT has many courses available too.
Many seminars have been put online (IBM's Almaden for example. UC San Diego has a neuroscience lecture series)

oomchu

18th November 2007 - 07:47 PM

hmmm... interesting subject. I can see both points as being valid. I know here in the US there are quite a few people, I've run into at least one of them, who do extremely well in high school, but once they get to college they find it's a different world and what got them the A in there doesn't necessarily work in college. Even in college though there are those who think they know the subject because they've received high marks. As far as the internet being a detriment or a boon to education..it's definitely both in my mind.

N O M

18th November 2007 - 09:17 PM

QUOTE (nanomvp+Nov 18 2007, 05:55 AM)

As you read this post, think to yourself, "can I not use the Internet, but my head, to get the reliable information that I want or need?"

You have a point, but I think you are approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

The availablility of information via the internet is only a problem for old-school ways of teaching and learning. We are living in a world where even experts can't e expected to know all the facts about their subject. There is just too much information for someone to know it all. This is the case not just with academic subjects, but with most jobs too. I personally use the internet as a data-searching tool all the time.

Schools need to acknowledge that kids will use the internet to gather information. Their homework should be assigned with this in mind. They need to learn how to search properly, how to critique information to determine whether it is of value or not. They should also be taught to credit their information sources.

This site is a perfect example of the dangers of the internet. Imagine a student who is told to do an assignment on Newton's theories, he arrives here at physorg and finds the garbage posted by the member who has assumed that name. He's not going to get an A for his assignment, but he will quickly learn that not all information on the net is useful, a valuable lesson nonetheless.

guiding_light

19th November 2007 - 07:51 PM

QUOTE (nanomvp+Nov 17 2007, 05:55 PM)

Instead of submitting written homework assignments, can make them like mini-oral exams every week for small classes, every month or so for large classes. That will drive the students to really know the stuff, even if they use the internet for half their information source.

For example, derivation of formulas and theorems, or a tricky counterintuitive problem, these should be good material for such mini-orals.

The exam time can be something like a half-hour, and grading could be done on the spot.

Best of all, more interaction between instructor and student. Always a good thing.

N O M

19th November 2007 - 08:26 PM

My local newspaper has an article today on a virtual teacher being developed.

photojack

26th November 2007 - 11:49 PM

nanomvp, Please read, "Education and Ecstasy" by George Leonard of the Esalen Institute. That book predicted the use of computers in schools way back in 1968 or 1969, long before home computers were even a pipe dream! The book was recently re-issued and is still pertinent today.

N O M, As for "Eve", I'd have to see that to evaluate it. My upper division botany professor was one of my mentors and I have always thought of real teaching as an art. I've attended lectures by Dame Jane Goodall, Jared Diamond and others and I somehow think "Eve" would fall short of the awe and respect a true mentor can achieve.

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