Online Education: Trend or Fad?

Original post date on online education, June 2018

Whether you are a student or faculty member, you may be starting to consider taking or teaching an online course. Online education seems to be the trend in education, especially higher education, but it is filtering down to the K-12 environment as well. Online education is here to stay!

Online education and technology are doubtless going to change how we learn in the years ahead. Remote learning is inexpensive and brings down the cost of near-universal access. — Andrew Yang

The move to online education

What are the drivers of this trend? In my opinion, the biggest driver was initially financial. As more and more schools are increasing their number of online courses and technology is catching up, other schools are seeing the benefit and feeling the pressure to add their own as well. Whether it is massive open online courses (MOOC) or full graduate degrees, learners have more options than ever before.

According to Allen and Seaman (2016), in 2014, there were 5.8 million distance education students with 2.85 million taking all of their coursework in a distance learning format. Approximately 70% of leaders of public institutions feel that investing in online education is critical to their strategic plan. You may ask, how do faculty feel about the value of online coursework? Allen and Seaman (2016) report that about 30% of faculty accept the importance of online education and feel it is a legitimate form of education, approximately 55-60% are neutral, and nearly 15% disagree with it being a legitimate form of education.

So, what makes a course online?

Traditional course                     No online content
Web Facilitated Course             1-29% online
Blended or Hybrid Course       30-79% online
Fully Online                                 80% or more

Do faculty like online education?

When talking with faculty members, you notice that, whether positive or negative, their opinion on online education is strong. As a faculty member who has taught online courses and as an M.B.A student who has recently completed an online program, I have some thoughts on why? There is such a wide range of teaching methods for online courses. Some courses are merely voice-over-PowerPoint with a 10-question set of recall questions at the end of each unit. Students in these courses quickly learn what they need to do to find the answers to the recall questions. There is little to no conversation between students or between students and faculty. Students achieve their desired grade after learning the requisite amount of work required and get little from the class. After the initial setup time, the course can run on autopilot semester after semester, with no faculty involvement.

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On the other end of the spectrum are courses set up to take full advantage of the technology and the expertise of the faculty. These courses have required reading and perhaps voice-over lecture PowerPoints, but these are merely to provide the background for the rest of the course. The bulk of the course is made up of writing assignments, discussion boards, case studies, and required online class meetings where students and faculty discuss the content and ensure understanding.

Many students have commented that the online environment makes them more comfortable talking and providing their opinion and perspective than a traditional course would. Instead of a 10 question recall question, full use of technology is used to make sure that a fair assessment is provided that assesses critical thinking skills and understanding of the content instead of the ability to look up an answer—more on technology and assessment in a later post.

Should you take an online class?

Should you take an online course? If you are unsure, try one of the MOOCs first, such as the ones offered by EdX and Coursera. These massive courses will give you an idea of whether an online format will work for you at little to no cost. With the number of students involved, be aware that there may be little faculty involvement and that the majority of the discussion and help with the content will come from your fellow learners.

If you like the format and you find you are motivated to stay on top of the content, then online learning may be for you. As you look for courses, pay particular attention to whether there are required meeting times, a discussion board with faculty involvement, writing assignments, and a description of the testing method. The testing method should show the faculty is aware of the pitfalls of testing online and has made an effort to make sure the tests are as fair as possible.