Towards a theory or model of productivity for online learning: outcomes, scale and design

By Tony Bates. In the HEQCO report and in his blog posts, Tom Carey raised the important issue of what part of online teaching can be scaled, and what cannot.
Outcomes and scale
I want to address this question in terms of what outcomes we are trying to achieve in education, because scaling must relate to what we are trying to do. For instance, it is quite possible to scale content delivery – this has been done since the early days of print and more recently radio and television. As Internet and mobile access becomes almost universal, the Internet can also deliver content at scale – this is what MOOCs do so well.
However, most educators at least would agree that education is more than just the delivery of information. There are lots of different ways to define learning outcomes, and at differing levels of detail, but I’ll start by quoting the following from Max Blouw, the President of Wilfred Laurier University, and Chair of the Council of Ontario Universities, in today’s Globe and Mail. More...