For the past year, students and educators have learned to adapt to virtual learning. Thinking about a return to "normal" begs the question of how online learning compares to traditional face-to-face learning.
In March of 2020, schools across the United States scrambled to navigate the unprecedented shift to virtual learning as the pandemic began to make waves across the country. Educators were forced to redesign their curriculums to fit an online environment in a matter of days. Many students had to modify their learning and studying habits to adapt to taking classes online and from home. We have lived through this distance learning reality for more than a year now, as many of us find watching recorded lectures and meeting for discussions over Zoom to be part of our daily routines now.
However, as Covid-19 cases decrease and vaccination rates increase, we are beginning to see a hint of normalcy returning. Many schools have either already started transitioning back to in-person classes or have made plans to return to normal by the upcoming fall semester. This begs the question of whether we will keep aspects of the online learning model as we make our return.
What is online learning?
We live in an increasingly digital age. In some sense, American schools and universities were as prepared as they could have been to make a quick shift to online learning, simply due to how technology-reliant we already were prior to the pandemic. As students and educators have already lived through more than a year of distance learning, what has it become?
The online learning format looks a bit different for everyone, but online classes generally have some or all of the following three features: asynchronous lectures, synchronous lectures, and synchronous discussions. Asynchronous lectures are the least interactive of the online format, and allow students to watch pre-recorded lectures at their own pace. Synchronous lectures typically involve a teacher or professor delivering content in real time through an online video conferencing platform. Synchronous discussions encourage students to interact with each other or the professor, typically in smaller group sizes.
The benefits of online learning
While an untraditional approach to education, virtual learning does have its merits, especially as individuals become increasingly tech-savvy. For one, an online education allows for more flexibility and convenience. Students and teachers are able to learn and teach from anywhere, provided they have access to the internet and a laptop. Rather than walking or driving to campus, students and educators are able to learn and work from home. Additionally, asynchronous online classes allow students to learn at their own pace and can rewatch lectures as many times as they need.
Ethical implications of online learning
While it may be convenient for students to just wake up and log in to their online 8:00 a.m. course, or for professors to skip the morning and evening commute and just teach from their home office, there are several ethical implications associated with solely online learning. One of the major drawbacks is accessibility, or lack thereof. Not all students have access to high-speed internet, have web cameras built in to their devices, or have a conducive environment to learn or work from home. It is clear that online learning better serves to convenience individuals from advantaged homes, and can act as a stressor or barrier for individuals from already disadvantaged backgrounds.
Another consequence of virtual learning is the possibility of security breaches or unintended guests during synchronous classes. At the start of the nationwide virtual learning experience, most schools and universities turned to the Zoom video conferencing platform to conduct online classes. As Zoom quickly surged in popularity, internet hackers took advantage of its security vulnerabilities and hacked into Zoom meetings and classrooms. These incidents became known as “Zoom bombings.” Schools and companies began to shift to other conferencing platforms as Zoom attended to their privacy and security issues, which have since been improved and updated. However, any virtual conferencing platform has the possibility of security weaknesses, simply due to the nature of the internet.
Comparing performance outcomes of online versus traditional learning
What does research suggest about the learning performance of students who partake in virtual learning versus students who learn in traditional classrooms?
Past research outcomes regarding the comparison of online and in-person learning lean towards face-to-face course delivery being more effective. One study performed in 2012 investigated 34 community and technical colleges to estimate the impact of online versus face-to-face course delivery on student course performance. The sample included 18,567 students. The investigators measured both course persistence and course grades to estimate and compare performance. They focused on courses that had both online and face-to-face options in order to understand the impact within certain courses. The results of this study indicate a student enrolled in the in-person class option performs better than if enrolled in the online option.
This figure above indicates the quantitative results of this study. Students enrolled in face-to-face courses were more likely to remain enrolled in a course and achieve a higher course grade than students enrolled in online courses. Higher course persistence and enrollments are both indications of higher learning performance.
"In practical terms, these results indicate that for the typical student, taking a particular course in an online rather than face-to-face format would decrease his or her likelihood of course persistence by 7 percentage points, and if the student persisted to the end of the course, would lower his or her final grade by more than 0.3 points"
Another related study further examined the performance gap between online and traditional courses, and also investigated how that gap differs across subgroups and academic subject areas. This research looked at nearly 500,000 courses from over 40,000 students from community and technical colleges in Washington state. The results again implied students in face-to-face courses would perform better than students in online courses, but also noted that the performance gap was wider for certain groups. According to the authors, “[the students] with the strongest declines were males, younger students, Black students, and students with lower grade point averages.” Therefore, the ethics of which student demographics reaps the most and least benefits is certainly something to consider in designing or implementing online course curriculum.
"While all types of students in the study suffered decrements in performance in online courses, those with the strongest declines were males, younger students, Black students, and students with lower grade point averages."
The main limitations of these studies include the population sampled and when the research was performed. The population of these studies looked at community and technical colleges, so there is a possibility that the findings do not extend to other forms of post-secondary education. In addition, these studies were published a couple of years ago, and we know that technology and its impact on education has changed tremendously, especially due to the pandemic. As of now, there is not much definitive research that indicates whether learning performance is significantly better between students in online courses versus in-person courses in other forms of post-secondary education, such as four-year colleges and universities. However, we are confident that with the amount of interest and data from students learning through online course models during the Covid-19 pandemic, there will be a plethora of future research that explores the online versus traditional models.
Future of virtual learning?
It will be interesting to see the future of online education, and the extent it will continue to be used in classrooms. While many of us crave the desire to return to normal, face-to-face interactions in the classroom, some of us have also grown accustomed to and maybe even favor the convenience and flexibility provided by online learning. Maybe we will start to see a hybrid model that combines online and traditional learning models, or maybe one will dominate more than the other. Certainly, upcoming research studies based on data from current students learning through the pandemic will help guide educators in the future about how much they plan on incorporating online learning models to their curriculum. As technology continues to be integrated into many aspects of our lives, I am curious to see the extent to which it becomes incorporated into student learning and our educational institutions.