In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
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.
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.
I can never tell if this guy is just a contrarian or honestly loves the taste of boot
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.
I like online learning because I’m autistic and in person learning makes me uncomfortable. I can tolerate it but it gets really tiring eventually. I’m currently a senior and am almost done with my computer science bachelor’s which I’ve done entirely online.
Online discussions suck, but so do in person discussions. Talking to neurotypicals is stressful just anticipating having to do it and trying to pretend to be “normal” really wipes me out.
I agree that some majors and classes are way better in person and I get that some people need to go in person to motivate themselves, but also going in person ends up being worse for some other people. I don’t think people should be forced to learn online, but I think the option should be there if it is reasonable to do that class online.
I hate to be an albatross around your neck, but it would serve you well to seek out opportunities to practice and hone your social skills. There’s definitely a wide variety of neurodivergence in the IT groups in my workplace, but you may have screwed yourself in terms of an opportunity to further build coping/masking skills that are sadly necessary in the workplace.
A commom refrain in many online spaces for experienced software devs and IT workers is that the job requires significantly more soft/social skills than most people are adequately prepared for by their studies. This also matches my personal experience coming up towards year 10 in IT, year 5 as a Systems Engineer/Admin/Scripting Monkey.
I worked as a cashier for about two years, so I do have some social skills, but too much noise and activity tires me out quickly. I chose online college partly because I can do it in an environment that’s comfortable to me since I can’t do that with work, it helps me get somewhat of a break. I have a friend I made at work who’s also autistic and doing an online CS degree. I find them easy to talk to and they are more outgoing than me, and they have helped me figure out how to better socialize. I have been experiencing autistic burnout the past few months though, so lately I have been regressing on some things. I don’t know if I’m going to make it, but atm I feel like I will eventually.
