Online "Education"

Smell that? It smells like spring. What does spring imply? The promise of summer and with it, the end of the school year.

Indeed, class ends next week for my university, which means I will have completed my first ever (and hopefully last ever) online class.

"But Seth, if you're so averse to the online education experience, whatever compelled you to take an online course?" --Average Concerned Blog Reader

A just question, Average Blog Reader. I needed four credits to round out my Psychology minor, and the only class available this spring that could fill said requirement was PSYC 439 -- Cognitive Psychology. This class came recommended by my psych-major roommate, who also took it online. He assured me the subject matter would pique my interest. Going into the semester, I was actually excited to experience what online courses were like, see how they compared.

It started out fairly well. As my roommate had promised, I found the material very interesting and insightful (in fact, the chapter on Attention inspired my blog Cell De-Vision). But, as often happens a few weeks into the semester, the excitement of a new year and new slate of classes wore off and as I sobered, I came to realize how...ineffective online education at UND was -- at least, for my particular class.

You'll see why, I think.

Essentially, the weekly regimen went as follows. One chapter was assigned per week. The students read the chapter and looked over the notes the professor offered, usually accompanied by a video lecture of her going through a PowerPoint. Then, she assigned Journal entries for us to complete. For these, we answered several questions that asked to reflect on our lives, then apply one major topic or concept from the reading to that life experience.

The most interesting thing we had to do -- and the reason why this class was worth four credits and not three -- were these online labs, in which we students would actually conduct variations of influential/groundbreaking studies that illustrated a certain cognitive phenomenon. After taking the lab, we'd answer questions that tested our understanding of the phenomenon, as well as discussion questions that had us articulate how that phenomena applied to real world situations. The journals and labs were always to be completed and submitted by Sunday at 5 pm.

Every fourth week we would take a test on the three chapters preceding -- a 25-30 question multiple choice/True or False exam we took through Blackboard (UND's online gateway) with a proctor. 

"Well, Seth, I must say that that seems a fair routine presented by the instructor. What qualms might you have had with such a course?" --Average Concerned Blog Reader

Indeed, Average Blog Reader, this was a fair structure which allowed us to work through the assignments in our own time. However, the execution of the course failed in several regards.

First off, the class was incredibly easy. Yes, Psychology classes tend to follow the stereotype of being easy in nature, since the material is intuitive and easily referenced to our own lives. However, entering this 400-level Psychology course, I expected to be challenged, my brain to be wracked.

Neither happened. In fact, this turned out to be the easiest course I have ever taken in college. I reiterate, a 400-level course was the easiest course I've ever taken. The difficulty had little to do with the subject matter; often times in the reading I would gloss over explanations of concepts and would have to read and reread definitions in order to understand what the text said. I think the (lack of) difficulty stemmed from the online medium. It was almost as if the professor figured that an online class would be harder to learn from, since it's less personal and more centered on the student's ability to teach his/herself, so she adjusted the class accordingly, resulting in journal and lab questions that were, for the most part, on par with a high school psych class in terms of how much thought they required. 

And the tests...

I recite these statistics in the least boastful way possible: I finished the first test in eight minutes, getting one wrong, and the second test in seven minutes with a perfect score, the easiest tests I've taken at UND. The third and fourth tests make for a nice segue into my next beef: the professor's effort.

Being an online class, the professor gave each "lecture" through the course website on Blackboard. As I said earlier, these lectures started out as videos of her talking through each slide of her notes on the chapter. I actually enjoyed this format for the first few weeks, for I feel I learn best by taking my own notes, transcribing the material into my own words. 

One week, however, the professor had a "complication" that resulted in her giving us 19 audio files, each a little over a minute. So I had to download 19 different files and listen to one little snippet lecture at a time. An inconvenience that I quickly forgave and shrugged off.

One file per slide...arduous.

Midway through the semester, sometime near spring break, the professor really had some "problems", preventing her from even creating video lectures for us to watch. So for that section of three weeks, we literally weren't taught anything. The test was open book, in order to make up for her "troubles". Consequently, I put forth the least amount of effort in that section and got two wrong on the test, which I took without a proctor and completed in about 30 minutes. On top of that, she did something similar for the fourth test, failing to record one of the lectures for the chapters, thus the fourth and final exam will also be open book...

Normally, I'm very understanding when someone faces adversity. Things happen that prevent the plan from running smoothly, so we adapt, often at the expense of adequate execution. In this instance, though, I have no sympathy or empathy. We students are paying you, professor, to teach us, to give us a quality education. We rely on you to be prepared each week, to conduct yourself in a professional manner, and anything less is unacceptable. 

Hopefully most online professors are like Good Guy Greg.

I guess I don't understand how she didn't prepare her lectures this fall or winter. Certainly she had ample time before the class started to record her lectures, make them ready to be viewed by the students? Her neglect to do so put us at a disadvantage and inhibited my learning. Again, normally I wouldn't be that upset by this, but the extent of my discontent spawns from my next point. 

Online classes cost way too much money. I'm not sure of the exact number, but I think I paid something like $1,000 extra dollars to  I just looked up the exact number and I had to pay $989 for "Tuition Online" and $200 for "Psyc Ugrd Online Course Fee". So it cost me $1189 more (that's over one-fourth of my normal tuition) to take Cognitive Psychology. And what did I receive in return? A mediocre, no, too lenient, a sub-par education on a topic I was genuinely interested in. I might as well have bought the book for $50, read the chapters, took my own notes, and had my roommate quiz me once a month.

My roommate put it nicely. "Taking an online course is a paradox in that you pay more for less effective education." --Ken, Freelance Psych Theorizer.

As always, Insanity Wolf hits the nail on the head.

The poor quality of the education was not due to just the professor's deficiencies. I think the whole online medium is inherently less effective.

The 5 pm Sunday deadline for instance -- most online classes have similar deadlines for assignments -- encourages students (like myself, I will admit) to put off their work for the class until the weekend, resulting in a cram session, a scramble to complete everything and submit it just in time. It's a pretty well known psychological fact (a fact that I ironically learned from Coginitive Psychology!) that learning is best done in small increments over a long period of time, called The Spacing Effect. Students have much better recall of material if they study for say one hour each day for eight days than studying eight hours in two days. This type of incremental studying is called Distributed Practice. Maybe the Cognitive Psychology class should have had different assignments due, or parts of the lecture opened three times a week (like Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, mimicking the three-lectures-a-week format of a typical three credit class) instead of having everything due by one day. This would facilitate incremental learning and require the student to learn about the material several times per week.

Another reason I think the education suffers is because of the distant nature of the online medium, what Freelance Psych Theorizer Ken calls "digital disconnect." The online lecture is one-way communication; the professor's recording gives you information that you listen to and take notes on, but you have no way of asking questions about concepts you don't understand. The student loses his/her ability for instantaneous feedback from the professor. If they have a question, they are forced to write an email in which words can be misinterpreted, thoughts and questions not adequately articulated. An email-answer to a question is much less effective than a face-to-face conversation with a professor.

I'd also argue -- for this was how I felt -- that communication with the professor is discouraged altogether with an online class. The physical distance from the professor results in a state of mind that makes me less likely to contact the professor because they feel so far away (i.e. "digital disconnect", as Ken put it). This eliminates one of the most effective ways of learning -- one-on-one Q and A's with the professor. Human interaction is all but gone, giving the student a less intimate experience that ultimately leads to them having less accountability in the class. As math major, I could not even fathom what an online math class would be like...

Thus, my take home message is that online classes are just not nearly as effective as classroom lectures. I do appreciate the convenience that online courses offer, and I understand that sometimes this is the only viable option for someone to get an education, and for those purposes it's passable, enough to suit that person's needs. But given the option between an online class and a face-to-face lecture, I would choose the latter 10 times out of 10.

Thanks for reading. If you agree or disagree with what I've said or would like to share your own online class experience, feel free to add a comment or two below and I'll be sure to check them out.

One of my biggest fears...