XplanaZine

Recently. MSNBC ran an article pointing to the court cases spawned by virtual worlds . According to the article, a virtual island in one of the massive multi-player online role playing games (MMORPGs) sold for $30,000, enough to attract commercial attention. Apparently, some businesses create third-world sweatshops, where low-wage laborers are being paid to play and accumulate enough virtual merchandise, so that an eBay sale of it makes the operation profitable.

This may seem a long way from Kathy Lee Gifford and the Honduran sweatshop that employed child workers to make her Wal-Mart-bound blouses, yet the principles aren’t too dissimilar. Design, or high-level work for sweatshop projects is done in wealthier countries and then the manual portion of the labor is completed offshore, preferably in a place where the labor costs are much lower.

The process applies to blouses and virtual worlds alike because sweatshops are about how something is produced rather than the thing that is being made. They focus on one of the cornerstones of capitalism — making something at a low cost and selling it for as much as the market will bear. In general, the sweatshop process focuses on:

• mass production
• lower-skilled labor
• inexpensive labor
• lower product costs

Many argue that sweatshop labor is simply a part of the capitalist system. It is only fair, after all, that manufacturers seek the best possible solutions for lowering product costs and increasing their chances for success in the marketplace. Where sweatshops have come under the heaviest fire, however, is with regards to the use of child labor and unhealthy working environments.

We have viewed education as an industry mostly protected from the sweatshop industries. There are age limits to teacher participation, certification mandates a certain education level, and federal and state laws protect staff and teachers on many levels. With the growing popularity of for-profit and online education, however, the time may be perfect for education-related sweatshops to bloom. Some would argue that they have already started to take root.

Online education does not mean that a teacher is not necessary for a class. It does mean, however, that the teacher can be more easily abstracted from the rest of the course content. In a traditional classroom, teachers are mixed together with books and other learning materials in an inseparable fashion. The teacher mixes her or himself into the content and serves as the voice or repository for most information. When students think about it, they usually say that the teacher is responsible for the information they receive in the classroom.

An online course, however, is generally organized into more granular and content/context-specific chunks that can be studied is short time segments. Some of these chunks involve instructor-driven material while others do not. Many are instructor-independent learning objects. This use of teacher-independent learning objects (at least ostensibly independent), makes it possible to separate the teacher from the course creation process as well. Learning objects can be designed by any subject matter expert and created by anyone who knows basic computer software. Then, when the course is mostly assembled, the teacher can be inserted at the last minute. If the course is constructed properly, teachers with less experience can be thrown into the mix with relative success.

Obviously, the above description matches what publishers have been doing for decades. Increasingly, they have tried to produce textbooks and supplemental materials that take most of the “work” out of teaching. They have added “teaching tips” and lesson plans that make even the most inexperienced teacher feel somewhat comfortable.

But online courses seem to be introducing new elements into the formula. First, publishers have been slow to respond to the opportunity and institutions have already begun developing their own online courses. Some have also realized that, since most online courses are still evolving, lower-quality learning objects are acceptable. At this point, just having enough content seems to be the jumping-off point for many.

Personally, I believe online courses will continue to improve and that, over time, we will see improved standards and a much higher quality of education. Meanwhile, the current state of affairs does make it natural to employ sweatshop labor. The most obvious choice for such labor, in higher education at least, is among our graduate students. They are a perfect fit for the task. Graduate students are subject matter experts who generally have better computer knowledge than faculty. They are already working for less and many are eager to earn extra money. Finally, they are easy to take advantage of because they are part of a hierarchy of inequality and many will do whatever it takes to get ahead.

Many universities are already developing online courses with the idea that these courses can be assigned to graduate students, thus reducing the costs associated with instruction. And, regardless of what is said publicly, some are also considering the plausibility of changing the per-hour pay ratio for graduate students teaching online courses. After all, if we can make efficient courses that require only fifty percent of the effort it takes to teach a traditional class, why not assign two classes for the price of one?

My guess is that, over the next five years, we will see attempts to mass produce learning objects and to take advantage of poorly paid graduate students, all in an effort to drive down the costs of course creation and course instruction. At the same time, tuition will continue to rise and univeristies will tout the quality of their faculty credentials.