Online Classes: Good or bad? Johnathan Carrera. Eng 201

Transcription

1 Online Classes: Good or bad? Johnathan Eng 201

2 One day a junior named Jessica wanted to take an advanced placement (AP) class on biology. One problem, her school did not offer the class she wanted to take. Not to be deterred Jessica found a school that would allow her to take the class she wanted and it would count for credit at the school she was attending. The reason why this story is interesting is the school that Jessica found was an internet based high school. (Karen Nitkin, 2009) Not everyone is faced with attending two different high schools to take the classes they want and need, but the decision on whether or not to take a traditional lecture class or to choose the new online class is becoming more and more frequent in school life. The first time I had to make this decision was when I entered college when I couldn t get a lecture class to fit my schedule. It was an experience that I was not prepared for, the work was difficult, I didn t feel like there much guidance from the teacher, and sometimes it was hard to understand what the assignment wanted me to do. I passed the class with a B and I did learn, but I felt somehow that I didn t get as much out of the class as I would have with a traditional lecture class. This has led me to wonder: Are online classes a suitable substitute for a lecture class? Freedom Usually college students who take an online class the first time is because of situations similar to mine, they cannot find a lecture class on the subject they want at a time they want. Kate Clifford, a freshman, told me that it was either take an online class and have it fit the schedule, or wait and possible take another semester of school. (Johnathan, personal conversation, 2012) The reason that students continue to take online classes is because they either are still trying to fit that schedule or they really enjoy that kind of learning atmosphere. A

3 big part of the learning atmosphere is being able to study the material or even go over the lecture whenever they want to. This is a lot of flexibility in a class and after doing her own study on the online class Sue Mahoney, Associate professor at the University of Houston, said that Flexibility was the main reason participants enrolled in the online classes. The online classes allowed participants to have more control over their school and work schedules. (2009). the online class makes it that the student is more in charge of their environment and can do things on their terms. This flexibility that college students find can also be the same thing that some high school students need. Online classes also have the power to help those students who are going to drop out of school. The article Online Classes can Increase Learning also point out reasons that students dropped out included the need to make money, to care for a family member, to raise a child, or because academic challenges caused them to fail or fall behind due to a lack of earlier preparation. These are kids could benefit greatly from the flexibility of an online class. Girls who through a mistake have to drop out of school in order to raise a child, boys who have to get a job because of economic hardships of the family require him to get one (John Bridgeland, 2008). These kids are going through decisions that could and do effect the rest of their life. These decisions to drop out will affect the amount of money they could make in the future, what kinds of employment they could have. Raising the Bar

4 Online classes can also help the students who are also trying to get ahead in school. Going back to the first example with Jessica, it allowed her to be able to take a higher level of learning class than her physical school offered. In the article Online Classes Can Increase Learning it laid out a few things that lead to students dropping out or not doing as well as they could. The article points out Most students said that their classes were uninteresting and lacked opportunities for "real world" learning, so the students lost interest in going to school (Unknown, 2009). By giving students like Jessica the chance to be able to try harder it makes it so that she will want to come to class, and that she will want to learn more, is that not what school is supposed to encourage students to do? With things like No Child Left Behind focusing on the educational needs of low-achieving children in our Nation's highest-poverty schools, limited English proficient children, migratory children, children with disabilities, Indian children, neglected or delinquent children, and young children in need of reading assistance; (US Dept. of Ed., 2001) it does not leave a lot of focus on the children who are exceptional and need help going farther. Form Verses Function The next question to look at is: Does it matter how the students receive the information as long as they receive it? At Brigham Young University Idaho (BYU-I) one of the classes that all students need to take is Family Foundations (Rel 200). All of the classes in the course are on the same sort of schedule. A unit is started with a Large Group Meeting where all the students in the course gather and listen to a speaker talk about an area of the course. After that the next few weeks are devoted to studying about the speaker spoke on. The homework assignments are

5 lectures given from various people on the unit, the classes are discussions about what was in the homework, eventually there is a test on the subject and the cycle starts over again. While this cycle is going on the students are required to study and memorize a document titled The Family: A Proclamation to the World. What makes this interesting is when the online class is compared to the lecture class. Both classes cover the same material, both classes watch a speaker. What really makes the biggest difference between the two classes is the amount of work and time that goes into them. A lecture class meets twice a week for an hour. If you factor in homework that would add another hour to two hours of homework making it about three to four hours of work a week. Students who take the online class can finish their work in two to three hours of work. What causes the difference? By not meeting physically as a class the students can save more time. Austin Allen, a freshman attending the online class, loves having that extra hour of time. He says that it allows me [him] to be able to devote more time to other classes. That I[he] can focus on more important things then having to sit through a boring class. (Johnathan, personal communication, June 26, 2012). Kyle Baer, a sophomore at BYU-I) said that he was counseled by his wife to take the online class because then I[he] wouldn t have to do as much work. (Johnathan, personal communication, June 24, 2012). Both of these students took the class at different times and both had the same belief of less work for the same amount of credits is a smart idea. Both were also pretty happy about not having to memorize the six hundred word document as well. Class Involvement

6 I have talked with different students about online classes there has been the same recurring complaint: They do not like the online class because they do not feel involved in the work. The students feel like they do not get as much out of the class as possible. The things that contribute to this are also the things that make give the online class so much strength and support. The benefits of the online class are the flexibility of when and where you work If the student works in an mindset of wanting to work hard and do good they will, and if the student decides to brush off the work then they will not do as well as others. The online class really calls for the student to be more proactive in their work. The more proactive they are the more they get out of the class, when students are not as proactive it can really hurt the grades of the class. One article pointed out that online students reported engaging in fewer interactions with other classmates, devoted less time to studying, and expended less study effort. (Yan Yang, Yoon Jung Cho, Susan Mathew, and Sheri Worth, 2011). In different study the researcher also found a correlation between participation and how effective the students felt the class was. It showed the same kind of results of the students who participated more in the class felt that the class was effective and they felt it was a good class. On the reverse side, the students who did not participate felt that the class not effective and that it did not help (William Drago, Jimmey Peltier). Both of these studies show that it is the student that decides how effective the class is, not the form of the class. One of the reasons that students feel that they might not need to be active in their online class is they feel that it the class will be easy. Rob Eaton, an associate academic vice president who oversees online learning at BYU-I, says this is the number one complaint we get about online courses is that they re more challenging than people thought. (Sarah Eyering, 2012). He

7 says that the students who take online classes assume that they have to be easier than lecture and class and they are not. Yes the classes are more streamlined than a lecture class but that does not mean that the students are getting a free grade for no work. This problem though is not with the online class, but with the how the students treat class. If we confuse the two we might end up like the teacher who wrote this to his newspaper Teachers are experiencing situations in which students who are failing their courses are registering for the identical class available online simultaneously. Motivating these students who are receiving credit at home regardless of their performance in the classroom is challenging at best. We also feel that the option of taking courses online has diminished the importance of passing the courses we teach. Students often tell us things like, "Well, it doesn't matter if I pass this class or not because I'll just take it online this summer." By providing them with this "easy out," the Florida virtual system has left us with plenty of carrots but few sticks (Ron Simons, 2012) The online class is not intended to be a get out of jail free card for students. It is supposed to be a tool to help the students achieve more in school, but whenever there is a product or service there will be those that try and use it for something other than what it was intended for. Sue Mahoney says that Students expectations influenced their perceptions and performance in the online learning environment. Students get expectations from previous online course experience, and on what others had told them. This is not a problem with the class itself but a

8 problem with how people approach the class. Mahoney also says Because students often feel that the online classroom can never be as good as a traditional one, they do not perceive the online classroom as being a legitimate learning environment. If the students would take an online class as serious as they would a lecture class this would not be a problem. Online Classes can be an acceptable substitute for a lecture class. They are not going to replace the lecture class entirely and they were never meant to. However, they will help close the gap between the students who are in danger of failing, and helping the students who want more out of their school life. Now when I hear students complain about their online class I have to wonder if they are taking the class seriously and giving it the attention it deserves.

9 Citation Drago, W., & Peltier, J. (2004). The effects of class size on effectiveness of online courses.. [ Management Research Review, 27(10), John Bridgeland (Director). (2008).[Video/DVD] Mahoney, S. (2009). MINDSET CHANGE: Influences on student buy-in to online classes. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 10(1), Online Classes Can Increase Learning. (2009). In R. Espejo (Ed.), At Issue. Has Technology Increased Learning?. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from The Education Innovator, 2008, February 29, 6) Online Classes Can Increase Learning. (2009). In R. Espejo (Ed.), At Issue. Has Technology Increased Learning?. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from The Education Innovator, 2008, February 29, 6) RUSH TO ONLINE CLASSES ILL-ADVISED. (2012, June 4). Tampa Bay Times [St. Petersburg, FL], p. 10A. Yang, Y., Cho, Y., Mathew, S., & Worth, S. (2011). College student effort expenditure in online versus face-to-face courses: The role of gender, team learning orientation, and sense of classroom community. Journal of Advanced Academics, 22(4), doi: / x