In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
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
Why wouldn’t you?
Because that’s the complete opposite experience of me and I think most other people
Why?
For the reasons listed in the post the commenter was replying to: people don’t engage as much with the material or with each other.
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.
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.
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.
@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 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
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.
The MSc Sustainability from Cranfield University is all online besides a 4 day residential each year.
Seems to work really well for them.
As with remote work, it really depends on what you’re doing. Some jobs and classes are tailor made for remote, some are nearly impossible to accomplish remotely. COVID inspired some really creative uses of technology but at the end of the day, it was an augmentation not a drop-in replacement.
I think online courses should be available as much as possible whenever practical, but what we all have to realize is that designing an effective online curriculum is expensive and difficult. We also have to realize that certain activities will never transition to online and we just need to accept that. Taking a lecture with 300 students? Put that that thing online. Learning an instrument? You need to be in-person for your lessons and ensembles.
What needs to change is how in-person workers are compensated and how institutions support the development of online programs. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
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.
People learn many different ways. Online learning is not right for everybody.
Your experience is not representative of the majority.
Institutional inertia
I can’t even get my postgrad course to record class sessions for the english as a second language international students.
I’m laughing at all these posts bagging on online education. Likely from the same people who think WFH is obviously superior to RTO. Some of the same issues apply here people.
WFH is superior for a lot of jobs yes. We don’t need all these office buildings. We don’t all need to commute.
I can never tell if this guy is just a contrarian or honestly loves the taste of boot
i prefer it too, but I’ve heard complaints from others saying they can’t learn well that way.
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.
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.
Because the vast majority of people either benefit or think they benefit from in person interactions. That includes people who end up in leadership positions who make decisions about how content is delivered.
Yes, plenty of people are able to be self motivated to do things online and it is great that the option exists for them. It won’t be the standard for most things though, because of how most people tend to interact with the world around them.
