In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
According to everything I have seen and read on the matter, most kids seemed to have a shit time with online schooling during COVID. Too easy to be distracted, frequent technical problems, no hands on activities or labs, no socialisation, no arts programs, no physical education, terrible support for kids who had learning problems or who otherwise required customised education plans, and the much larger class sizes meant an overall poorer quality of education.
For many, it was an unmitigated disaster, and most kids are much happier to be back at school in person. A handful loved it though. My daughter was one, though she also is very happy to have music classes again, so even she prefers being back in school.
Our conservative provincial government liked the cost savings though, so they tried to introduce an online course requirement to get your high school diploma, but due to popular demand, they had to include an opt out option. Since the opt out was so popular, they are now making it harder to access by requiring that you fill out a form for it available only by contacting the school guidance office.
Let’s face it, online education is not popular because it sucks unless your program only requires a lecture, you are very motivated to learn and study, you don’t need or want to discuss anything complicated with profs or peers, you have no learning or hearing disabilities, and you prefer to avoid people. It is great for work you already know how to do, which is the reason my daughter loved it, and why I like working from home. But default online education? Correspondence school has long been a thing, so if that’s you, fill your boots. It seems most would rather pass on it.
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.
In my experience
That’s great, and that’s why it’s an option.
But research consistently shows that everyone is different and has different learning needs.
More ways to learn means more people succeed in learning.
Now your specific question is still quite interesting, with emphasis added to default:
Why it is not the default option for universities?
I think online is rapidly becoming the default for anything that can be learned online, for anyone who can learn online.
But I’m thankful that we have both community colleges and universities for things that cannot be effectively taught online and for people who needs more modes of learning.
I think it’s easier to stay motivated when you have contact with other people. Even the OU recognises this and tries to incorporate meetups or at least video conferences.
A lot of people probably want the traditional college experience, but online learning is definitely an option at a lot of colleges.
@FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io
@Mee@reddthat.com Is the tradition thr Animal House experience while in school and then graduating to multiple job offers that pay well enough that your income alone was enough to buy a house and raise a family. Because if that’s the tradition they are looking to continue, I’ve got some bad news.
Online education should make education more affordable. Instead, most organizations charged only slightly less than in-person credits.
In practice, online education is worse. Discussion boards are a shallow replacement for real shoulder to shoulder conversations, many students speed through video lectures, and the entire experience seems flattened and gamified. It feels more “effective and efficient” but that feeling doesn’t necessarily match reality.
Indeed. I’m genuinely baffled to hear OP finds online learning more effective and efficient
People are different, and not everybody needs/wants other people around them all the time.
That’s fair, but it’s not the common perception to college and certainly not a basis to ask why it isn’t the “default”
I agree that was just as a reference to OPs feeling. They might be overwhelmed by people. And given how many people, especially in management positions, are unable to understand why people prefer to work from home, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched. Both sides can be ignorant.
Why wouldn’t you?
Because that’s the complete opposite experience of me and I think most other people
Online education isn’t exactly great for people with poor self control or focus. At best, online education is good for lectures, but not much else (aside from if commuting or finding a place close by to live is a pain, then I suppose online education may be a tradeoff in that regard).
Everything else is generally better in person. Stuff like group projects and whatnot cannot be done online.
Since COVID, I’ve found that the growth of technology isn’t exactly great for the learning experience. Now a lot of educational work takes place through the distraction vortex (computers and phones are very tempting to do something else instead). Pre-pandemic when education was more paper and pencil based, it is much easier to focus. At “best”, you can only daydream or whatnot. Other people would not be as tucked to their phones and laptops like it is since the pandemic.
In a way, online education would also be harmful in reducing social cohesion as well if it becomes the default mainstream, so it’s not just limited in excluding certain neurodiverse populations from access to education. Online education isn’t exactly more “efficent”.
I think hybrid is the way to go. You won’t connect with your peers online the way you do irl, and I it’s healthy to leave home from time to time. I also work better in a dedicated office space versus at home.
But as a student in an IT related field: God do I hate the uni pcs. They. would. not. run. unity. once. because of some obscure bug with my user profile and I had to waste my lecturers and my time switching users, trying to install the right version every single lesson. For two semesters I could not parttake. On my own PC at home I could have fixed that within minutes because admin rights and decent internet. Heck, I even asked the IT department if I could have admin rights which they denied, quite understadably. Sorry this turned a bit into a rant.
But cutting commute time and getting up shortly before lecture sure is nice :3
I think a great majority of learning in college comes from living someplace other than home. Meeting different kinds of people from different places and spending time with them. Classes are very important but so much learning happens outside of classrooms.
I think this is one of the reasons conservatives hate college. Impressionable students might develop empathy, and we certainly can’t have that.
But but, Elmo said empathy is what’s holding us back!! /s
Nothing defines him and his associates/fanboys better than that statement. To me, showing empathy and acting on it is the most beneficial thing one can do for humanity.
He’s right. It is what’s holding THEM back
@KingGordon True, but few can afford the luxury experience of campus living.
In my experience, it doesn’t need to be on-campus. Just getting to know other students and working/studying with them is enough.
I’ve never lived on campus and idk how it works in the US but when I’d come in for the lectures I still met plenty of people who challenged me and my ideas and helped me grow as a person. Hell even just taking the subway to campus every day got me to actually start adulting and out of the shell of school and home life.
I can’t imagine my experience wold have been better online. The third year was almost all lab work and practical.
But aside from that, one of the best things about my offline experience was getting to spend time with people from other disciplines and honestly, some 20-odd years later, that has been almost as valuable as my degree in my career as well as my understanding of the world.
Both me and my wife tried doing online courses for our Masters and ended up opting out that route.
Both of use found they were riddled with people who didn’t show up to the regular online ‘team meetings’ or wouldn’t contribute to the ‘team projects’ until the day of submission.
I know you have slackers in regular university as well but at least there, visibility and contribution is immediately noticed by the professors.
I would also argue that being hands on makes a huge difference in most courses.
I prefer online learning for sure as a method of actually learning stuff but for BSc the vast majority of what you learn isn’t on your course, it’s from the folks around you, and I don’t mean corporate networking and brown-nosing for jobs, I just mean interactions with folks outside of your bubble.
I did CS and honestly that BSc was just a piece of paper tha helped me get an MSc and a job after that, I don’t think I was taught anything there that I didn’t know and the vast majority of learning was on my own outside uni for which the actual groundwork was laid during my MSc, which was online temporarily due to covid.
Nowadays I upskill exclusively online on my own and learn far more far more accurately this way. Though you still need folks to talk to about it who are ahead and behind, but it’s easier to find that online than IRL anyway.
As other people already named it, personal interaction is one big factor. Being in a friend group, learning together and trying to achieve things together greatly enhances the chances to complete the studies.
Also this is only possible for lectures and most seminaries. Outside of social science and humanities you usually have some kinds of hands on or lab courses, which of course can’t be done online.
Most posters here are talking about the benefits to the person taking classes as to why online classes aren’t the norm, but let’s be honest here.
When you own a monopoly, you don’t give it up. More online classes would send the message that the “college experience” isn’t as necessary, which would lose the college money.
