The ever-growing question: Will online learning replace or become equal to meatspace learning?I have a question for my colleagues out there who teach both online and in class, or have experience in both. Have any of you come across an online course that was equal to the class experience?
The issue here is not, for me, with the physical enhancement of watching Susie Snowflake fall asleep during lecture. What I want is an examination of the quality of education.
My experience has been that there are plenty of pros for working online. You can teach and travel to do research at the same time. No meetings. No commute. And it pays so much more than adjunct work. Seriously more. For less time.
But quality of the programs is lackluster at best. The courses are super-crap and stuck in a 9th grade level. The online courses frequently link to Wikipedia and movies like "Robin Hood" as learning sources in place of a textbook. The assignments ask about feelings. The requirements focus more on "student logged on 4 times this week" than "student understood critical thought." It's so complete and utter bull shit that I stand amazed that the word "university" is allowed to be attached to these various institutions.
My friends and I together have compared notes for 5 different online institutions, some universities, some community colleges, and one an online writing center. They all seem inferior to the in-person version of college. And so I end:
Q: Has anyone had a good, genuinely college-level experience with these online courses?
My courses are far from perfect, and I wish the students did more writing. But the curriculum is still pretty rigorous -- they use actual textbooks, outside sources must be cited, Wikipedia is not allowed, etc.
ReplyDeleteMany online students are underprepared, so the curriculum tends to be pitched a little lower as a result. Many students attend online classes because they program is open enrollment -- the student might not be accepted to a more traditional school, or be able to attend. I know I strive to provide a solid learning experience, as do the colleagues I talk to.
When I taught face-to-face, my students were all pretty much the same -- 18 year olds from the same few towns, very few from other states. My online students come from every student and range in age from 18-65. Discussion can be much deeper as a result.
There are more changes I'd like to see, but my general complaints echo everyone here at CM -- I want students who are more engaged, who have stronger high school backgrounds, who value learning and eschew the customer service mentality.
There is one shining example of on-line/distance learning - the Open University in the UK. I know people there, and I have taken courses myself as a student whilst working here. The standards are excellent... but it's DIFFERENT to classroom courses. And more work to do well.
ReplyDeleteI earned my master's on-line. There are a handful of engineering schools that offer such a program, and many of them have on-line classes paired with an on-campus class. I watched lectures that were given in front of a classroom of live students, I did the same homework and took the same tests (proctored by an approved third party).
ReplyDeleteI was a bit unprepared next to the kids who had just graduated college. But I would have been equally unprepared on-campus.
Now, I'm sort of a test case. Having completed the master's online, I was accepted to a handful of PhD programs, and am at the same school (in person) that I did the on-line degree through. I'm one of the first such creatures, so I get to demonstrate the value of the on-line degree. Hang around for another year or two, and see if I fail.
I graduated from a hybrid doctoral program (online coursework with intensive face-to-face "residencies") and currently teach both on-campus and online.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I am puzzled that there still are people asking: "Is online learning equal to 'meatspace' learning?"
We've all seen the "live" student in class who we seriously thought was dead. Theoretically, it is possible for the comatose student to pass the exams/papers and earn credit for the class while never seeming to actually engage in the class.
In the online environment, however, one cannot "phone it in" (paradoxical as that might sound). Replacing the live discussion a written one. Participation is no longer an agonizing dance of getting students to please, pretty please, ask a question/make a comment. The online student must provide a substantive contribution or simply gets no credit for participation.
And then the online student still has the same papers/exams.
Ultimately, there are good and bad aspects to either online or on-campus learning. But to question online learning's core validity is a rather unenlightened inquiry.
In my online teaching, I've occasionally had a class of 4 or 5 students. That worked, and that was fun. I could invest a LOT of time into responses and emails (or synchronous texting or video chat) for a small number of students.
ReplyDeleteBut, when I had 15-20 students, I only had time to send the most general "form response"-style notes when I saw problems.
The difference between a small and large class online seemed WAY more important to me than the same dynamic in the face-to-face world. (I refuse to say meatspace...it's so unpleasant.)
The question of whether it works or not seems moot.
ReplyDeleteIf there is no change in the pecking order more and more people with have to take adjunct jobs with larger class loads (I teach 36 sections a year and many of my colleagues teach more than that in order to make something to the tune of 50k a year)
Teaching online/blended is a necessity for us because it makes it feasible for us to even make a living as a teacher. And while my tenured and tenure track (and much older) colleagues teach 2/2 or whatever (and I envy them) it seems unlikely we will return to (a majority of) such privileged working conditions anytime soon.
And, in all honesty, the online/blended formatting makes my job so f&*%ing easy that I feel like it's still part time with 36 paid hours per week.
So, the question of whether it works or not needs to be prefaced with "in an ideal world..."
Students in this whole thing sign a devil's bargain - they sacrifice educational integrity for convenience, ease, and the illusion that they are educated.
The students I have are in some ways the easiest customers to please because they are the dumbest consumers that this nation has ever managed to produce.
If we sided with the students and their interests the answers would be so obvious - but we prefer to offer a minimum of service at an outrageous price and dress it up in a fancy wrapper. My students are getting a financial reaming I would never put myself through the number of them that like it is incredible.
We eat our young. It's disturbing.
I've taught blended (we call them hybrid) classes for a while, and tried my first fully-online class last summer, during a 5-week term. For what I teach -- writing -- I think online is a good format, and, if the class didn't accomplish everything I would have in a regular semester class, it had much more to do with the 5-week length (which I'm not sure is really responsible, but my university offers it, and I need the money, and want to have a bit of time left in the summer for my own research and writing) than the online format.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm talking about online and hybrid versions of longstanding courses at a fully-accredited, bricks-and-mortar state university. And because I'm a salaried employee with a set load, I don't earn more teaching online; in fact, I'm pretty sure that online classes, even in a regular semester, will take more time than face to face ones. The hybrid ones certainly do, because there's more one-on-one interaction between me and the students -- which is also, of course, a strength of the format.
The student attrition rate is definitely higher in online-only and even hybrid classes, even after I send out letters doing the math about the total hours ("class" plus preparation/homework) that students need to set aside,and the need for self-discipline. In some ways, I consider that a plus of the online environment, especially for a writing class: they either do the work (which is mostly stages that eventually add up to a pretty serious longer paper) or they don't. There's no fooling themselves that coming to class = "taking the class," even if they're hopelessly behind. I still get a few overly-hopeful inquiries about the possibility of "catching up" during the waning days of the semester, but more students seem to see the handwriting on the wall and officially drop, which is easier for both of us (and better for the student's transcript).
I teach online using exactly the same course materials as I use in my face-to-face classes. I even expect them to do the same group projects. Sometimes, especially when my in class sessions feature long, awkward silences, I even think the online courses are better. Certainly the discussions can be just as interesting.
ReplyDeleteI've found the blended classes can be horrible though, full of students who think they only need to work once a month and expect you to cover a month of work in 2 hours.
I've taken two college classes as a student, both were piss-poor. One was a graduate-level class - if I'd actually paid for the class I would have demanded my money back (as it was I let the college I was teaching at pay). I know the class wouldn't have been taught the same way if it were in person and I know I would have learned more. It wasn't the prof - he did all the online learning tricks - the class was just not what it could have been if it had been in person, there was too much disconnect between the students, the instructor, and the material.
ReplyDeleteMy online courses use the exact same textbooks and readings as their in-person versions. Instead of lecturing, I substitute videos (not popular movies, but scholarly pieces), extra web links, and short essays I've compiled that distill what I'd talk about in class. My students are graded in (a very small) part on how much time they spend online, but The Big Brother That Is Blackboard allows me to see how much of that time is productive. Students who log in and then skip out to Facebook for 30 minutes are busted. I also require group projects because I'm evaluated on "student to student interaction" as part of the criteria. Discussion board alone is not going to cut it.
ReplyDeleteIf online is done right, it's supposed to be more challenging than face-to-face because the student truly has to be self-motivated. I'm not standing over Snowflake Sven reminding him to study for the quiz or read the syllabus. The student has to be a good reader also or else the experience will not work out well. And time management becomes even more important because I don't expect Sven to be online at a set time, but I do require him to turn in his work by a deadline.
Bad classes can seem even more deadly online, particularly given the anonymity students can use to spew venom. Good classes online are like nothing else. In those situations, everyone participates. Even if you have a few who are not up to par, they at least try and usually end up improving because they start to float to the mark of their classmates' work. I've had students who followed not only me but each other into future classes because they liked working together so much. But the instructor really has to be present in the class. It won't just run itself. If I'm not checking on them constantly, responding to their questions, participating on the discussion board and chats and blogs, making sure everything works, and helping them with online collaborative skills, the class would be a huge flop.