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.

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 someone who was was an adjunct before and during the pandemic, I can tell you from first hand experience that a lot was lost when transitioning from in-person to remote learning.

The most obvious impact was participation. Even at the college level, when students aren’t physically in the classroom they are less focused on the class.

However, even beyond that there are a lot of things that suffer:

• The ability to just walk over to a student to see how theyre doing (whether they want you to or not).
• In class exercises and group collaboration.
• The ability to easily dive into questions and tangents (drawing programs online are very hit or miss).
• Not to mention audio and video issues.
• Ability to read the classroom (going to fast, something wasn’t clear, etc.)

It may not sound significant, but it really adds up. Not to mention that the impact from covid in education is very visible at all levels of education.

Look at it this way, I paid £3,290 per year in tuition fees to attend university back when I went. The price of tuition has since nearly trebled to over £9k.

If I paid £9k per year for online courses and was denied the student experience of actually attending a university campus (as many teenagers who went to uni during COVID had to), I’d be fucking livid!

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.

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.

People learn many different ways. Online learning is not right for everybody.

Your experience is not representative of the majority.

As someone with ADHD, I do horribly when I try to learn online. If it’s not being forced to the forefront of my mind by going to a classroom every few days, I never get any assignments done and I end up failing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I played wow during almost all of my online courses