In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
As someone who was was an adjunct before and during the pandemic, I can tell you from first hand experience that a lot was lost when transitioning from in-person to remote learning.
The most obvious impact was participation. Even at the college level, when students aren’t physically in the classroom they are less focused on the class.
However, even beyond that there are a lot of things that suffer:
- The ability to just walk over to a student to see how theyre doing (whether they want you to or not).
- In class exercises and group collaboration.
- The ability to easily dive into questions and tangents (drawing programs online are very hit or miss).
- Not to mention audio and video issues.
- Ability to read the classroom (going to fast, something wasn’t clear, etc.)
It may not sound significant, but it really adds up. Not to mention that the impact from covid in education is very visible at all levels of education.
Because American educational institutions are not and haven’t been about academia and learning for some time. It’s a good ol’ boys club you pay with daddy’s money or massive amounts of debt to be a part of, to give you a piece of paper you can use to virtue signal to other people who wasted similar amounts of money in the same place.
Hiring in IT has been an eye opener, I actively distrust people who present their degree as their first and foremost point of hirability; because they’re usually useless.
Because American educational institutions are not and haven’t been about academia and learning for some time. It’s a good ol’ boys club you pay with daddy’s money or massive amounts of debt to be a part of, to give you a piece of paper you can use to virtue signal to other people who wasted similar amounts of money in the same place.
There are some of those, yes, but far more colleges and universities are NOT those than are.
Hiring in IT has been an eye opener, I actively distrust people who present their degree as their first and foremost point of hirability; because they’re usually useless.
I do IT hiring as well. I don’t fault the younger folks that lead with their degree. They’ve been told all of their lives how important it is to get one and the it will make them stand out from their peers. I’ll agree with you however that a degree by itself does not make someone competent at the subject matter.
When I’m dealing with recent grads, I’ll ask for things outside of the degree coursework that deals with problem solving or demonstrations of conceptual knowledge (as oppose to rote). Lots of them fall flat when put to these question, some, however, shine. Where a degree (any degree) is useful is that it usually means they can write decently enough. They know at least some etiquette and professionalism. Hopefully it also means they know how to look something up, which really is the key skill of IT.
Things like lectures I agree are actually better online than in person, but there’s a lot about university learning that can’t really be replicated online.
The most obvious thing being physical demonstrations and hands on projects, which I had in several physics and engineering classes.
Also I think in-person works better for discussion sections or office hours, where talking it out and writing it on a board is often easier to do in person than online (although there are tools for these things online).
Another big thing you’d miss out on by studying online is the whole social aspect of living away from your parents and with other people your age and making friends and going to parties and such.
People learn many different ways. Online learning is not right for everybody.
Institutional inertia
I can’t even get my postgrad course to record class sessions for the english as a second language international students.
The MSc Sustainability from Cranfield University is all online besides a 4 day residential each year.
Seems to work really well for them.
As with remote work, it really depends on what you’re doing. Some jobs and classes are tailor made for remote, some are nearly impossible to accomplish remotely. COVID inspired some really creative uses of technology but at the end of the day, it was an augmentation not a drop-in replacement.
I think online courses should be available as much as possible whenever practical, but what we all have to realize is that designing an effective online curriculum is expensive and difficult. We also have to realize that certain activities will never transition to online and we just need to accept that. Taking a lecture with 300 students? Put that that thing online. Learning an instrument? You need to be in-person for your lessons and ensembles.
What needs to change is how in-person workers are compensated and how institutions support the development of online programs. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
I’ve got a master’s degree and I’ve also been a teaching assistant and I strongly disagree with the notion that online teaching is more effective. Putting all materials online is useful, but explaining something to someone is way more effective when you’re standing next to them.
Also money. If it was all free to get the paper online, who would pay to get it in person?
Some classes translate to an online format much easier than others. How do you effectively translate an upper level chemistry lab to be done online? Even if you could do it in such a way that the student gains the theoretical knowledge, it wouldn’t give them the hands on practice that they’ll need for real lab work.
I played wow during almost all of my online courses
I was on an 8 hour webinar last Wednesday for professional development. Satisfactory on one screen the webinars on the other. My wife looked at this as she was leaving for work, “this is what I imagine all my students did during COVID”.
I’m laughing at all these posts bagging on online education. Likely from the same people who think WFH is obviously superior to RTO. Some of the same issues apply here people.
WFH is superior for a lot of jobs yes. We don’t need all these office buildings. We don’t all need to commute.
Of course WFH is often the better option, by far, but I’m saying the practice suffers from many of the same issues we’re talking about here.
I can never tell if this guy is just a contrarian or honestly loves the taste of boot
Got a rebuttal? “Boot licker” counts around here, always a solid vote winner. You don’t have to say anything smart, at all, just level the accusation.
Your experience is not representative of the majority.
What are your metrics for “effective?” As someone who is both teaching and taking classes currently, I can tell you engagement is pitifully low in online formats. Education is not just about memorizing facts and going through the motions to get a good grade. There’d have to be some amazing innovation in online education practices to convince me it will be the default anytime soon.
One thing that doesn’t seem to be mentioned is that practically everyone is cheating on online assessments when they can. I’ve personally seen probably 60% of my masters cohort cheat this way discussing exam questions on WhatsApp.
Grifting is so common and accepted in mainstream media people genuinely don’t see the harm in cheating during assessments. To them that’s part of the university experience, to win at any costs. And that’s why we have nitwits who cannot tie their shoes or write a for loop without having to ask chatGPT.
Anyway where I’m from many exams have returned back to in-person, which is a shame because online exams were so much more relaxing which probably gave a better assessment of people’s understanding vs their ability to cope with stress.
