Evaluating student online learning

Online learning give benefits, but it makes demands too. It requires high motivation. The excitement to slack off looms larger for students studying with little supervision. And despite all the technological aids used in online learning, communicating with course mates and instructors takes more effort.

What we were seeing here and I believe it's a national trend was that students who liked this method of online learning, either out of convenience or necessity, would take a course online, dean of an online learning university said, "but our retention rates were lower than in a traditional classroom."

A student successfully completed all the online learning courses he enrolled in at online degrees, but he had to make sure he never fell too far behind in his work. "That's the biggest problem I had: actually setting aside the time and not getting behind in my work," he says. "It wasn't really a big problem for me, but I could see it easily could be in online classes."

Students less motivated than online associate degree to doctorate degree students might not fare as well. "If you don't have to show up three times a week and look into the professor's eye," it might be easier to let things go and get behind and say, `Oh well, I give up.'" This holds true for both online courses and courses offered at a distance through other means.

A student who does stick with it may have to work harder than students on campus to interact with the instructor and with classmates. Even when online students participate in classes in real time via live broadcast, the interaction has a different quality. "You didn't have the same kind of contact you would with a teacher in a normal classroom," online student says. "You had to be aware there were people in other sites and try not to dominate the teacher's attention."

When both time and distance separate the students and the instructor, communication takes even more effort. Discussing complex subjects via e-mail or discussion boards may require lengthy, typewritten messages. While online learning students labor at the keyboard, traditional students might get the same results with a brief face-to-face conversation.

"When somebody walks up after class and asks a question," says on campus bachelors degree and masters degree student, "you can pull out a piece of paper, and maybe a quick sketch will answer it, whereas the same thing can take several paragraphs to explain in words. The tools for sending figures over the Web are getting better, but it is harder to have good interaction."