MOOC model
That title is an attention-getting device. I'll explain (succinctly) and ask a plain and simple question.
A MOOC is a current innovation in higher ed and stands for massively open on-line course. It challenges the business model of higher ed and is built upon the massive power of Internet to provide a "place and a means" for many people in many different locations and situations to contribute information and learn from one another. ("asynchronous teaching and learning")
This thread seems to POSSIBLY represent a substantial example of how a message board concept isn't just people talking - it can be a place and a means for analysis to get done, for data to be sifted, and for the next set of questions to be identified (and for canards, malapropisms and the hobgoblins of small minds to be sent packing).
Question predicate: A-Squared says:
"At this point it seems we can be fairly certain that the airplane started striking trees about a mile from the threshold, at an altitude somewhere around 300 feet or more below MDA, 150 feet or more below the PAPI, and at least 100 feet above airport TDZE.
So the question becomes 'how did they arrive at that point, that far below the MDA and that far below the commissioned slope of the PAPI?'"
Question:
Should a layperson (that is, like me) understand phrase "fairly certain" as used by A-Squared to mean either: (a) no more certain than in the old order, before Internet communication such as this, and therefore all meaninglessly preliminary, because Only NTSB Knows, or (b) representative of a shift in relevant knowledge and communication parameters large enough to suggest a new order?
In an on-line course, if students posted the kind of data the cognoscenti have posted here, the discussion and analysis would proceed apace, waiting naught for any slow-moving authority outside of "the conversation", let alone one administered by Washington. A new order exists in the Academy, but not on the Flight Deck as in macrocosm? I object.