The recent opinion piece regarding online courses raises a few misconceptions and fallacies that are worth addressing. First in the Venn diagram of academia, distance-learning courses and online courses are sets that can overlap but neither is exclusively contained within the other. In other words they can be separate ways of conveying information to potential students.
While an online course can often be an asynchronous experience, there are also online courses where, even though the participants are in different locations, a real-time exchange of ideas can and does occur.
A fallacy is put forth by the column that “the quality of education received from a distance (or is it online) course can never be equated to that of the traditional classroom setting.” This makes the assumption that the two were actually intended to be the same. They are not the same, but they can be evaluated to see that they meet the same educational objectives to the same extent.
Another error in the editorial is that “teachers are the factor that make or break a student’s success.” Teachers facilitate learning to the best of our ability, but we are hardly THE factor, because there are many factors and the vast majority of the factors are outside of the control of the instructor.
The biggest misconception is that “online learning (presumably ALL online learning) consists of standardized programs designed to reach a large number of consumers – but standardized programs rest on the assumption that all students are standardized learners”. This is actually two misconceptions rolled into one sentence. Not all online courses consist of standardized programs, and no true educator ever makes the assumption that all students learn the same.
The truth is that online and distance courses can be good or bad, the same as classroom courses. Not every student is cut out for online and distance courses, but many can take these courses successfully. Likewise, not every course could be taught equally effectively as an on-line or distance course. What educators can and should do as a responsible part of offering an online or distance course is to try to make the course meet the same objectives as an in-class course. That means finding ways to not only deliver the material effectively, but also accurately and honestly, assessing how well learning objectives are met for the online or distance course.
Steven Pomarico
University biology professor