Dennis Bayazitov | Assistant News Editor
Featured Image: Students believed online courses were not as effective for learning as being present in a physical classroom. | Dennis Bayazitov
By no means are university and technology strangers.
Whether technology serves to uncover groundbreaking research, create a convivial, accessible atmosphere of student support, for distributing campus news, coordinating event logistics, or to expedite commutes and enrich housing experiences—today, post-secondary institutions empower their students with many more resources than decades of research methods and the learning styles of their grandparents, which have effectively been made obsolete.
Arguably, the most notable of these academic innovations—shouldering the most implications for the learning process itself—is the prevailing adoption of the virtual classroom.
Earlier this month, York Political Science Professor Dr. Thomas Klassen published an opinion piece in the Toronto Star, in which he recounted his own experience teaching an online course, questioning the value and effectiveness of online instruction. For him, this growing trend of student learning was both positive and worrisome.
“Classroom teaching is a visceral live drama with unanticipated questions and debates, doors opening to admit late students, and only one opportunity to reach students and ensure their learning,” Klassen wrote.
However, when it came to teaching online, unlike being center-stage, he likened the process to making a movie.
“I recorded video lectures by superimposing my face onto the corner of presentation slides and graphics.”
For him, recording sessions would take place in his home office at all hours of the day and night. Yet for his students, they could be entertained anywhere in the world, at any moment—watching, listening, and studying at their convenience.
There was no back-and-forth, no confirmation that his pupils were following his anecdotes— Klassen said he rehearsed, edited, and prepared even more so than for live lectures, yet the final product resulted in a less intimate and instinctive learning environment.
“As a digital professor, I felt like a stage actor forced to star in a film.”
However, in spite of the potential anxieties or anticipations this growing trend might stir, there do also still exist more practical and observable implications that reveal its influence on the learning process. In studying these implications, students and professors alike might be better able to evaluate whether or not the value of online education is on par with its ambition.
One specific gain introduced with implementing online education and enabling distance learning is the coordination of “multiple underserved, geographically-isolated individuals to engage with, who might not otherwise be able to attend in-person courses,” explains one Learning with Technology assistant lecturer with the Faculty of Education. He/she wished to remain anonymous.
Meanwhile, several of the most noticeable drawbacks seem to be concerned with how online learning is developed, organized, and presented, and what students are—or are not—invited to do in new online learning environments.
“For example, supporting underserved and/or isolated communities, or individuals who are unable to learn face-to-face,” adds the assistant lecturer.
“It all depends on pedagogy. Face-to-face courses with bad pedagogy are not necessarily better than online courses with good pedagogy.”
Sitting at a currently enrolled populace of approximately 52,300 students, York attracts a diversity of students pursuing a variety of academic fields, all which might require different learning approaches that are better-suited for their respective programs.
“York is a comprehensive, progressive university providing a diverse student population with access to high-quality education in a research-intensive environment,” noted York president Rhonda Lenton in her President’s Message.
As this trend of growing online education is still relatively new, still continuing to spawn novel teaching and assessment styles, learning platforms, and collaborative spaces, there is no way for certain to know the full scope of the positive—or negative—ramifications they might have on the student experience.
Nevertheless, several York students seem to share Klassen’s wariness of online learning— primarily, as to whether or not it is as powerful as learning in a lecture hall.
“Online course options allow students to commit to school at any time, so they can work whenever their employer needs them,” shares Celia Lewin, second-year Biomedical Science student. “In turn, they are able to take advantage of more job opportunities—or more respectable opportunities—that are in their field of interest, such as work in an office, rather than a bar.
“I have taken a few online courses, but I do not believe they are as beneficial as in-class learning.”
Avani Abraham, third-year Biology student, shares a similar view. “Students who are not able to maintain a traditional schedule due to work or personal commitments have the freedom to learn on their own time,” he notes.
“The drawbacks are of course those that come with self-directed learning.
“The freedom gained is a double-edged sword—you have more control due to the less-rigid structure of the course, but that also means you can more easily lose said control and become overwhelmed when procrastinating.”
So far, accessibility, comfort, and flexibility seem to be of the greatest values that online education has to offer.
The installation of such an online education framework—even if not as intimate, immediate, or visceral as a lecture—without a doubt, offers those who otherwise could not attend class with a chance to do so. Also tending to be more inexpensive, such courses may be the more preferable route for lower-to-middle-class families, especially when considering those with student parents.
Dr. William Gage, associate vice president of Teaching and Learning at the Office of the Provost, discusses his own thoughts on the matter.
“Location can limit a person’s access to higher education, and so can time constraints due to, for instance, family and work-related commitments. Online learning can help students overcome those kinds of constraints by creating opportunity for greater flexibility in how a student engages with their education.”
In his piece, Klassen acknowledged that flexibility goes hand-in-hand with such accessibility. Many students find these courses more appealing, as they can now afford opportunities to combine studies with other activities, he mentioned. “Post-secondary education institutions find these courses attractive, because fewer physical assets like classrooms and parking lots are required.”
Klassen also noted that there is, in fact, even a marked decrease in the building of new classrooms in universities and colleges across Canada.
He emphasizes how crucial it is to know for whom—and when—online education works. “From my experience, it does not work well for students just beginning their post-secondary studies.”
He urges first-years to instead opt for in-classroom environments. His rationale: that students need to first comprehend how to learn at an advanced level, and become familiar with conducting research and expressing themselves in a face-to-face setting.
For students who do not prefer informal interaction with colleagues and instructors, Klassen surmises online courses might just be the better choice: “Online education places a premium on written communication: email, chat, blogs, and written assignments.”
Nick Sukhram, a third-year Law and Society student, reflects a similar opinion. “Through online education, more people with diverse circumstances can be educated. A drawback would be the efficiency,” he said.
“Communication between professors in-class versus online will be different. Questions that come to mind are: will the context of the lesson be misunderstood? Are there extra office hours? Will the students and/or professors constantly be monitoring one another’s online activity in order to communicate?”
In any case, the landscape of online education is one that is still young and forming. While students and professors may already have enough experience to decide firmly which of the two they prefer, it is possible that in only a couple of years the landscape will already be radically different.
“The problem right now is that no one knows the value of online courses,” Klassen comments. “Do students learn as much as in classroom courses? Do they learn different skills?”
“My sense is that employers and universities—graduate or professional programs, for example—have not yet come to a conclusion about how to evaluate a student who has studied mostly online.”
As this genre of education continues to unfold, it will be necessary to understand which students need what most. At the end of his Star opinion, Klassen shed light on the area of research to be most glaringly lacking: the types of online education that are most effective for specific, and differing, groups of students.
Gage, for one, appreciates this call to action. “There is always more to learn and I suspect that research will continue to reveal ways to continue improving the methods by which teaching and learning happen,” he says.
He notes one process already in place for locating this very sort of student data that should be useful in the future.
“An area of research called Scholarship of Teaching and Learning seeks to understand, in part, the very questions that Professor Klassen has rightly identified,” Gage responds.
“At York, the Teaching Commons is a hub of such activity. As an educator, something that excites me is the potential in emerging technologies to augment the teacher’s ability to create an increasingly personalized education for students.”
Learning can be just as effective in online courses as in what might be considered traditional face-to-face lecture format, he continues. The greatest value in online courses are “the options that they can afford our students in terms of accessibility.
“Creating more choice for our students is, I believe, a benefit.”
Meanwhile, on the receiving end of such choices, students continued to share how they feel about the commonplace emergence of online education, as well as their own suggestions for improving student-teaching style compatibility.
“We can ask the students if they prefer face-to-face communication, are skilled at research, need physical help from the professor, or are comfortable with using technology,” proposes Abdeali Saherwala, second-year Environmental Studies student. “Before we place them in an online course, we have to assess their online or technical prowess, so they do not get bogged down by the technical aspects of the online university.”
“To add, I believe that all online students should also have to take a course that teaches them about the technological functions.”
Ayesha Boison, a first-year Professional Writing student agrees that creating assessments should be done before signing up or registering for any classes.
“Assessments should involve questions such as: ‘what languages are you fluent in?’ or ‘for how many years have you been going to school?’ and so on.”
Natasha Ali, another second-year Biomedical Science student, prefers the in-class route as well, “because they allow for face-to-face interaction with the instructor, which I like. Also, since there is no predetermined lecture schedule to follow, I feel like online courses make it easier for students to fall behind on the material, as it is their sole responsibility to listen to an online lecture, make notes, and keep up.”
Saherwala also includes a more likely concern: “The drawbacks of online education can be that you might get distracted on the Internet. Rather than doing your assignments or lectures, you might be surfing the web or looking at social media.”
Does this mean that all online courses are but a utility for students who cannot access their lectures, be it because of distance or conflicting schedule reasons? As far as successful learning and knowledge retention is concerned, it does seem that—for the time being—students agree this is true.
Klassen likens it to the beginning of the Internet: “Surely a good thing overall—full of hype, but not well understood and riddled with perplexity.”
Who knows? As online education continues to develop and grow, flirting with the advent that is virtual reality, refurbishing compatibility assessment processes, and implementing more opportunities for two-way feedback and communication, it may full well—much like the Internet—soon become commonplace as a professional necessity.
At any rate, that’s some ways down the line.
For now, though, perhaps online education—much like the Internet—can continue serving as our faithful, virtual companion: as our reason to stay home, and our excuse to not indulge in those presumed dull, in-person social obligations.
