The Successes and Failures of Online Learning Today
The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of students to move from traditional, in-person education to remote and online learning.
For the past three months, students of all ages have attended their classes virtually, through Zoom meetings and other online collaborative programs.
Note that there is a distinction made among educators between the terms “remote” and “online.” Remote learning refers to attending classes virtually, such as over Zoom. Online learning generally does not involve video-conferencing, although it may feature pre-recorded videos.
Some have called the past few months a natural experiment, a trial run by which to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of remote and online learning.
But let’s take this proclamation with a grain of salt — after all, teachers never got the time to properly adapt their curricula and teaching methods to the online medium. They were expected to make the transition nearly overnight.
Let’s dive into the world of modern online learning and explore the impact it could have on the future of education.
The democratization of information
Perhaps the most salient feature of the online learning world prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was the rise of free learning resources.
Casual users of the Internet can easily access YouTube tutorials on a wide variety of topics, academic and otherwise. Millions of students have turned to the Khan Academy videos, for instance, to review topics covered in class.
The last decade saw the rise of edX, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that features over 2500 online courses from 140 institutions. It trails only Coursera, another MOOC, in total number of students served. Such platforms offer a plethora of free courses taught by reputable professors to anyone with an Internet connection.
Not all online learning is free, of course — it would hardly be such a lucrative business if it were. But even the paid online courses are usually far more economical than their in-person alternatives.
The cost of tuition is lower, and the lack of physical textbooks or the need to commute can save precious money and time for students who may be working part-time jobs to help finance their education.
What are some of the advantages of learning online?
As with any innovation, online learning has its own share of advantages and disadvantages. In general, people believe that in-person education is ultimately superior — hence the free market responds by charging less for online tuition.
But at the same time, countless in-person courses today feature an online component, usually as a supplement to the main instruction delivered inside the classroom. This indicates that online learning does offer some unique advantages.
Online learning platforms can empower instructors who are well-versed in modern technology to try out innovative new pedagogical methods.
Real-time online collaboration across the world, discussion boards, anti-plagiarism software, interactive educational websites, and much more allow teachers to expand beyond the traditional model of lecturing while students take notes.
An article in Forbes emphasized the flexibility of time and location inherent to online learning. Students can access course materials from the comfort of their own homes and at whatever times fit best in their schedules. Students who might feel shy or uncomfortable participating in classroom environments could feel more at ease in an online environment.
Furthermore, online courses can use machine learning to offer students personalized help.
For example, the platform can analyze how each individual student performs on various topics — how much time they spend on each one, how many questions they get wrong, etc. — and provide more review for only the topics that that particular student needs.
What are some of the disadvantages of learning online?
The most obvious drawback of online learning is the loss of the human element so vital to in-person instruction.
While the advent of Zoom has made large-scale video-conferencing free for educators (at least during the pandemic), technology still has a long way to go before such virtual meetings can come close to mimicking genuine, in-person interaction.
Moreover, friendships and bonds between students can only blossom when they meet face-to-face.
The past few months of forced remote and online learning have also exposed socioeconomic realities that were once conveniently overlooked.
Students from disadvantaged backgrounds may not have dependable Internet access at home, or may come from broken homes that cannot provide a quiet, distraction-free learning space for months on end. These critical factors place such students at an even greater disadvantage relative to their wealthier peers.
An opinion piece in Scientific American argued that learning from home is not conducive to productive learning habits because there’s a lack of accountability.
It’s easy to get distracted or slack off without anyone else knowing. Students have to constantly hold themselves accountable, which may be asking for too much discipline from a generation raised in an era chock-full of electronic devices competing for their attention.
A lack of accountability also makes it easier to cheat and therefore harder for teachers to fairly conduct examinations or other assessments.
Some common exams, such as the SAT and GRE, have been offered online during the pandemic, but proctoring these exams is complex and difficult to emulate — examinees must use a special program and allow a proctor to watch them through their webcams.
Where do we go from here?
As the pandemic draws on, schools have debated between continuing to operate online in the fall or attempting some form of hybrid model combining online and in-person instruction. Hopefully teachers will be better equipped if they are given the time to adapt their curricula accordingly.
It’s clear that online learning is here to stay. But what kind of role will it play in the future of education? And what potential does it hold for developing communities?
These are some of the questions we’ll explore in our next article!
Ira Jaan is working to combat some of the failures of online learning for children in the Philippines.
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