Did the University of Phoenix — an online college — buy out Iowa State when I was not looking?

There is the foreboding feel of a learn-at-home institution growing at Iowa State — beyond the rank-and-file ambling to class in your sweatpants, I mean. I have heard more and more noise about online classes and, in particular, online coursework each year at Iowa State. Rather than educational progress, this electronification is a case study in technology detrimentally affecting an area in which it is overapplied.

I suffered through a dynamics class last semester with a well-respected professor at Iowa State. It was not his occasionally brash demeanor, his strict grading of exams, or his amusing in-class tangents that made the class unbearable. No, it was the obnoxious use of an electronic evaluation system that made me want to excise from Iowa State the ghost of the late John Atanasoff.

Nights were spent floundering in the glow of my laptop hoping that my three-page solution had achieved the right value to enter — or at least one within the +/- 2 percent range. Instead of spending my time listening to a recitation or asking questions of the TAs and the professor, I spent my afternoons swearing at WileyPlus and hoping that the question that I just botched for the third time would be similar to the worked example that the software decided to reveal.

I propose a solution for the faculty at the university: Kill online coursework. At least in the required courses, this must happen. Do not make people pay $6,000 to $20,000 a year to do the same things they could from their parents’ basements. Reward the students that take the over-the-top step of trekking to class during the doldrums of winter by making a real, live person look at their work and offer constructive feedback.

Maybe, when it has been sufficiently proven that the faculty cares about the work they assign in these classes, the students will respond by actually appreciating the work they are given.

Note: “You know what gets my goat?” will be a weekly article dedicated to getting your week started off right by addressing the minutiae of college life.