Online Learning: A Personal Reevaluation. It’s possible digital classrooms aren’t the end of American education.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | March 22, 2024 | Rob Jenkins

[karpov]

In May of 2011, I wrote the following words in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Online learning has become the third rail in American higher-education politics: Step on it and you’re toast.” In so doing, I planted my foot squarely on that electrified third rail.

Besides being roundly criticized in the comments section, I learned that my administration at the time—which was, unbeknownst to me, planning a major online expansion—did not appreciate what they saw as an attack on their sacred (cash) cow. I was removed from my administrative position, had my pay cut, and was threatened with dismissal. Being tenured, I couldn’t really be fired on such flimsy grounds. Instead, administrators spent the next year making my life miserable in various petty ways.

The irony is that the article in question, titled “Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online?,” was not, in fact, an attack on online learning. It merely pointed out that, 15 years into the virtual-classroom experiment, online courses still had much lower completion rates—the percentage of students who finish with a passing grade—than their “face-to-face” counterparts, despite all that had been done to address the discrepancy.

The problem, I argued, was two-fold: We were offering too many courses online, including some that probably shouldn’t be taught in that “modality” (like science labs and other clinical courses), and we were encouraging far too many students to take online classes, primarily as a way of growing enrollment without increasing overhead (no new buildings needed). A fair number of those students, I suggested, lacked either the necessary technical proficiency or the self-discipline (or both) to succeed in online classes. And this conclusion was borne out by the abysmal completion rates—in many cases, well below 50 percent.

[Jonty30]

I think online sources of education allows a person to have unlimited reviews and interactive opportunities to understand the material, at least potentially.

If we had an education geared towards educating the students, we could see students graduating grade twelve a few years early with a solid education. If we had an education system geared towards actually educating students.

[Red Badger]

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