The efficacy of on-line learning just depends on who you ask | Opinion

As a professional educator in high school and college classes, I yearned to meet education experts with only one arm so they cannot keep saying “On the other hand.” No matter what the issues are, researchers can find consultants that subscribe to one educational theory just as easily as finding others that argue just the opposite.

Nowhere is this more obvious than analyzing student performance in online classes compared to traditional in-person classes. A report by the Public Policy Institute of California evaluated student outcomes in online classes and in-person classes in the California Community College System.

The research often found contradictory results. For example, short-term learning outcomes for students in online classes are poor, but the long term outcomes are not.

Students are less likely to complete online classes than a traditional class and they are less likely to complete the online class with a passing grade. Lower success rates are evident across the curriculum and the different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Online class success rates are between eleven and fourteen percentage points lower than in traditional classes.

The data show that Latino students are less likely than other racial groups to take online classes. Similarly, males are less likely to enroll in online classes than females.

Success rates are lower in online classes than traditional classes. About 60.4% of students in online classes complete the course with a passing grade compared to 70.6% for students in traditional classes.

Online learning exacerbates achievement gaps across racial groups. The achievement gap between white and African American students is 12.9% in in-person classes compared to 17.5% for students in online classes. Students are less likely to succeed in all academic subjects in online classes than in traditional classes.

That is the essential problem: How effective are online classes? Recently, many colleges have implemented hybrid classes whereby online instruction is supplemented by in-person classes. According to a report in the US News and World report, early analyses have found that students in these hybrid classes have better success than either online or in-person classes.

A more fundamental difficulty is that our educational system keeps trying to measure two things that cannot be measured: learning and effort. Despite our best intentions, we can only measure student performance under a specific set of circumstances. Students who are sick with long-term covid will not perform as well as they would when they are healthy. A college student who takes an exam when he is recovering from a night of binge drinking will not perform well. A student who missed the lectures on the ideal gas laws will not do as well as one who attended the lecture.

The professor cannot be sure who is actually doing the work for the online classes. Students at BCTC who take math classes online are required to take a proctored in-person final exam. Unsurprisingly, some students admitted that someone else did the assignments which caused them to fail the final and the class.

Students in public schools often have other challenges that negatively impact their performance. For far too many students, the only meals they ate were the breakfast and lunch at school. When the pandemic closed the public schools, I am sure kids went hungry.

In my years teaching public schools, I was required by law to report several cases of sexual or physical abuse. If students are enrolled in online classes, who would be able to report abuse?

A huge advantage of in-class instruction is the opportunity for social interaction with a wide diversity of students. Sadly, many school shootings were committed by students who felt disenfranchised or persecuted. Online classes exacerbate those feelings and foster paranoia.

Taking online classes requires much more self-disciple than in-person classes. My experience from teaching high school and college mathematics classes revealed that many students enrolled in online classes lack the self- discipline to be successful. Students in online classes often fail to complete assignments on time and found that they cannot catch up.

The best answer to the question of which is better: online or in-person classes is “It depends.” Each pedagogical model has its strengths and weaknesses. Suppose Mary and Bob go to an ice cream parlor where Mary orders butter pecan and Bob orders strawberry. Who made the right choice? Both of them chose the. one they like best. Some motivated students will do fine in online classes, but weaker students are better served by in-class instruction. One size does not fit all.

As H.L. Mencken said: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Roger Guffey is a retired teacher in Fayette County.