“Are you looking to get a degree in law enforcement? At Oklahoma Wesleyan University, you can now enroll 100% online,” the radio blared. I blanched, wishing I could temporarily intercept the broadcasting waves and interject my disgust. “What a travesty to learning!” I thought. “How dare he promote that?” I drove on, trying to keep calm. “Do these OWU professors even know what they were doing to society?” I pondered. To my chagrin, the advertiser refused to end his rant. “Yes, this special course, hand-crafted for the working adult, is now available exclusively online,” the speaker kept booming jubilantly. Finally the ad ended, and I heaved a sigh of relief. This semester I’ve experimented with an online class or two for the first time, and I can’t stand it. Internet-based classes are the sorriest excuse for education I’ve ever seen.
What I hate most about an online class is that it doesn’t teach me as much as a real class does. Case in point, I’m learning very little from my online history class. It consists of nothing but timed quizzes and exams. I’m not talking to anybody, and I’m not listening to any interesting stories about what happened in 1905. I’m just flipping through an oversized book and filling out boring tests. In contrast, I’m learning tons in my onsite programming class. Not only do I learn from the professor, but I learn from other students. Everyone in the room knows something I don’t. Even the most unlikely programming student, a former football player named Corey, showed me how to properly code my “for loop” during an intense in-class assignment. Once we both knew how to do it, we shared the solution with others. This gave us an opportunity to look at each other’s code and listen to each other’s questions. That could never happen online.
Secondly, I cannot forge new relationships in an online class. For instance, I can’t even name the students in my online history class. I’ve never met the professor! However, I know nearly every student in my programming class because I spend five hours with them every week. I know the teacher well and appreciate her ability to explain concepts with a beginner’s mindset. Bottom line, if I’m going to spend time and money taking a college course, I want as much mileage from it as possible. I’m spinning my wheels if I’m not meeting new people.
Finally, online classes leave me less satisfied than real classes do. I hate to say it, but there’s something depressing about the Internet. It leaves me in a vacuum. When I spend all day working on the Internet, I feel as though I’ve not really done anything spectacular. This tends to discourage me even if the project is worthwhile. For example, I began two online classes this semester, but I became so dissatisfied with my online biology class that I dropped it. Was the professor expecting me to handle the lab experiments all by myself, with nothing but virtual instructions? Help! I felt sorry for the online students who stayed in that class. How dissatisfied they must have been!
If your goal is to learn little, meet few people, and remain dissatisfied with life, then I suggest you take your laptop into your monastery of choice, lock the doors, and take all the online courses you please. But don’t dare email me about how good your life is. I’m too busy learning with live, charismatic humans to interact with your dead laptop.
This illustrative thesis originally appeared in print for my Composition I class. I couldn’t resist sharing it here.
Interesting hypothesis. I mostly agree with you, but I guess that one needs to consider why they are doing online education. For example, I’m currently in a school that seems to fulfill what you want. However, it’s only to get me my first two years of school. I hope to use last two years (which are definitely the most interesting) to do online school, so I can learn my field, get a degree, and get out there as fast as possible.
But I’m antsy….wanna get going with my career. I’m not the norm.
Chris, I know people who successfully get through college 100% online. But I have to agree with you, it’s not the norm.
Chris, I hear you. Yet you speak of adults with a potential to lose focus and fall into over-tech lifestyles or careers. And Martyn, I think your point drives home the article’s core – truly, in my 4 decades in business, no doubt exists the majority of poor communicators aren’t those ‘with luggage or issues’, but those who so immersed in the (then) computer age rise, that all human interractions atrophied. And the article speaks of the youngest generations now – 2nd graders using online templates to build their own classroom webpages, to toddlers through teens who so immerse in texting brevity and cryptic online discourse, that actual, real-world, international professionalism is – absent. It isn’t (in my estimation) blue-light manufacturing or just-in-time scripting for outsourced staff that diminishes industry caliber, it is burying one’s head in the machine so long, that humanity has virtually (no pun intended) disappeared.
Nice article Martyn, however I do have to disagree with you on most of this topic. While I see what you say could be true for some people, I don’t find it to be true about others including me. I take roughly half of my classes online, mostly Gen Ed classes because I see them in all truthfulness to be a waste of time. If I am able to take those classes online that leaves me a vast amount of time to continue improving my programming skills or something of that sort. If I take IT classes online it is also usually the unimportant ones such as Operating Systems. I have think I will be interested in the class for me not to take it online, or else I will simply stare into space for two or so hours soaking in less than if I would have taken it online.
I see we have conflicting views on a few things, that makes it all the more interesting!
See you around, Tanner
Lol! You’ve got some interesting presuppositions, Tanner:
1. Students don’t learn a lot in most college classes
2. Therefore, in order to learn, students need to teach themselves the stuff that’s actually important.
If those presuppositions are correct, then online courses make tons of sense. They take less time so you can get to the good stuff (learning on your own).
I agree with your presuppositions, provided I can add “at OSUIT” at the end of each. The problem is with the school…
*ducks*
In all truthfulness I would add about 65% of all schools name to the end of each of those! I’m just there for my degree, I know enough to probably go work a somewhere and be successful, however nowhere will hire someone without a college degree :-/
We need to get you into TU. Or Harvard. You’re just smart, that’s all.
Ha wouldn’t that be nice!
Not all online classes are bad, maybe most, maybe some, or maybe just the ones you have taken. First, it’s a relatively new medium, people are still learning.
As for not interacting, my husband has had multiple group projects in his online mba program, enough so that he recognizes and interacts with other students so he knows which ones to avoid choosing for the next project. The professors give live lectures, have chat sections, and interact on bulletin boards. The students have worked with a venture capitalist putting together a plan which was brought to the attend of the dean for all programs, not just the online programs.
There are online classes for high schoolers that provide content and interaction they wouldn’t get elsewhere. Some find they get more out of the classes because the students and teacher want to be there.
I did online classes for webdesign, some were better than others since so much depends on the professor, just like in face-to-face classes (both my husband and I have undergraduate and graduate degrees through traditional programs). Ultimately, I would bet that your history class would have been just as terrible in person.
I don’t recommend online classes for the “traditional” 18-21 year old student who has the time and money to sit in a class during the day. But there are plenty of students who don’t fit that category and a growing number of faculty interested in making their online education as meaningful as that in person. And making blanket judgements about online education can’t be good for your business with people who want to make “cool” online learning apps.
Actually, people who take that history class in person say it’s great.
I dunno. Our society is going down the tubes if people prefer to huddle around a laptop instead of meet real humans at a specific time each week. Scary.
Good article, Martyn. I agree with you, I would rather take a class in person than online. I find it easier to concetrate, and it just seems more real. Easier to get involved. Thanks.
However, while It’s probably taking it to far to try to get your Masters degree online, there are some online classes/courses that can be very helpful, being more accesible and cheaper.
Actually, in my experience online classes are more expensive. I had to pay an extra $150 “electronic fee” for my history class this semester. #fail
Online classes are as hopeless as offline ones. Self-learning is always the best.
Lol. I can tell you never got a degree.
Having a high-sounding degree and not doing anything with it is like having a BMW in the middle of an ocean. 90% of people DO NOT apply (at work) what they learned at school/college. So, the only useless use of a degree is to put it behind your name in a visiting card? I have a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Electronics and Communications. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? That’s the worst investment I have made in my life till now. Period.
And that’s when you bought Facebook stock …
Sounds like your school is doing it wrong. Here’s a link to TED talk on how online classes can be done well. http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_norvig_the_100_000_student_classroom.html
Cheers,
Tom
Hi Martyn, I love the premise of this post and the way that it challenges conventional thoughts about the internet. Do you remember the time we were sitting at the light near Downtown Disney, and I mentioned that the purpose of the internet should be to facilitate face-to-face interactions and not computer-to-computer? Our meeting each other means that we have a meaningful relationship, but until that time occurs, the it’s quite a shallow connection. What’s the point of “connecting” if we never meet, shake hands, and share jokes? So really, the internet should be facilitating meaningful face-to-face interactions and not home hibernation.
To that end, talking over Skype almost counts as a face-to-face. When you have a chance to talk, a deeper relationship is forged than one merely through WordPress comments.
As far as learning goes, I see the benefit of distance learning, but I agree that online classes at universities are weird. You forfeit the opportunity to learn nuances from a lecture, meet people to study with, and visit the professor to ask questions. It may be a pain to go to class sometimes, but it also encourages normal human interactions that are important for our development as well-rounded people. We need to know how to talk to classmates and how to talk to professors.
With that said, I’m a big fan of self learning by reading from home. There’s a lot that can be learned by reading books on your own, and it’s even very possible to learn more than you can from sitting in a class and being held back by your classmates who are learning to slowly. There’s a benefit to this as well, which you can attest as someone who learned web development in your own from home.
Conclusion: There’s benefits to both at-home learning and in-class learning, but if you’re at a university and paying tuition, why not show up to class, meet some people, make some friends, and get a richer educational experience? Agree?
p.s. I love your writing in this essay. Was your professor impressed?
p.p.s. Have you read Writing with Style yet by John R. Trimble? If not, you’ve got to put it on your must-read list.
Wow, lots of typos in that comment. Feel free to clean it up.
Hi Joseph,
Thanks for weighing in. Always appreciate your insights.
I like how you’ve grouped it:
1. If you’re going to college, go to college
2. If you’re not, it’s cool, you can still learn a ton just from books
At the end of the day, I like what my composition teacher said:
So no matter how you get your education, at the end of the day you get a JOB, and you perform the same functions regardless of how you got your knowledge.
You’ve helped clarify a bit more here, and I like your unique errors. That’s what makes this place human, you know.
When the only goal is to fill an empty vessel with information, and test how well that information was retained, online courses are easy to implement for an educator. Traffic School anyone?
But if the goal is to get students to think critically–a must for any history course–then online courses are much more difficult to create. It’s tough to recreate the “realtime-ness” of live conversation and the ability to go off on tangents in an online environment.
I had high hopes that Google Wave might be able to help with this, but it got killed before it gain any momentum.
And to your Composition teacher’s quote I’d add, “Mastery is when you learn how to break the rules.”
Hi Bryan,
Glad you see it this way. I was beginning to think I was the only one! The Internet is never going to replace real life. Thank goodness.
Because I love people, I agree with you. But because I learn faster than professors teach, I prefer the “go at your own pace” online format and disagree with you. I also disagree with you because I regret going to college, but that’s a different thing altogether, huh?
I agree 33.3%.
To explain the “love people” agreeing – I meant that offline classes do offer personal interaction, which the more I think about it, is pretty important to me.
So I agree 55%.
55 and counting. Do I hear 60?
Seriously, what degree did you get? I should know that …
Valid points, Martyn, and especially interesting because this is your world. What do you think about udacity? Some schools (like Stanford) are finding that their students who take the classes online are doing better than students who are getting lectures in person. Or khan academy, where they’re using online classes as a supplement to in-class teacher interaction? I agree that most people are doing online education poorly, but what do you think about these very professional models?
Hi Joe,
I’m sure people out there are doing it right. The important thing is to keep it blended. Spending one’s entire day in front of a computer screen reduces productivity while increasing stress and loneliness.
I strongly (and I mean strongly) prefer on-ground classes. I’ll commute extra days to school if I have to. Most everyone I talk to at OSU agrees: they only have to take about one or two online classes to absolutely hate them.
It seems there’s a disconnect between young students like myself and adults. The working adults don’t seem to mind the online classes. It means more time at the job and with their families — they relish this, and I don’t blame them. So yeah. To each his own.
The comments are great, and yet are not all indicating just distance-learning. The big push today is student flipping and a MOLE (modern online learning) platform. Interactive dryboards are a tiny pre-step in the in-class setting. Yet the big money is being laid down now in hopes of centralizing all edu online. For instance free K12 public school online sites, and I’m surprised at the distance learning fees with readily available credentialing and designation providing schools are online, such as one finds searching ‘free online courses from top (universities, career colleges, jr or sr hi’s, colleges, universities…). The likes of Edmodo stylized greed-infested investors building today’s youths’ brains is terrifying.
The environment of an online classroom is entirely different from the traditional classrooms. Most students miss the personal interactions with the instructor. But the online courses are popular as a flexible and inexpensive medium to acquire knowledge and skills. If a person has enough free time to attend classes on a regular basis, he can always avail the benefits of traditional classroom based learning models.