UCLA to start offering online courses in spring quarter

Starting spring quarter, three online courses will be offered to UCLA students as a part of the University of California Online Instruction Pilot Project, though some students have expressed concerns with the prospect of online learning as opposed to standard courses.

The UC began rolling out the pilot online education program in January, with one online course being offered at UC Berkeley for the spring semester.

UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz are also participating in the pilot program, offering one online course for spring quarter.

While UC administrators say the program was designed with students in mind, Evan Critchlow, first-year political science student, is skeptical about the online option.

Critchlow originally enrolled for the online Political Science 30 course after its lecture was full, but later dropped the course after deciding that the online course would not be an adequate supplement for the lecture.

“I thought that if I were in an online course, I would not have the same motivation to keep current with the material,” Critchlow said.

Design | Media Arts 9, Political Science 30 and Political Science 115D will be taught in an online format, said UCLA spokesman Steve Ritea. Previously, the courses were only offered in a standard lecture environment.

Political Science 30 is the only one that will have both a standard lecture course and an online course option, Ritea said. A total of 388 UCLA students have enrolled in the pilot program for the spring quarter and each class is full, he said.

The UC hopes that this alternative method for course delivery will help enrich the classroom experience for students, said Shelly Meron, a UC spokeswoman.

“Among other reasons, the primary objective of the online program is to alleviate some enrollment pressures on heavily impacted general education courses,” Meron said.

Class sizes at UCLA in particular have increased over the years in response to budgetary cuts, Ritea said.

Online courses will consist of podcasted video lectures and virtual discussion boards for students to engage with each other in the course material.

While Critchlow said that some students might learn better in an online setting, he said he worried that the online course would be impersonal.

“There is a sense of accountability that comes with having to physically go to lecture and discussion each week that I thought would be nonexistent in an online course,” Critchlow said.

First-year political science student Kristina Curtis has registered for the lecture version of Political Science 30 for spring quarter. She said she was worried she would not be able to grasp the concepts as well in the online class.

“I’ve listened to podcasted lectures before and never got as much out of them because of all of the other distractions,” Curtis said. “Those distractions are eliminated when I physically attend lecture.”

Political science Professor Kathleen Bawn, who is teaching both types of Political Science 30 courses next quarter, said she is interested to see how effective the online program will be.

“Ideally, I’m trying to offer the opportunity to learn the same material as in the face-to-face (class) but in a way that will be better for some students,” Bawn said. “It will probably be less effective for other students.”

The biggest difference is that students in the online course will take 14 pairs of quizzes to assess how well students are acquiring the knowledge through the video lectures, she said.

The online classes are tailored for students who have constrained schedules and like to listen to video lectures multiple times or students who focus better at a desk rather than a lecture hall, Bawn said.

The UC is working to develop ways to track the effectiveness of the new online education program, she said. That includes tracking students’ success in online classes and storing the data in a university-wide system.

Specifically for Political Science 30, students in the lecture course and online course will be given the same exams, so performance will be directly comparable, Bawn said.

While some students seemed wary of the option to enroll in online courses, others expressed an interest in their potential.

First-year business economics student Mathew Rosenburg, who took a Design | Media Arts course in the fall to fulfill general education requirements, said that he would have preferred an online option if it were offered.

“It was difficult for me to focus for three consecutive hours in a lecture hall on a Friday morning, so it would have been nice to take the course online where I could go at my own pace,” Rosenburg said.