
Online Education Leaves Too Many Students Behind - NicoJuicy
https://hackernoon.com/online-education-leaves-some-students-behind-4dc816fd7613?source
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znpy
In my opinion online education is failing because:

1- people are not accustomed to it and online education companies do not
spread a "methodology" to approach online education. Students that need help
are supposed to at least use discussion forums but often they don't

2- online education target the low hanging fruits, usually offering "just"
master's degrees. I dreamed to be able to get my bachelor's by an accredited
institution, on-line and for a reasonable fee but that dream never came true.

So at least in my opinion, online learning didn't really happen: the promises
of "disruption" and "revolution" haven't been kept.

You still need to go to a regular university to get a bachelor's degree, and
then you can (maybe) enroll in a master's degree, assuming regular
universities aren't better/cheaper than online ones.

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two2two
The premise of the article is right in that those students who need extra
attention for learning the actual course material fall to the bottom while
other disciplined and receptive students learn more. This widens the gap, and
you can see it during online course discussions. The former group usually
respond later and with much poorer quality, but they fulfill the requirements
to earn the grade.

This is where my objection to online courses come in. The checkboxes for what
is needed to complete the course are much easier to tick online with far less
scrutiny of the actual work than in-person classes. (Then there are those in-
person classes which use online platforms for work, but that's a whole other
topic)

Even for those who are willing and able to learn efficiently from online
courses, a simple search for what professors see on the backend of the
platform used administer the course will show what metrics they use to decide
whether the student did the work.

For example, in Instructure's Canvas platform professors know when you've copy
and pasted, how much time you've spent on the system (and specific modules),
which areas of the course have been opened, and other details on students use.
Professors use different methods with the data they have access to, and some
use none at all. Once a student figures out the professors hidden methods for
determining gradable work, that's what can become the focus for the student
and not the course material itself.

I do both. I figure out the professors hidden methods, usually after a couple
of graded assignments, and then I make sure I check those boxes as well as
fulfilling the assignment requirements. So even if a student is good at
learning online, they can game it enough to make it easier to get a better
grade. This further widens the gap because those who care less about the grade
but just passing the course likely never think about these variables.

Ultimately, a student can pass an online class and not learn a single thing,
while others can learn as much as the course offers, but likely retains less
than an in-person course since they're able to have a crutch with tricking the
system.

Needless to say, there's more to the story for success with online courses.
Anecdotally, I learn far less from University online courses than I do from
high quality tutorial videos that I find for subjects I want to learn online.
Oddly, more and more professors are using these videos to supplement their
curriculum. I don't know how I feel about that, as it seems to cheat the whole
idea of paying them to teach me. Let me supplement the course material with
outside material on my own, and don't integrate into your lecture.

