"A bit" might be understating it

Hey guys, so I'm starting off this week of online education and I feel compelled to make one thing very clear: I'm going to be a bit biased. I like online education for a lot of reasons in theory, but in practice, it's always managed to injure me somehow.

Case 1: I failed English freshman year of high school and had to take it during the summer. I took it online and was totally unable to go on choir tour because this online class had in-person exams that had to be done in a very strict timeframe. I understand the reasoning behind making sure the person taking the class is the person who's getting credit for it, but this is still stupid. High school English is stupid.

Case 2: Despite what that last paragraph implied, I actually get really good grades. I completed my AS in Computer Science with a 3.8 and had a 4.0 at my previous university. That said, the lowest grade I've ever gotten in a college class was online. Usually, when a teacher assigns readings, I blow them off. They don't really expect you to know it, they just expect you to have a base knowledge so you'll know what they're talking about when they go over it in class. I pick up things pretty quickly so I don't bother. I listen and I pay attention and I absorb information and I learn. For this class, there were obviously no lectures, just reading assignments, so I did them. I read that entire textbook basically from start to finish, and not even just skimming it. I discussed it with friends. I took notes. I wrote papers. I did the assignments. I put up with a group project. I studied.

And I got a C. I've gotten poor grades before in classes (poor like Bs) because I didn't do the work, but it worked well in college because exams were usually weighted higher and I did well on those. But this class? I did the work, but according to the statistics she sent out, I was in the 25th percentile of exam grades. It wasn't that the class was hard, it was that I sucked at it. Keep in mind that this is a psychology class and psych is one of my favorite subjects. It's not like I had a hard time understanding the material; it's not like I didn't do the work; it's not like it was an objectively hard class; I just did terribly.

And my only explanation for that is that the class was online, and I think that highlights a few major flaws with the idea.

1) The lack of teacher-student feedback. Now, I've had online classes (I took 3 last semester) where the professor gave thorough feedback on everything I turned in, or at least everything where points were taken off, but more often than not, that's not the case. In another class I took last semester, I got literally no feedback on anything. I did the assignments on my own time; they were graded at some point in the future; and my grade was literally my only feedback. B+.

Why was it not an A? I don't know. I don't know what I did wrong or what I could've done to fix it. Now, this isn't a problem so much innately with the system as with the professors but the main problem is that even if they give feedback, I have to seek it out. I have to go back to my assignments and stalk them every day until they're graded and hope there are comments there. This makes actually figuring out what the professor wants and improving on it a much more difficult task, especially when...

2) The assignments tend to be all the same. This is definitely a limitation of online software. If you have students in a room together, you can do all sorts of activities. Show a movie; play a game; draw pictures; call on students to explain; have people ask questions; put people in small groups; make a diorama; pretty much anything.

Online? Your choices are mostly read this article; read the textbook; watch this video; write a paper; take a quiz; or complete a worksheet. I've also been asked to listen to music clips but that was a music class and not really relevant in a broad sense. And this is the problem, because if you don't know how to write a paper like your professor wants, she can't write in the margins revising notes. You just get 15/20 and have no idea why. And then you get 15/20 for every other assignment because they're all essays. But I know the main problem, at least for me, is that...

3) There is no room for incorporating other learning styles. When I first signed up for online classes, I had to complete some sort of online course readiness test that asked me about a bunch of relevant things. It asked me about my computer skills, my typing speed, my reading speed, my computer specs, my work-ethic, my degree of self-motivation, etc. You know what it really didn't ask me? If I learn well in a text-only environment. Yes, it was sort of my bad to pick 3 online classes in a semester when I hadn't taken one before, but all signs pointed to "Ooh, I'm self-motivated and love setting schedules for myself. I'll be the best online student ever!"

And that just wasn't true. Like I sort of mentioned before, I work really well in a format that involves discussion. I talk through things to understand them (which I tried to do by commenting on the textbook to my friends), but that dialogue between professor and student is really important to my learning. Without having a single lecture or, honestly, a single word actually written by the professor for the class (All of those powerpoints had different people's names on them...), you might as well have just given me the textbook and the final exam. That is not how I learn. I tried. I really tried, but consistently, my exam grades were lower in my online classes than they've ever been via traditional methods.Not to mention, I don't really remember anything of what I learned. I mean, I didn't know it then, so there's no reason I'd know it now, but isn't that sort of a problem? Honestly, I really think that's because in person, you can incorporate all sorts of different learning styles, but online, unless you're doing video conferencing, there's really only one. And the idea of video conferencing leads me to my next point:

4) Setting up a universal schedule is impossible, or at least highly inconvenient. Some of the main reasons people take online classes is because they work during the day or they travel between two homes or they have children, which sums up to one thing: their schedules are severely limited and they need something flexible to work around it. This means a few things. First, it's really hard to coordinate for a group project. Second, you can't set exam dates that aren't windows and you certainly can't set a location. Maybe they don't think this is a problem for high schoolers taking freshman English, but I could have been busy (and would have been). The same system is in place for seniors who might have jobs or siblings they need to take care of. I've had professors say all assignments are due Sunday night only to assign something due Friday that I never looked at because I was busy during the week. This lack of touching base is something that's hard to work around. It's hard to say things and not know when people are going to check it, which is why it's an even bigger problem that...

5) Some professors still aren't accessible. Again, this is a problem with the professor and not the concept, but it's still something I've run into. One professor in particular comes to mind as being completely inaccessible 3/7 days of the week. Specifically, Friday-Sunday, aka "The time everyone is done doing their weekday stuff and has time to work on online classes." Again, with flexible schedules, obviously some people were working before then, but I think the amount of people who do most of their work for online classes during the weekend comprises the majority. This is one thing if you have physical classes where you see students every other day and are always available at some time convenient for both of you (i.e., during class), but online? You need to be available. Obviously, no one expects a response within 10 minutes (and you shouldn't be asking questions about your assignments that soon before they're due), but you can't block off 3 days where people need you the most.

A lot of these gripes and examples are personal, and I hope they aren't all universal, but I think it does say something about online education: the way it's being implemented presently falls short of what a traditional classroom can offer. Traditional classrooms give you varied assignments and teaching styles along with an actual relationship with your professor. You can ask your professor a question and get immediate feedback that can incorporate drawings and other media and doesn't rely on text alone. You can interact with other students in a way that can actually help your education (e.g., "Wait, so we're doing what on this assignment?") rather than only because you were assigned a group project and you have to talk to these people whose names you won't remember next week. Online education can be an option but I really don't think it's the best way to retain the most information. It's just too limited as it exists now.