Online Learning May Not Help Those Who Need Help Most

A study by Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars from the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University finds that students perform worse in online courses than they do in traditional ones. This is one of the first comprehensive research efforts aimed at figuring out how such courses compare to the ones taught [...]

The authors looked at the results of more than 40,000 students and their results in nearly 500,000 courses and found that those enrolled in online courses were more likely to drop out or fail compared to their peers taking classes face-to-face with the instructor. What is most worrying is the fact that likelihood of failure wasn’t consistent across all groups. Males, Black students, younger kids and those who already had lower grade-point-average had the widest gap between their performance in online courses and those taught in a typical classroom.

The last finding is a concern because these are broadly the exact demographic groups that the expansion of online learning was supposed to help most.

In tackling the subject, the authors also attempted to understand why up till now, the results of research into online education produced such varied results.

One potential cause for the wide variation in results across studies may lie in the different student populations and course contexts examined in each study. Some populations of students—for example, those with more extensive exposure to technology or those who have been taught skills in terms of time-management and self-directed learning—may adapt more readily to online learning than others . In addition, some academic subject areas may lend themselves to high quality online learning experiences more readily than others and thus may support students more effectively in their efforts to adapt.

The adoption of online education has been – in part – bolstered because it was viewed as a way to deliver education to demographic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in higher education. However, it was exactly those students whose gap in performance between online courses and traditional ones was widest. Which means that the measure that was supposed to battle this kind of academic inequity could – in theory – actually exacerbate it.

The study also found that online course performance also fluctuated by subject. Specifically, the difference in performance in all subgroups was greater in humanities, like English and Social Studies. The authors speculate that these kinds of courses rely on more peer support which is not as present in an online environment.

Comments

Dick Carlson

February 27, 2013 at 11:26 am

Well, without seeing more of the methodology it’s hard to really understand what was learned here. But it’s pretty easy to bet that people have an easier time studying history online than ballet. Or how to hit a baseball. And the QUALITY of the online curriculum has a huge effect on how well the student does, and (surprise!) whether or not they remain engaged and complete the courses.

I’m always amused that people who readily understand that there are great differences between one classroom teacher and another seem to think that every online class is pretty much the same.

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Headlines 2/28/2013 | EdGator

February 28, 2013 at 2:55 am

[...] Online Learning May Not Help Those Who Need Help Most [...]

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Karen Littlefield

February 28, 2013 at 8:51 am

Since the study as presented here doesn’t give us any specifics as to how the curriculum was presented or any relationships to presentation, I have a hard time with the presented results. It appears to me that just as Mr. Carlson suggests, we need to identify the presentation format, the engagement format, and the method of connection provided for the student/teacher connection before we just accept these results as fact. These same formats effect the quality of student success in any educational setting.

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James

March 2, 2013 at 6:03 am

We’ve known for a long time now that failure rates, drop outs, and lower performance are the major struggles of “online” or distance education in general. These can be ameliorated through increased contact with the instructor or more “make work” assignments to keep students engaged or interacting with their peers, but “online” education will always have lower performance through both a self-selection process (those who take these courses are more likely to have competing obligations) and the nature of the medium (multimedia socratic interaction, such as writing while listening and looking with some interaction, is more conducive to “learning” as an activity distinct from yet correlated to “teaching”).

We’ve also known, institutionally, for quite some time now that “online” learning is the worst option for those students who are most likely to prefer it: historically under-performing, historically disadvantaged (in education), and under-represented student groups.

Institutional studies have reliably given these results for a few decades now.

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