“Are Canned Courses Impacting Academic Freedom?”

by Molly McCluskey

For some, they’re a blessing: a chance to focus less on course development and more on the actual teaching. For some, they’re a curse: eroding academic freedom and the very fabric of collegiate professordom. Regardless of the perspective, they’re being used more frequently. And the trend doesn’t appear to have an end in sight.

They’re cookie cutter courses, pre-formatted by the respective institution and handed to incoming professors and instructors, dictating objectives, syllabus and assignment lists. They’re seemingly most popular in the virtual classroom, where colleges are scrambling to create, promote and meet the demand for alternative learning. From the student who needs to work full-time to pay for an education, to a parent struggling to balance family and schooling, more and more students are looking for something other than the traditional classroom format.

Online courses are one way professors can distance themselves from controversy, and utilizing canned courses ensures that in the wake of a debate, the buck for course content deemed controversial can be passed elsewhere. Some say the online format is safer, others say it’s less fulfilling. But the majority of faculty opinion falls somewhere in the middle, with faculty preferring the ease of delivering canned courses and the immediacy of individual student/faculty relations. Regardless of the results, and whether intended or not, more and more institutions are moving to a canned format and placing those courses safely in the realm of cyberspace.

But there is a fine line between suggesting what topics be covered and when, and determining each aspect of the professor’s interactions with his or her students. If one wonders how today’s professors are adapting, one only has to ask. It’s a topic most feel strongly about, one way or the other.

Dr. Carol Passman has taught undergraduate psychology and counseling courses for nearly fifteen years, and graduate courses for five. She has used online course work both to supplement traditional course work and in a fully online capacity. Dr. Passman says that she is rarely bothered by having to use a pre-developed course format if that is the arrangement she has made with the institution.

“To the contrary,” she says, “I enjoy teaching a pre-developed course now and then, as it is sometimes a welcome respite from the demands of course development.”

She mentions, however, that academic freedom can be undermined in other ways. While the simple act of using a canned course doesn’t stifle her teaching, “I feel academic freedom constraints when I am told how and when I will be in contact with students, and this is something that seems to go hand-in-hand with canned course teaching.”

“You can’t tell me how to teach,” agrees Vince Petronio, manager of information and instructional technology services at University of Rhode Island’s Providence Campus. “Academic freedom is a highly cherished and long-standing freedom. Even though I’m using an online form, you still can’t tell me how to teach.”

He has often made the format of his online courses available for other faculty to use as a template for their own course development. Some, he says, have used it. Others have not.

Jana Highwart, who teaches finance and accounting in the MBA program at Franklin University, doesn’t see her academic freedom stifled in any way by teaching canned courses.

“When I started teaching in 1997, the first class I inherited was not in the (canned course) format. I had to create my own syllabus, assignments, tests, etc. It was a huge undertaking, at first, trying to decide what worked, what didn’t.”

Her following year, Highwart began teaching PC applications courses that were formally organized throughout the department.

“Wow, what a difference!” she says. “I felt I could just teach! For an adjunct, this was definitely a wonderful benefit and very effective. I did not feel that I was confined in any way. For the students, there were also great benefits. It ensured that no matter what time of day or night you attended class, you would gain the same knowledge and learn about the same material.”

James Cunningham, a distance learning doctoral student whose institution uses the canned learning format, sees both sides of the argument.

“Many of the good professors will offer other options to the assignments in the canned course format, offering more freedom for the students taking a course.” But he says he occasionally prefers the simple canned format. “It keeps things interesting because if the course is canned throughout, one can work ahead and not get too involved with the class. We all know that all professors are not the same and in some classes, one would have to work much harder if the course was not already set up.”

Erika K.H. Gronek recently completed her master’s degree at George Washington University in Educational Technology and Leadership. The entire program was conducted online and she had varying levels of satisfaction with her course work.

“I believe that the course content can get stale and out of date over time. Sometimes professors neglect to update due dates and other semester-specific information on the syllabus. Sometimes a course written by a different professor than the person delivering it causes an uneasy fit of teaching styles. Links become out of date and neglected.”

Petronio says this discrepancy, while more notable in the virtual forum, happens frequently in the traditional classroom as well. “We talk about the quality of online education. Well, what about the quality of face-to-face education? Who hasn’t been through a professor walking into the classroom with pages of yellow notes and reading them for an hour and a half? The same arguments we use for online should be regularly and systematically applied to face-to-face courses.”

He should know. The University of Rhode Island’s Providence campus has primarily dealt with continuing education and back-to-school students, many of whom took advantage of online courses. In 2006, the campus will be attempting to appeal to traditional students, as well.

“Offering traditional students the online option, which has primarily been used for non-traditional students and continuing education students, gives them so many more options. Athletes who have to travel and can’t always make class can now log on anytime or place,” he says. “Students are kept completely on track for their degrees, and with more of the student population carrying full or part-time jobs to pay for school, it allows them to continue with more flexibility.”

Flexibility? Sure. Independence and self-motivation? No argument. But what about the most basic of communications, human interaction?

Passman, who doesn’t mind being told what to teach, as long as she isn’t told and interact with her students, says, “I am more sensitive to efforts on the part of an institution or academic department to control my interactions with students and students’ interactions with each other. I believe these (interactions) give students the experience of going to an engaging and dynamic virtual classroom, a sense of space and place shared with an online community of learners.”

Petronio agrees. “The professors that, in a traditional classroom, are available to their students are going to be the same professors who return e-mail promptly, who are available for questions or comments.”

The more successful programs will incorporate a series of checks and balances, including, perhaps most importantly, student feedback. Franklin University has a team of professionals who design all of their canned courses. Each course is developed in a uniform manner with expectations, deadlines and deliverables so that students have a similar experience regardless of the instructor. But it doesn’t end there, says Highwart. Each course is set up with an option for both students and the instructor to make suggestions throughout the semester about any element of the course.

“The courses are designed to incorporate student feedback and also feedback from focus groups. For instance, with the development of MBA 730—Executive Financial Decisions—the university assembled a group of top financial executives from corporations.”

Not all programs take such care. A former faculty member at Stanford who currently teaches at a “regular public university” and a “traditional private university” had a very different experience. “I taught a business law course for DeVry online but the course started with assault and battery and never touched on employment law, product liability law, etc.”

This happens, he says, because some schools “hire” experienced people,’ but they’re not experienced at teaching. They may know, say, accounting, but they are completely raw to teaching. They are cheaper, and the school can plug people in and pull them out at will. The canned course is supposed to provide a measure of quality control, but that obviously depends upon the quality of the course developer.”

This happens primarily, he says, at for-profit institutions. “They do this because they don’t want to hire teachers any more than McDonald’s wants to hire Cordon Bleu chefs.”

“Buyer beware,” says Petronio. “The schools that offer only online courses, well, you should check them out the same way you’d check out other schools. Look at the instructors and their qualifications. Will they give you a degree? Sure. Will they be recognized by other institutions? Maybe not.”

In the end, it seems online courses in a canned format are subject to the same barometers as traditional courses, such as course development and dedication of both the students and the professors to interact.

There are, of course, some differences. Says Passman, “Online teaching isn’t for everyone. I think the degree of training in online education and the level of experience has more impact on the colleagues with whom I have consulted than does degree of control any particular institution attempts to except.”
Petronio agrees.

“If there are problems with the canned format in the online forum, many people want to blame the medium. It’s not the medium. It’s who’s using the medium. I don’t tell people how to teach. I try to say to them, in using this technology, it’s even more important that you do x, y, and z. Until the institution says before you can teach via the web, you must complete the training, you’re going to have mixed results.”

To be sure, academic freedom in the classroom, virtual or otherwise, has become an inflammatory issue in some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious campuses. Berkeley, Columbia, DePaul and countless others have been in the headlines over what and how professors are allowed to teach in an increasingly hostile political environment. As more and more topics become off-limits, some professors censor themselves. Opinion seems to no longer have a place in the classroom, nor does any factoid that might be considered offensive.

Canned courses may provide a convenient cover for those faculty concerned about such things. However, what remains to be seen is whether canned courses and academic freedom can co-exist peacefully.