Letters

Published: Thursday, October 29, 1998

Thursday, October 29, 1998

Letters

UCLA Extension article misleading

Katie Sierra's Oct. 23news story about online courses at UCLA ("Online courses now more accessible, acceptable") contains seriously misleading errors about the nature of UCLA Extension's successful offerings and of Extension's business relationship with OnlineLearning.net.

First, the statement that "all online classes offered through UCLA Extension are designed by OnlineLearning.net" is untrue and upside down.

These are UCLA Extension classes. Only our instructors and Continuing Education Specialists are responsible for the curricular design, content development and instruction of online courses just as for live classroom courses.

This means, therefore, that Extension's online courses conform to the same campus academic review and approval procedures that apply for all of our offerings.

OnlineLearning.net (OLN) is Extension's partner for the marketing and distribution of online courses.

But it has no authority over matters involving curriculum or course design or the particular expression of the curriculum, which belongs to the instructors, in keeping with UC policy.

A correct statement would have been: "All online classes offered and designed by UCLA Extension are made available through OLN."

Second, it is equally misleading to state that our online students, including school teachers, are enrolled anywhere but in UCLA Extension.

All UCLA Extension online students pay their fees to the Regents to enroll with us in the same manner as those studying with us in classrooms.

UCLA Extension instructors evaluate and grade their work; student records reside exclusively with Extension.

OnlineLearning.net provides a very effective and attentive service and technological infrastructure that complements our own and helps make our classes "user-friendly."

But it has no academic or academic administrative relationship to Extension's online students.

Finally, juxtaposing the discussion about UCLA Extension's online classes with the insightful comments attributed to Provost (Brian) Copenhaver about Web-based learning and the College is perhaps also confusing.

The College's highly innovative use of the Web and the UCLA intranet for matriculated students has no interface with UCLA Extension's distance learning efforts.

In this light, it would have been more illuminating to point out how well our instructors are already fulfilling the divergent (linear and non-linear) expectations of the adult learners taking Extension's online courses.

These classes range in subjects as varied as "Introduction to Nonfiction Writing," "JavaScript for Educators," "Teaching English as a Second Language," "Introduction to Visual Basic," to "Principles of Accounting" or "Human Resources Development."

I regret that your reporter did not contact anyone at Extension for this story.

Had she done so, we would have gladly helped your readers with an accurate understanding of UCLA's real achievements, with respect to UCLA Extension's leadership among divisions of continuing higher education on the ground and online.

Robert Lapiner

Dean

Continuing Education and UCLA Extension

Fight for diversity has not died

It is obvious that Marc Olson in his Oct. 26 viewpoint article ("Measure ensures the best get educated") completely missed the point of the walkout for Proposition 209, which occurred last Wednesday and Thursday.

Apparently, Olson has not seen the astonishing statistics, which report a devastating drop in the number of minorities enrolled at UCLA, or he would have never referred to the proposition as being "dead."

First of all, professors walked out, not to harm students by putting off teaching for two days, but they did it to shed light on a problem that is far from being "dead,"as Olson calls it.

It does not matter if 20 or 200 professors walk out, as long as even one shows his or her concern, Proposition 209 lives.

How dare anyone say that we should all accept Proposition 209 and be happy, especially when the mind-blowing effects of the proposition can be seen from walking on campus any given day.

If we lived in a perfect world without any racism, where everyone had the opportunity to attend a nationally recognized high school, Olson would be right.

Proposition 209 would be a dead issue.

Unfortunately, our world is far from being perfect and, thus, we must make it as fair as possible for everyone.

It is absurd that Olson questions whether everyone has a right to higher education; of course everyone has the right to go to college. I understand and agree that it is not fair for bad students to be accepted to college.

Keep in mind that affirmative action did not help these undeserving students, but rather, it helped underprivileged students who worked just as hard as you and I did in high school.

Here's something to think about: will Olson's point of view change, once the number of whites being admitted to UCLA decreases because more Asian Americans have been let in?

Will Proposition 209 be considered Œdead' then? I seriously doubt it.

Lakesha Breeding

Third-year

English

Behavior toward women scientific

I am writing in response to Maryam Baqi's column on the objectification of women in a purely sexual sense, "Society, culture must stop objectifying women's roles" (Viewpoint, Oct. 23).

Baqi has some good points in her column, but I think she misses the root of the underlying problem (as she perceives it).

The idea that women are thought of as only sexual is correct in many senses.

There is a reason for that.

No matter how much we as humans try to transcend our situations and become a truly enlightened species, we are still compelled to reproduce, in order to survive.

To ensure our reproductive tendencies, we are given the instinct to mate.

This is not something we have much choice about.

While this idea may seem counter-intuitive with the world population boom and all of the problems it entails looming on the horizon, it is necessary to recognize that we are animals in the animal kingdom.

Every other successful species in this kingdom exhibits the inherent characteristic of motivation to reproduce.

If Maryam Baqi is looking for an answer to the question she grapples with in her column, then she should look no further than the primordial forces that be.

Rob Grant

Editor in Chief

The Channels

The Santa Barbara

City College newspaper

grant@pilot.sbcc.net

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