Online Education Does Not Teach Students

 

I have been in and around higher education for about for 35 years of my 45 year career...  I was a teacher, a course designer, an administrator, and a consultant...  

I have designed as well as taught online courses and while there is more work for the teacher than being in the classroom, there are many problems with the quality of learning that online students face.

Online courses basically involve the following:

• Reading assignment
• Research assignment
• Writing assignment
• Watch a teaching video or slide show
• Discussion Forum Assignment
• Quiz Assignment
• Optional team assignment

NOTE:  all of these assignments are calculated out on the number of minutes each assignment is likely to take...  and, they are designed so that "X" number of hours each week will be allocated by the student to complete this course.

Some will move faster than anticipated while some will move slower than anticipated.

Unintended Consequences...

1.  Teachers cannot prove students did the reading

2.  Teachers cannot prove student did the writing

3.  Teachers cannot prove that students did the quiz

4.  Teachers cannot prove that students participated in the discussion

5.  Teachers cannot prove that students did not use the textbook when taking the test

6.  Teachers cannot prove that students did not collaborate outside of class sharing answers

I used to work for ITT Technical Institute in Knoxville, TN and we were mandated to take online courses each year.  We would get together and take the test collectively and missed one or two intentionally sometimes.  The management did not correlate the answers, just that we had taken the course.

Did we do ourselves a disservice?

Perhaps, but our collective mindset was that the course was written by an amateur and contained no viable information that we could use to make us a better instructor.

Online quizzes are always the same:

• so many multiple choice questions
• so many True/False questions
• so many fill in the blank questions
• so many essay questions

NOTE:  the essay question had an answering matrix that teachers use to compare the answer with the points that the course designer thinks should have been mentioned...

The quality of writing is not typically looked at...  that is to say... if the writing is done at a high school level instead of a college level, there is no penalty assessed against the student.

BASICALLY,

the student can earn a very high grade level and did not learn or retained anything...  and, may not even have done the work themselves...

HOW IS THIS IMPROVING EDUCATION IN AMERICA???