[Vision2020] The Trouble With Online College

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 2/19/2013 6:26 AM, Art Deco wrote:
>
> The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> February 18, 2013
>
>
>   The Trouble With Online College
>
> Stanford University ratcheted up interest in online education when a 
> pair of celebrity professors attracted more than 150,000 students from 
> around the world to a noncredit, open enrollment course on artificial 
> intelligence. This development, though, says very little about what 
> role online courses could have as part of standard college 
> instruction. College administrators who dream of emulating this 
> strategy for classes like freshman English would be irresponsible not 
> to consider two serious issues.
>
> First, student attrition rates --- around 90 percent for some huge 
> online courses --- appear to be a problem even in small-scale online 
> courses when compared with traditional face-to-face classes. Second, 
> courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly 
> motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students 
> who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need 
> close contact with instructors to succeed.
>
> Online classes are already common in colleges, and, on the whole, the 
> record is not encouraging. According to Columbia University's 
> Community College Research Center, for example, about seven million 
> students --- about a third of all those enrolled in college --- are 
> enrolled in what the center describes as traditional online courses. 
> These typically have about 25 students and are run by professors who 
> often have little interaction with students. Over all, the center has 
> produced nine studies covering hundreds of thousands of classes in two 
> states, Washington and Virginia. The picture the studies offer of the 
> online revolution is distressing.
>
> The research has shown over and over again that community college 
> students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to 
> fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that 
> they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return. 
> Worse still, low-performing students who may be just barely hanging on 
> in traditional classes tend to fall even further behind in online 
> courses.
>
> A five-year study, issued in 2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in 
> Washington State community and technical colleges. It found that those 
> who took higher proportions of online courses were less likely to earn 
> degrees or transfer to four-year colleges. The reasons for such 
> failures are well known. Many students, for example, show up at 
> college (or junior college) unprepared to learn, unable to manage time 
> and having failed to master basics like math and English.
>
> Lacking confidence as well as competence, these students need 
> engagement with their teachers to feel comfortable and to succeed. 
> What they often get online is estrangement from the instructor who 
> rarely can get to know them directly. Colleges need to improve online 
> courses before they deploy them widely. Moreover, schools with high 
> numbers of students needing remedial education should consider 
> requiring at least some students to demonstrate success in traditional 
> classes before allowing them to take online courses.
>
> Interestingly, the center found that students in hybrid classes --- 
> those that blended online instruction with a face-to-face component 
> --- performed as well academically as those in traditional classes. 
> But hybrid courses are rare, and teaching professors how to manage 
> them is costly and time-consuming.
>
> The online revolution offers intriguing opportunities for broadening 
> access to education. But, so far, the evidence shows that poorly 
> designed courses can seriously shortchange the most vulnerable students.
>
This interesting and unsurprising, not to mention unsigned, article does 
not mention any relation between student age and course persistence or 
performance.  If the situation is as bad as reported for post-secondary 
school aged students, one might surmise that the reported problems might 
be worse among younger, high-school age students if one considers only 
those students' interaction with the curriculum per se.  Whether 
concurrent high school attendance while living with parents would 
favorably impact high school students' success rates in on-line courses 
is speculative, though one would like to think that simultaneous parent 
and teacher knowledge of on-line course enrollment would be favorably 
motivating for students.  Notwithstanding that, the article does not 
portend well for success of the policies Idaho senior educational 
leadership continues to attempt, disrespectfully of voters' wishes, to 
foist upon the public.


Ken
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