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Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some student

Very favorable comments all around from the very online crowd who comments here. I’m much more skeptical. I have no doubt this will work well for some students, but as someone who taught online for the better part of two years I can say with certainty that the experience is very different and (for the wide majority of students) worse than being in person. My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (ie., forgetting specific subject matter information) and a loss of broader “studying skills” (ie., coming to class and doing homework) after the pandemic. In intro classes in our department, mean grades have been a whole standard deviation lower than the long run pre-pandemic average. That’s a huge effect! This is also not just specific to our department or university but has been written about widely in the higher ed press. People have been confidently predicting that online education “is the future” since the 1990’s. IMO the lesson of the pandemic is “no it’s not and it’s never going to be.” If online works for you, awesome. Enjoy! There are great resources out there. But I don’t think you are in the majority.

WinstonSmith84 4y ago
Maybe there is a difference with kids which have been used to get online schooling from the very beginning and others who suddenly have to study remotely. And then, it may also depend on your family situation at home such as having an independent, quiet room or a noisy shared room .. ?
PretzelPirate 4y ago
We’re researchers able to separate the negative effects on children of online learning from the negative effects from other causes such as global panic and uncertainty, the inability to see friends, etc…?
- deleted 4y ago
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- MrBlueIncognito 4y ago
  > the inability to see friends At least that last factor is directly correlated with online learning. Also I know from experience that most students in online classes aren’t even actively listening. A good chunk of them end up on YouTube or Instagram.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    My experience in a physical classroom in the pre-smartphone era is much the same: a good chunk of the students are spacing off throughout any given lecture. At that time it was passing notes, doodling, or just staring out the window rather than online distractions. It might be worth considering whether synchronously sitting in a lecture with 30 other kids isn't, in fact, a good model for learning in any environment, online or otherwise.
    - a9h74j 4y ago
      > in a physical classroom ... a good chunk of the students are spacing off throughout any given lecture Think of a meeting of 30 people in your own office environment and wonder how many people are spacing out at any given moment.
  - PretzelPirate 4y ago
    > At least that last factor is directly correlated with online learning. Unless they live in rural settings, it’s likely a very loose correlation. When I was a kid, I grew up in a neighborhood in a walkable town and my friends and I saw each other everyday, though we went to different schools or were in different grades at the same school. I later moved to a rural area for high school and only saw people at school due to how far away we all lived from each other. In the first situation, I suspect online learning would have been great for me since I could do it at home and I’d still have plenty of social interaction without the downside of hauling books between classes, sitting in an uncomfortable classroom environment, and largely not paying attention since there wasn’t any way for the teacher to track my participation in a large class. I’m not sure how physical education would have worked at that time, but maybe fitness trackers help with that nowadays. I do suspect that online learning isn’t great for lower income households since they may not have dedicate space set up for learning, and it would be a shame to create yet another class difference in education.
ekanes 4y ago
> My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (ie., forgetting specific subject matter information) and a loss of broader “studying skills” (ie., coming to class and doing homework) after the pandemic. No disagreement that grades are lower, but is it possible we are in some ways measuring the wrong things? In a modern age, “remembering information” or “doing homework” don’t seem so applicable to the future. Being in person can be important, but it’s for mostly social reasons, not the ones you stated.
- huitzitziltzin 4y ago
  > but is it possible we are in some ways measuring the wrong things? No disagreement, but we were measuring the same things pre- and post-pandemic. The negative effect on those measured outcomes is very real. It is possible that if we were measuring the "right things" (whatever those are) we might see no effect. A priori that's a little implausible IMO but I'm willing to entertain the argument! > In a modern age, “remembering information” or “doing homework” don’t seem so applicable to the future. Strong disagree on "remembering information is not applicable to the future." I partially concede on "doing homework", but honestly there is no other way to make the students attempt to apply the material they learn, and no way for them to understand what they don't understand except by attempting to apply it! Homework might suck, but there is a good reason everyone uses it!
- itronitron 4y ago
  It would be nice to know whether, and at what grade levels, standardized test scores have been affected as I am inclined to believe that the standardized test scores (i.e. SAT) have remained stable.
freemint 4y ago
> In intro classes in our department, mean grades have been a whole standard deviation lower than the long run pre-pandemic average. Have you ever considered that the digital teaching methods you employed are subpar compared to those a dedicated online only teaching platform might have. I don't mean to suggest you did not try.
- itronitron 4y ago
  > a dedicated online only teaching platform Can you provide links to any?
- huitzitziltzin 4y ago
  I think it's obvious that the digital teaching methods we employed were not effective, but there was no information available at all about what worked. Also: we tried many different things. Certainly I did! Moreover (as I replied to a different comment above) even after a year of being online the students were unable to identify things that made any of their online classes work. At that point they had resigned to their classes sucking. (Not just my class - I asked my students to tell me what worked in any of their online classes. Collectively that's asking about the teaching methods of a few hundred professors.) If you have information about some methods which work, I would have loved to have them. I would still love to have them! (If you can provide some evidence about whether and how they are known to work that would be better still.)
  - freemint 4y ago
    I don claim to have a good answer but i would ask myself a chain of questions: Were learning materials which cover the required material made available to students? Were those materials made available on an approachable platform? Were those materials made available on a platform which encouraged habit formation for students to work on the material? Are students able to track their progress? Are students able to confirm their progress and check with where they are supposed to be if the exam dates are fixed? Is the progress of student embedded into a (meta) narrative which ties together the lecture and provides topical humor (like a lecturer would when cleaning the blackboards)? Are means in place to ensure passive diffusion of important information if students are stuck? Are means in place to encourage or enforce formation of student learning groups and cooperation between students? The traditional lecture hall model has a lot of mechanism which need to be replicated in the digital sphere.
phphphphp 4y ago
The lesson is that education is not one size fits all, something we’ve “known” for a long time: anyone predicting online is the future (or isn’t the future) is missing out on that crucial piece. Online should be the future for people who grow best with online learning, in person learning should be the future for people who grow best with in person learning. I’d also argue that online school during the pandemic, like remote work during the pandemic, is not representative of online school during non-pandemic times.
sandworm101 4y ago
In person is obviously better for actual learning. I went to highschool before online was an option. But a few years ago I was talking to a kid who had the option to do classes online, at their own pace. They were free to take final exams whenever they wanted. If I could complete classes like that I would probably have finished highschool in a couple months. I might not have "learned" as much, but who here actually learned anything inside a highschool classroom? If all you are really doing is box-ticking and passing exams, online learning is definitely the way to go. Let the kids move at their own pace. Let them get out from under the highschool system so they can go onto somewhere where they can actually learn real material. That said, my highschool did teach, more forced, me to read vast volumes very quickly. That skill really helped at various levels later. But that can be taught in other ways than sitting in a classroom slowly memorizing Shakespeare.
- mattmcknight 4y ago
  School would be vastly improved by the ability to pre-test out of topics or subjects. I actually went to an elementary school that let you do that for math and it was great.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    Walking into a classroom and telling the teacher that you have already passed the final exam, that you are done with the class and will no longer be attending their class ... that is basically highschool fantasy.
  - waterhouse 4y ago
    The fact that this isn't common is mind-boggling to me. If a student can prove that they know the subject well enough that them sitting in that class would be a waste, then why does anyone think it's a good idea to make them continue sitting in that class? My first guess is "there are some pushy parents who will want their kid to be in a higher class even when their kid isn't qualified for it". The answer to this is, have a rigorous test and a high standard for skipping a class. My second guess is "teachers have a general stance of not wanting to make any 'concessions' to parents, otherwise that will attract more pushy parents". (I did once have a math teacher who said "If I let you ... then I'd have 100 parents wanting the same for their kids.") So... keeping a strong negotiating position for the teachers is more important than doing right by individual students. I think the answer is that, ultimately, the people making decisions about children's education don't have strong incentives to make it go well. If the kid sits in class bored but not causing trouble, that doesn't create a problem for the teacher or the principal; if the kid is enthusiastically learning in the next-level class, that might be nice for that teacher, but on average likely won't make a huge difference—and actually the teacher whose class the kid came from will get a replacement student who might need help, so that teacher may be genuinely disincentivized to recommend the kid's advancement, even aside from the "negotiating position" aspect.
VMtest 4y ago
Online learning is for those who can take advantage of it and accelerate their learning or manage better their time For those who couldn't stand it should stay behind by attending classes physically
bnralt 4y ago
In my experience, in-person educators often do a rather poor job with online education. There's often a lot of effort to emulate in-person learning, instead of an acceptance that online education is its own thing. They also often approach online education with a bias against it, which I doubt helps things. In-person educators trying to do online learning, getting poor results, and then saying it's the fault of online education is a bit like a YouTube educator teaching in person classes, doing poorly, and then declaring that in-person education is inferior. Also worth noting that students who have spent years being conditioned with in-person learning might have an adjustment period when starting online education, one that might not go smoothly if it's happening during a crisis and guided by people inexperienced with and predisposed against this form of education.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  This is a really important insight and I think everyone should take note of it for pedagogy going forward for the next years
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  In both online and inperson, a major choke point occurs when students get stuck on a problem and have nowhere to go to get help, or when students don't get useful feedback after submitting their work. This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. I imagine a huge factor is also parental involvement, when it comes to encouraging students to set aside several hours each night for study and homework. In the absence of parental involvement or in cases of parental neglect and indifference (woefully common in many situations), the role of the teacher becomes far more important in encouraging the student to develop good study habits. This might be more difficult in the online situation.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    That's why you should use a "flipped classroom" model, to focus in-person effort on these limited chokepoints. That still leaves everything else that can largely be done non-interactively and at the best pace for each student.
richardw 4y ago
Some students have terrible teachers and an excellent online supplement can’t hurt. Living in South Africa, we have a huge difference between the best private schools and the worst public schools. It would be nice to know that every child in the world has at least a base level of education available that reduces “quality of your teacher” as a variable. Obviously this assumes they’re able to learn remotely. I realise that’s not everyone. That doesn’t mean this has no value. I had extra lessons that were part recorded (so I could rewind etc) and tests with a teacher who could help guide through aspects I didn’t understand. Improved three symbols in one year with about a solid week of study over each holiday. Self study worked very well for me, as a supplement.
rendall 4y ago
Are you sure this effect isn't a combination of the in-person education culture, developed over centuries, having difficulties adjusting to a new paradigm; and the measures themselves (e.g the skill of "coming into class") not being appropriate for the new paradigm?
tkgally 4y ago
One minority data point here. I teach at a university in Japan. I have been teaching my classes exclusively online—live using Zoom—for more than two years, and overall the experience has been better than with the in-person classes I taught for many years before. The class discussions have been meatier and more focused than in person, and the students have been turning in better papers. I recognize that the results would be different in other situations. I am fortunate to teach small classes of motivated students with good study skills. And as one of the “very online crowd,” I might have been able to adapt to online teaching better than some others. But the big revolution of online learning is the opportunity it gives for people to take part in interactive classes regardless of their location. Yesterday I taught a graduate seminar with fourteen students, eight in Japan and six in China, including two in lockdown in Shanghai. Everyone was able to take part actively. Starting next Monday, my other graduate class will shift from afternoon to morning Japan time so that a student who is in Mexico and unable to return to Japan can take part in real time. This past Monday, one of the other students in that class was in COVID quarantine near Narita Airport but was able to participate fully in class. Until recently, it was assumed that the only way to conduct interactive classes in real time was for the teacher and students to all be in the same physical location. If students couldn’t get to campus for whatever reason, they were excluded. Online education opens up educational opportunities for many people who couldn’t participate before.
- huitzitziltzin 4y ago
  Please tell me your secret. Is there anything you do differently, relative to in person? Or do you just end up with a selected sample of super motivated students? This in particular: > The class discussions have been meatier... is a literal miracle. I think it might be this: > I am fortunate to teach small classes of motivated students with good study skills. I teach an honors and a regular section of one of my classes. The honors students (who are more serious and motivated in general) definitely are affected less. If you are teaching grad students that is also not going to be representative of the overall population. Those guys are definitely in the right tail of motivation.
  - tkgally 4y ago
jamal-kumar 4y ago
Damn I spent the whole pandemic reading books and doing my best to get ahead as such How did everyone else mess it up so bad? I'm just reading this and thinking back to my resolve to use this time as positively as possible, like study and doing my best with savings was the most obvious thing at the time to me Might be something to do with me living in the third world and adaptation culture being different
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > How did everyone else mess it up so bad Kids. A different set of mental-health challenges. Being worried about losing their job. Being more dependent on their non-coliving family than you are. Being more worried about their family than you are. Having a job that they're not used to doing online. Having a job that's hard to do online. Having a job that couldn't be done online. Being deprived of life-long hobbies and interests that can't be done online or in the home. etc etc.
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    So get into finance options where the effort->profit ratio is way more favorable as a hedge against all of what you mentioned or you and your entire family will suffer is what you're saying, in the most positive interpretation possible
mymythisisthis 4y ago
I see private tutors enrolling kids into Khan Academy and helping them pass the Khan Academy math courses. You get tutor help for your child, at the same time get some formal credit in the process. Khan Academy has very strong brand recognition. Many parents pay to have their child tutored. Partially because the quality of math teachers in high school is random (some are very good, others are not). Partially because one on one help is always very useful.
mattmcknight 4y ago
I think the key advantage of this kind of method is that rather than proceeding at a single pace, the students can stay on a topic until they master it, and then move on. It's kind of a way of ensuring every student gets at least a 90% in a course, but the amount of time it takes them to get there can vary. While this is obviously a little more difficult in a classroom format, I have seen it done in the 80s completely offline for math where the whole grade of students take a bunch of pretests at the beginning of the year (including the tests for the prior year material) and then are assigned to two week groups or classes for the topics they need. After two weeks, they get a post test. If they haven't passed at 90%, they stay in that topic until they complete it. If they have, they move on to the next topic. It got a little complicated as a few people were in groups that went down to one person after a while, and they were just giving me worksheets and then I would ask if I had a question, but I was able to proceed at more than 2x the normal pace for a few glorious years. So, maybe doing the Khan Academy thing in the building, where you have a supervisor there to keep kids on task and prevent cheating, as well as ample people to whom one can ask questions, could be a net improvement.
itronitron 4y ago
Not many people here are distinguishing between online learning and online classrooms. In my experience from observing my own children who universally despise online classes, Khan Academy has been excellent (with the exception of their Physics curriculum which is a complete mess.) I have no doubt that if I enrolled them in the 'classes' that they would absolutely hate it, especially based on that Daily Seminar image that looks like a Zoom meeting. With the shift to enrolled classes it seems like they are pivoting towards the Educational Industrial Complex, which is unfortunate. That discourages me from donating to them again. Although I am always happy to pay for quality learning material and workbooks I'm not interested in supporting online classrooms.
Bedon292 4y ago
While there certainly have been some negative outcomes as far as grades go. There have also been studies saying that school going online has improved the mental health of some students [1]. There was a decrease in anxiety, and a decrease in the severity of depression. Students who had lower wellbeing pre-pandemic were the ones who saw a significant increase in wellbeing going to school online. Now this is speculation on my part but the students who may be suffering from bullying (leading to that anxiety and depression) now have more control of their environment and connections. Its easy to ignore someone typing in some chat room (and maybe even mute them entirely) that you can't ignore when they are physically in the same location as you. And I know being able to control my environment, and fidget or move around, or whatever I want to do allows me to work better than being stuck in some classroom bored and daydreaming. So for certain people there are definitely positive outcomes. Even if they are a minority. And a service like this might be a great asset to those people. [1] https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-Peoples-Mental-Health-during-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-Report.pdf https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-Peo...
daneelsan 4y ago
There is a difference between online education because there is no other way as there is a pandemic (are the students and the institution ready to switch to online, are the courses even designed to be imparted online, etc.), and online education because it's a choice.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
> If online works for you, awesome. Enjoy! There are great resources out there. But I don’t think you are in the majority. I think this is exactly it. In person never worked for me. I was bored - and being bored I ended up with “discipline issues.” I would never do my homework, never pay attention in class, was always late because I was talking in between sessions, etc. My teachers weren’t a fan, the administrators weren’t fans, parents were upset. Every year, starting in 2nd grade, at the end of the school year I was given “token” exercises as a way of getting passing grades so I wouldn’t be held back. I’d knock those out and continue on. At the time I was thankful to the instructors for giving me that opportunity. In retrospect I’m fairly confident I know why that happened. Every year we were administered state achievement exams. The school was evaluated based on the students performance on these tests. While I was failing every subject, I carried the class (scoring at least 10% higher on the exam than the next highest grade) every year. Holding me back would have raised quite a few questions about their curriculum. Fast forward to 12th grade. I drop out of in-person school and switch to online. My in-person school refuses to release my records (we owed them money) so I was starting 12th grade with no credits. The online program was self paced. I knocked out 3 years of eduction in 3 months. Then turned 18, walked downtown and took the GED instead of finishing the last year. Self paced education is huge for certain people. Every once in a while I think of all the kids in the world who could achieve so much with their youth, but instead they are strapped to a chair being tortured 7+ hours a day by well intentioned adults.
mynegation 4y ago
Counterpoint to your counterpoint: I think it is wonderful and we need more of these! It may not work for everyone but the important thing is that it may and will work for someone for whom other options are not available or subpar. I grew up in a small backwater-ish city and school was useless, outside of socializing. By far, the most important thing I did for my education was enrolling into a distance learning physics and technology school managed by one of the nation's top technical universities. You would receive learning materials and exercises several times during the school year by snail mail (yes, I am that old) and send your answers back for grading. Whatever I am and the life I have started with this.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
I'm sure online teaching is worse than in person teaching, at least the way most online teaching is done now. But who is the target audience here? I was homeschooled for many years and the parent doing my teaching was not very effective. I'm positive that this online teaching would be better than that was. In fact, my homeschool friends who did remote video courses (as close as you could get to online at the time) were much better at many subjects than I was. I don't think its online vs in person. It's online vs nothing or online vs shitty teaching.
adamsmith143 4y ago
But how are actual outcomes? I'm less concerned with how someones grades look in high school and more interested in how they perform in College for example.
david927 4y ago
> If online works for you, awesome ... But I don’t think you are in the majority. I think there's a huge under-served group who are specifically not the majority. Smart kids are generally held back by being shoehorned in with other kids. Personally, I think we need to figure out how to use online resources best and that the future will most certainly be a mix. But also please entertain that maybe the optimal audience for this program isn't the majority at all, actually. And that doesn't make it less valuable.
- ravedave5 4y ago
  This is exactly my daughter, she thrived online when her teachers posted a weeks material at a time she'd be done by wednesday. She was so happy she could work at her own pace and didn't have to wait for other kids.
  - tombert 4y ago
    I'm a bit similar. I always did poorly in school working at the pace that the teachers wanted me to go. I would do well on the tests, but always had awful grades because I didn't do all my homework. When I discovered WGU 1.5 years ago, I did much better simply by being allowed to go at whatever pace I felt like, and taking time off when I felt like it, and I managed to get through school in a fairly short amount of time. I'm doing online graduate school now, and fortunately my supervisors are somewhat amenable to this style; they simply give me a bunch of recordings of their lectures and all the assignments that I'm expected to do all at once. Some days I don't do anything, other days I'll spend six hours straight watching lectures and doing homework.
- zoom6628 4y ago
  Couldnt agree more. I personally prefer to study alone, and even my MBA i chose a program where class-time(f2f or online) was optional. I did none and still passed. Have recently watched my daughter respond quite differently in online learning in group environments. One is Wingchun( a martial art) taught by enthusiastic and outright funny instructors. My little girl loves every minute of class. The other is oddly-enough Montessori class where she feels held back by other kids and their chatter. But she LOVES the IRL Montessori classes. I feel that this form of online high school wont be for everyone but there is a segment of those for whom this medium suits them best due to combination of circumstance, motivation, and personality. Education is not 'one mode suits all'. I struggled to stay engaged at high school. Tertiary wasnt much better until i discovered extra-mural (distance education), and loved it.
la6472 4y ago
There is some truth to it but teachers and professors who do not support online mode of teaching also work to undermine it for your own vested interest aka job security. I am sure a online school or class can do their own study and produce opposite results.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
My experience with professors and the concept of "study skills" is that there is often a skewed perception of how students should learn that is colored by their own experience. Many of my classmates did not regularly go to lectures, and most of them did very well. When they struggled in a class or the teacher was a good lecturer, they went. Professors who cared were often the ones who never missed a lecture themselves. This could be an indication that the traditional yardsticks of who is a "good student" are breaking down. I would also chalk up the students generally being less organized to the stress of the situation, rather than a degeneration of study skills.
pbreit 4y ago
I don't think any of this is necessarily true and I hope few believe this at this point.
lodi 4y ago
I despise the notion that "real communism has never been tried!", but real online teaching has, uhh, never been tried. The futuristic dream: kids use fancy tech like AR goggles and haptic tech to manipulate shapes in a collaborative learning game and ultimately learn math in an intuitive way. Think of the best Jypiter notebook you've seen and then take that off the screen and into the real world. Then add an AI assistant that constantly guides you through common questions and make it so that the whole program is continually being refined to make it better and better for each successive generation of kids. Every lesson has tens of millions of dollars poured into it since it will be reused potentially billions of times. The practical dream: okay we don't have money for any of that, but at least use the internet to break geographic constraints. Have actual math teachers teaching math to various classes around the country/world, have actual music teachers teaching music, immediately direct gifted kids to accelerated classes, have more flexibility with special needs kids (e.g. take classes in a different time zone so that their parents can help), offer a wide selection of second languages by connecting kids to foreign teachers, do virtual exchanges, etc. The reality: most kids don't even have computers. Actually I was shocked to learn that many kids don't even have chairs and desks at home. This is in Canada by the way. My wife was teaching K-8 online classes to kids lying on their beds, propping up their mom's borrowed iphone on their bellies, trying to not fall asleep as the front camera streams a dimly-lit view of their chin. So to summarize, we start with the same in-person learning, from the same teachers to the same class, remove all of the blackboards/manipulatives/etc., reduce the child's field of view to a 6" screen streaming a laggy 480p video with horrible sound, delete all friendships by enforcing quarantine both during and after school, and finally conclude that online learning doesn't work!
- gabelschlager 4y ago
  It doesn't even need to be that complicated. Starting out with good software that tracks exercise progress of the students, giving them exercises on a suitable level and immediate feedback would already go a long way. And teachers could use it to see, how the students perform and know what to teach in more detail.
- kelvinquee 4y ago
  We do exactly this at the startup [1] that I'm running. Depending on their level and the equipment they have, young children learn Chinese online with native teachers using Zoom on their phones or StoryLand (eg Gather) on their laptops. Many commenters have mentioned that socialisation and its associated obligations are beneficial to learning, and this is what we are reminded of everyday among our students. Kids learn best when they see other kids learn. And kids learn best when they are able to directly apply what they learn into a project that they own. We enable our own students to publish their own books and to perform in musicals that they produce. Many online education companies fail because they think that all online education ("edTech") is simply digitising the school. It's not. To succeed, we need to think deeply about what online and physical education does best. Hit me up if you want to learn more. [1]: https://storychopsticks.com https://storychopsticks.com
gcheong 4y ago
I'm curious how something like Chemistry is going to work. I was able to take 3 years of it at my high school and can't imagine not having a full hands-on lab component as part of the experience.
bstar77 4y ago
You are correct, applying traditional education methods to online/home school is unlikely to work well. Concepts like "homework" are generally obsolete at the home school level. Independent learning replaces the antiquated idea that our children need to be preoccupied with boring, grindy work when they are out of the "classroom". Children will have plenty of time to grind when they get older. Building a love for learning is 100x more important than rote memorization. The child's age is also significant... I certainly would not have a child under 12 working under the the same expectations as a teenager. Additionally, every child develops at a different rate, so finding that sweet spot is an important part of home schooling. These are all things that the public school mentality finds incredulous. So I agree with what you are saying, but so many people still think the model for home school should be the same as a public/private school situation, which is where things fall apart. It's obvious to me that children always need to be well socialized and have a variety of teachers and experiences, but that can be achieved if the parent is proactive and willing to spend the required time and money to foster learning over optimizing for succeeding in the public school system.
rmason 4y ago
There's some truth in what you're saying but I've got to disagree. Right now there's a kid in a Lagos or Harare slum who will find the cure for cancer. This boy or girls parents will spend their life savings on a Chromebook for this child who will trek to an Internet connection in a library (or a McDonalds like in present day Detroit) and they will acquire a high school education and with that credential be accepted into a top university. It may not prove to be the best choice for some but for many kids in the third world it's that or nothing.
screye 4y ago
I have been sceptical of online schools and will continue to be a sceptic. Khan Academy is one of the most competent organizations to try such a thing, but I deem the problem to be completely intractable. In person learning is about learning from your peers as much as it is about learning from your instructors. People are quick to point out that the commonly occurring bad in-person instructor can be compared to online-learning. But, they leave out the fact that online-learning completely sidelines any prospects for peer-learning. I am not even bringing up the role schools play in socialization, physical health and as day-care. No amount of online-anything is going to replace that.
ipaddr 4y ago
What if you and your colleague and alike were replaced with the best couple of teachers in the state with the rest of the money spent on eas who could help directly. We might see two full grade improvements. Trying to replicate the in person experience online is going to be a worse experience. The benefits, reduce costs and chances for a better education are there.
mindcrime 4y ago
IMO the lesson of the pandemic is “no it’s not and it’s never going to be.” The "it's never going to be" part does not necessarily follow from any of the data presented so far. Perhaps we simply need a better understanding of how people learn online, and get better at using technological tools to facilitate learning? I mean, is there any particular reason to think we've reached the pinnacle of what learning software and online educational platforms can do?
PolygonSheep 4y ago
I was homeschooled after 8th grade due to social problems at school (I was bullied to the point of being suicidal for being fat). This was entirely by choice on my part and this was back before online learning was a big thing (early-mid 00s) so it was all in paper books then. I did quite well in the program and on the SAT I took to get into college in lieu of a high school diploma. I did okay in college too, graduating with honors. I really can't see what I lost by basically doing high school alone in my bedroom reading books and taking self-graded exams. I think it can work with the major caveat that it has to be both voluntary and the student has to bring a genuine desire to learn to the table. Not all students do. I think Khan World School will work very well but for maybe 10% of students leaving 90% worse off. Conversely I think in-person traditional schooling will work well for 90% but make 10% worse off due to stuff like bullying. It would be unconscionable to withhold something like Khan World School from the people it could benefit. It's okay that it doesn't work for everyone. Neither does the traditional system.
skyde 4y ago
why do you care about student "coming to class and doing homework" if they can learn the subject and get 100% of the exams without it ?
mbrodersen 4y ago
Have you considered that you might have to drastically change how you teach to be effective online? Simply trying to copy what you do offline to online will most definitely not work well. Doing live online lectures for example is frankly a waste of time. So perhaps instead record your lecture once and let the students watch it offline, submit questions, and only then discuss those questions online. Or even better: find the best online recording of your subject matter and let the students watch that instead. The likelihood of you being the best lecturer to present the material is low. So go find the best one out there and use that instead. And customise your online interactions to the specific problems your students have instead.

WinstonSmith84 4y ago

Maybe there is a difference with kids which have been used to get online schooling from the very beginning and others who suddenly have to study remotely. And then, it may also depend on your family situation at home such as having an independent, quiet room or a noisy shared room .. ?

PretzelPirate 4y ago

We’re researchers able to separate the negative effects on children of online learning from the negative effects from other causes such as global panic and uncertainty, the inability to see friends, etc…?

deleted 4y ago
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MrBlueIncognito 4y ago
> the inability to see friends At least that last factor is directly correlated with online learning. Also I know from experience that most students in online classes aren’t even actively listening. A good chunk of them end up on YouTube or Instagram.
- lolinder 4y ago
  My experience in a physical classroom in the pre-smartphone era is much the same: a good chunk of the students are spacing off throughout any given lecture. At that time it was passing notes, doodling, or just staring out the window rather than online distractions. It might be worth considering whether synchronously sitting in a lecture with 30 other kids isn't, in fact, a good model for learning in any environment, online or otherwise.
  - a9h74j 4y ago
    > in a physical classroom ... a good chunk of the students are spacing off throughout any given lecture Think of a meeting of 30 people in your own office environment and wonder how many people are spacing out at any given moment.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  > At least that last factor is directly correlated with online learning. Unless they live in rural settings, it’s likely a very loose correlation. When I was a kid, I grew up in a neighborhood in a walkable town and my friends and I saw each other everyday, though we went to different schools or were in different grades at the same school. I later moved to a rural area for high school and only saw people at school due to how far away we all lived from each other. In the first situation, I suspect online learning would have been great for me since I could do it at home and I’d still have plenty of social interaction without the downside of hauling books between classes, sitting in an uncomfortable classroom environment, and largely not paying attention since there wasn’t any way for the teacher to track my participation in a large class. I’m not sure how physical education would have worked at that time, but maybe fitness trackers help with that nowadays. I do suspect that online learning isn’t great for lower income households since they may not have dedicate space set up for learning, and it would be a shame to create yet another class difference in education.

ekanes 4y ago

> My colleagues and I can attest to both general learning loss (ie., forgetting specific subject matter information) and a loss of broader “studying skills” (ie., coming to class and doing homework) after the pandemic. No disagreement that grades are lower, but is it possible we are in some ways measuring the wrong things? In a modern age, “remembering information” or “doing homework” don’t seem so applicable to the future. Being in person can be important, but it’s for mostly social reasons, not the ones you stated.

huitzitziltzin 4y ago
> but is it possible we are in some ways measuring the wrong things? No disagreement, but we were measuring the same things pre- and post-pandemic. The negative effect on those measured outcomes is very real. It is possible that if we were measuring the "right things" (whatever those are) we might see no effect. A priori that's a little implausible IMO but I'm willing to entertain the argument! > In a modern age, “remembering information” or “doing homework” don’t seem so applicable to the future. Strong disagree on "remembering information is not applicable to the future." I partially concede on "doing homework", but honestly there is no other way to make the students attempt to apply the material they learn, and no way for them to understand what they don't understand except by attempting to apply it! Homework might suck, but there is a good reason everyone uses it!
itronitron 4y ago
It would be nice to know whether, and at what grade levels, standardized test scores have been affected as I am inclined to believe that the standardized test scores (i.e. SAT) have remained stable.

freemint 4y ago

> In intro classes in our department, mean grades have been a whole standard deviation lower than the long run pre-pandemic average. Have you ever considered that the digital teaching methods you employed are subpar compared to those a dedicated online only teaching platform might have. I don't mean to suggest you did not try.

itronitron 4y ago
> a dedicated online only teaching platform Can you provide links to any?
huitzitziltzin 4y ago
I think it's obvious that the digital teaching methods we employed were not effective, but there was no information available at all about what worked. Also: we tried many different things. Certainly I did! Moreover (as I replied to a different comment above) even after a year of being online the students were unable to identify things that made any of their online classes work. At that point they had resigned to their classes sucking. (Not just my class - I asked my students to tell me what worked in any of their online classes. Collectively that's asking about the teaching methods of a few hundred professors.) If you have information about some methods which work, I would have loved to have them. I would still love to have them! (If you can provide some evidence about whether and how they are known to work that would be better still.)
- freemint 4y ago
  I don claim to have a good answer but i would ask myself a chain of questions: Were learning materials which cover the required material made available to students? Were those materials made available on an approachable platform? Were those materials made available on a platform which encouraged habit formation for students to work on the material? Are students able to track their progress? Are students able to confirm their progress and check with where they are supposed to be if the exam dates are fixed? Is the progress of student embedded into a (meta) narrative which ties together the lecture and provides topical humor (like a lecturer would when cleaning the blackboards)? Are means in place to ensure passive diffusion of important information if students are stuck? Are means in place to encourage or enforce formation of student learning groups and cooperation between students? The traditional lecture hall model has a lot of mechanism which need to be replicated in the digital sphere.

phphphphp 4y ago

The lesson is that education is not one size fits all, something we’ve “known” for a long time: anyone predicting online is the future (or isn’t the future) is missing out on that crucial piece. Online should be the future for people who grow best with online learning, in person learning should be the future for people who grow best with in person learning. I’d also argue that online school during the pandemic, like remote work during the pandemic, is not representative of online school during non-pandemic times.

sandworm101 4y ago

In person is obviously better for actual learning. I went to highschool before online was an option. But a few years ago I was talking to a kid who had the option to do classes online, at their own pace. They were free to take final exams whenever they wanted. If I could complete classes like that I would probably have finished highschool in a couple months. I might not have "learned" as much, but who here actually learned anything inside a highschool classroom? If all you are really doing is box-ticking and passing exams, online learning is definitely the way to go. Let the kids move at their own pace. Let them get out from under the highschool system so they can go onto somewhere where they can actually learn real material. That said, my highschool did teach, more forced, me to read vast volumes very quickly. That skill really helped at various levels later. But that can be taught in other ways than sitting in a classroom slowly memorizing Shakespeare.

mattmcknight 4y ago
School would be vastly improved by the ability to pre-test out of topics or subjects. I actually went to an elementary school that let you do that for math and it was great.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Walking into a classroom and telling the teacher that you have already passed the final exam, that you are done with the class and will no longer be attending their class ... that is basically highschool fantasy.
- waterhouse 4y ago
  The fact that this isn't common is mind-boggling to me. If a student can prove that they know the subject well enough that them sitting in that class would be a waste, then why does anyone think it's a good idea to make them continue sitting in that class? My first guess is "there are some pushy parents who will want their kid to be in a higher class even when their kid isn't qualified for it". The answer to this is, have a rigorous test and a high standard for skipping a class. My second guess is "teachers have a general stance of not wanting to make any 'concessions' to parents, otherwise that will attract more pushy parents". (I did once have a math teacher who said "If I let you ... then I'd have 100 parents wanting the same for their kids.") So... keeping a strong negotiating position for the teachers is more important than doing right by individual students. I think the answer is that, ultimately, the people making decisions about children's education don't have strong incentives to make it go well. If the kid sits in class bored but not causing trouble, that doesn't create a problem for the teacher or the principal; if the kid is enthusiastically learning in the next-level class, that might be nice for that teacher, but on average likely won't make a huge difference—and actually the teacher whose class the kid came from will get a replacement student who might need help, so that teacher may be genuinely disincentivized to recommend the kid's advancement, even aside from the "negotiating position" aspect.

VMtest 4y ago

Online learning is for those who can take advantage of it and accelerate their learning or manage better their time For those who couldn't stand it should stay behind by attending classes physically

bnralt 4y ago

In my experience, in-person educators often do a rather poor job with online education. There's often a lot of effort to emulate in-person learning, instead of an acceptance that online education is its own thing. They also often approach online education with a bias against it, which I doubt helps things. In-person educators trying to do online learning, getting poor results, and then saying it's the fault of online education is a bit like a YouTube educator teaching in person classes, doing poorly, and then declaring that in-person education is inferior. Also worth noting that students who have spent years being conditioned with in-person learning might have an adjustment period when starting online education, one that might not go smoothly if it's happening during a crisis and guided by people inexperienced with and predisposed against this form of education.

jamal-kumar 4y ago
This is a really important insight and I think everyone should take note of it for pedagogy going forward for the next years
photochemsyn 4y ago
In both online and inperson, a major choke point occurs when students get stuck on a problem and have nowhere to go to get help, or when students don't get useful feedback after submitting their work. This is directly related to the teacher-student ratio, regardless of whether it's online or not. I imagine a huge factor is also parental involvement, when it comes to encouraging students to set aside several hours each night for study and homework. In the absence of parental involvement or in cases of parental neglect and indifference (woefully common in many situations), the role of the teacher becomes far more important in encouraging the student to develop good study habits. This might be more difficult in the online situation.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  That's why you should use a "flipped classroom" model, to focus in-person effort on these limited chokepoints. That still leaves everything else that can largely be done non-interactively and at the best pace for each student.

richardw 4y ago

Some students have terrible teachers and an excellent online supplement can’t hurt. Living in South Africa, we have a huge difference between the best private schools and the worst public schools. It would be nice to know that every child in the world has at least a base level of education available that reduces “quality of your teacher” as a variable. Obviously this assumes they’re able to learn remotely. I realise that’s not everyone. That doesn’t mean this has no value. I had extra lessons that were part recorded (so I could rewind etc) and tests with a teacher who could help guide through aspects I didn’t understand. Improved three symbols in one year with about a solid week of study over each holiday. Self study worked very well for me, as a supplement.

rendall 4y ago

Are you sure this effect isn't a combination of the in-person education culture, developed over centuries, having difficulties adjusting to a new paradigm; and the measures themselves (e.g the skill of "coming into class") not being appropriate for the new paradigm?

tkgally 4y ago

One minority data point here. I teach at a university in Japan. I have been teaching my classes exclusively online—live using Zoom—for more than two years, and overall the experience has been better than with the in-person classes I taught for many years before. The class discussions have been meatier and more focused than in person, and the students have been turning in better papers. I recognize that the results would be different in other situations. I am fortunate to teach small classes of motivated students with good study skills. And as one of the “very online crowd,” I might have been able to adapt to online teaching better than some others. But the big revolution of online learning is the opportunity it gives for people to take part in interactive classes regardless of their location. Yesterday I taught a graduate seminar with fourteen students, eight in Japan and six in China, including two in lockdown in Shanghai. Everyone was able to take part actively. Starting next Monday, my other graduate class will shift from afternoon to morning Japan time so that a student who is in Mexico and unable to return to Japan can take part in real time. This past Monday, one of the other students in that class was in COVID quarantine near Narita Airport but was able to participate fully in class. Until recently, it was assumed that the only way to conduct interactive classes in real time was for the teacher and students to all be in the same physical location. If students couldn’t get to campus for whatever reason, they were excluded. Online education opens up educational opportunities for many people who couldn’t participate before.

huitzitziltzin 4y ago
Please tell me your secret. Is there anything you do differently, relative to in person? Or do you just end up with a selected sample of super motivated students? This in particular: > The class discussions have been meatier... is a literal miracle. I think it might be this: > I am fortunate to teach small classes of motivated students with good study skills. I teach an honors and a regular section of one of my classes. The honors students (who are more serious and motivated in general) definitely are affected less. If you are teaching grad students that is also not going to be representative of the overall population. Those guys are definitely in the right tail of motivation.
- tkgally 4y ago

jamal-kumar 4y ago

Damn I spent the whole pandemic reading books and doing my best to get ahead as such How did everyone else mess it up so bad? I'm just reading this and thinking back to my resolve to use this time as positively as possible, like study and doing my best with savings was the most obvious thing at the time to me Might be something to do with me living in the third world and adaptation culture being different

petesergeant 4y ago
> How did everyone else mess it up so bad Kids. A different set of mental-health challenges. Being worried about losing their job. Being more dependent on their non-coliving family than you are. Being more worried about their family than you are. Having a job that they're not used to doing online. Having a job that's hard to do online. Having a job that couldn't be done online. Being deprived of life-long hobbies and interests that can't be done online or in the home. etc etc.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  So get into finance options where the effort->profit ratio is way more favorable as a hedge against all of what you mentioned or you and your entire family will suffer is what you're saying, in the most positive interpretation possible

mymythisisthis 4y ago

I see private tutors enrolling kids into Khan Academy and helping them pass the Khan Academy math courses. You get tutor help for your child, at the same time get some formal credit in the process. Khan Academy has very strong brand recognition. Many parents pay to have their child tutored. Partially because the quality of math teachers in high school is random (some are very good, others are not). Partially because one on one help is always very useful.

mattmcknight 4y ago

I think the key advantage of this kind of method is that rather than proceeding at a single pace, the students can stay on a topic until they master it, and then move on. It's kind of a way of ensuring every student gets at least a 90% in a course, but the amount of time it takes them to get there can vary. While this is obviously a little more difficult in a classroom format, I have seen it done in the 80s completely offline for math where the whole grade of students take a bunch of pretests at the beginning of the year (including the tests for the prior year material) and then are assigned to two week groups or classes for the topics they need. After two weeks, they get a post test. If they haven't passed at 90%, they stay in that topic until they complete it. If they have, they move on to the next topic. It got a little complicated as a few people were in groups that went down to one person after a while, and they were just giving me worksheets and then I would ask if I had a question, but I was able to proceed at more than 2x the normal pace for a few glorious years. So, maybe doing the Khan Academy thing in the building, where you have a supervisor there to keep kids on task and prevent cheating, as well as ample people to whom one can ask questions, could be a net improvement.

itronitron 4y ago

Not many people here are distinguishing between online learning and online classrooms. In my experience from observing my own children who universally despise online classes, Khan Academy has been excellent (with the exception of their Physics curriculum which is a complete mess.) I have no doubt that if I enrolled them in the 'classes' that they would absolutely hate it, especially based on that Daily Seminar image that looks like a Zoom meeting. With the shift to enrolled classes it seems like they are pivoting towards the Educational Industrial Complex, which is unfortunate. That discourages me from donating to them again. Although I am always happy to pay for quality learning material and workbooks I'm not interested in supporting online classrooms.

Bedon292 4y ago

While there certainly have been some negative outcomes as far as grades go. There have also been studies saying that school going online has improved the mental health of some students [1]. There was a decrease in anxiety, and a decrease in the severity of depression. Students who had lower wellbeing pre-pandemic were the ones who saw a significant increase in wellbeing going to school online. Now this is speculation on my part but the students who may be suffering from bullying (leading to that anxiety and depression) now have more control of their environment and connections. Its easy to ignore someone typing in some chat room (and maybe even mute them entirely) that you can't ignore when they are physically in the same location as you. And I know being able to control my environment, and fidget or move around, or whatever I want to do allows me to work better than being stuck in some classroom bored and daydreaming. So for certain people there are definitely positive outcomes. Even if they are a minority. And a service like this might be a great asset to those people. [1] https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-Peoples-Mental-Health-during-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-Report.pdf https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-Peo...

daneelsan 4y ago

There is a difference between online education because there is no other way as there is a pandemic (are the students and the institution ready to switch to online, are the courses even designed to be imparted online, etc.), and online education because it's a choice.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

> If online works for you, awesome. Enjoy! There are great resources out there. But I don’t think you are in the majority. I think this is exactly it. In person never worked for me. I was bored - and being bored I ended up with “discipline issues.” I would never do my homework, never pay attention in class, was always late because I was talking in between sessions, etc. My teachers weren’t a fan, the administrators weren’t fans, parents were upset. Every year, starting in 2nd grade, at the end of the school year I was given “token” exercises as a way of getting passing grades so I wouldn’t be held back. I’d knock those out and continue on. At the time I was thankful to the instructors for giving me that opportunity. In retrospect I’m fairly confident I know why that happened. Every year we were administered state achievement exams. The school was evaluated based on the students performance on these tests. While I was failing every subject, I carried the class (scoring at least 10% higher on the exam than the next highest grade) every year. Holding me back would have raised quite a few questions about their curriculum. Fast forward to 12th grade. I drop out of in-person school and switch to online. My in-person school refuses to release my records (we owed them money) so I was starting 12th grade with no credits. The online program was self paced. I knocked out 3 years of eduction in 3 months. Then turned 18, walked downtown and took the GED instead of finishing the last year. Self paced education is huge for certain people. Every once in a while I think of all the kids in the world who could achieve so much with their youth, but instead they are strapped to a chair being tortured 7+ hours a day by well intentioned adults.

mynegation 4y ago

Counterpoint to your counterpoint: I think it is wonderful and we need more of these! It may not work for everyone but the important thing is that it may and will work for someone for whom other options are not available or subpar. I grew up in a small backwater-ish city and school was useless, outside of socializing. By far, the most important thing I did for my education was enrolling into a distance learning physics and technology school managed by one of the nation's top technical universities. You would receive learning materials and exercises several times during the school year by snail mail (yes, I am that old) and send your answers back for grading. Whatever I am and the life I have started with this.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

I'm sure online teaching is worse than in person teaching, at least the way most online teaching is done now. But who is the target audience here? I was homeschooled for many years and the parent doing my teaching was not very effective. I'm positive that this online teaching would be better than that was. In fact, my homeschool friends who did remote video courses (as close as you could get to online at the time) were much better at many subjects than I was. I don't think its online vs in person. It's online vs nothing or online vs shitty teaching.

adamsmith143 4y ago

But how are actual outcomes? I'm less concerned with how someones grades look in high school and more interested in how they perform in College for example.

david927 4y ago

> If online works for you, awesome ... But I don’t think you are in the majority. I think there's a huge under-served group who are specifically not the majority. Smart kids are generally held back by being shoehorned in with other kids. Personally, I think we need to figure out how to use online resources best and that the future will most certainly be a mix. But also please entertain that maybe the optimal audience for this program isn't the majority at all, actually. And that doesn't make it less valuable.

ravedave5 4y ago
This is exactly my daughter, she thrived online when her teachers posted a weeks material at a time she'd be done by wednesday. She was so happy she could work at her own pace and didn't have to wait for other kids.
- tombert 4y ago
  I'm a bit similar. I always did poorly in school working at the pace that the teachers wanted me to go. I would do well on the tests, but always had awful grades because I didn't do all my homework. When I discovered WGU 1.5 years ago, I did much better simply by being allowed to go at whatever pace I felt like, and taking time off when I felt like it, and I managed to get through school in a fairly short amount of time. I'm doing online graduate school now, and fortunately my supervisors are somewhat amenable to this style; they simply give me a bunch of recordings of their lectures and all the assignments that I'm expected to do all at once. Some days I don't do anything, other days I'll spend six hours straight watching lectures and doing homework.
zoom6628 4y ago
Couldnt agree more. I personally prefer to study alone, and even my MBA i chose a program where class-time(f2f or online) was optional. I did none and still passed. Have recently watched my daughter respond quite differently in online learning in group environments. One is Wingchun( a martial art) taught by enthusiastic and outright funny instructors. My little girl loves every minute of class. The other is oddly-enough Montessori class where she feels held back by other kids and their chatter. But she LOVES the IRL Montessori classes. I feel that this form of online high school wont be for everyone but there is a segment of those for whom this medium suits them best due to combination of circumstance, motivation, and personality. Education is not 'one mode suits all'. I struggled to stay engaged at high school. Tertiary wasnt much better until i discovered extra-mural (distance education), and loved it.

la6472 4y ago

There is some truth to it but teachers and professors who do not support online mode of teaching also work to undermine it for your own vested interest aka job security. I am sure a online school or class can do their own study and produce opposite results.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

My experience with professors and the concept of "study skills" is that there is often a skewed perception of how students should learn that is colored by their own experience. Many of my classmates did not regularly go to lectures, and most of them did very well. When they struggled in a class or the teacher was a good lecturer, they went. Professors who cared were often the ones who never missed a lecture themselves. This could be an indication that the traditional yardsticks of who is a "good student" are breaking down. I would also chalk up the students generally being less organized to the stress of the situation, rather than a degeneration of study skills.

pbreit 4y ago

I don't think any of this is necessarily true and I hope few believe this at this point.

lodi 4y ago

I despise the notion that "real communism has never been tried!", but real online teaching has, uhh, never been tried. The futuristic dream: kids use fancy tech like AR goggles and haptic tech to manipulate shapes in a collaborative learning game and ultimately learn math in an intuitive way. Think of the best Jypiter notebook you've seen and then take that off the screen and into the real world. Then add an AI assistant that constantly guides you through common questions and make it so that the whole program is continually being refined to make it better and better for each successive generation of kids. Every lesson has tens of millions of dollars poured into it since it will be reused potentially billions of times. The practical dream: okay we don't have money for any of that, but at least use the internet to break geographic constraints. Have actual math teachers teaching math to various classes around the country/world, have actual music teachers teaching music, immediately direct gifted kids to accelerated classes, have more flexibility with special needs kids (e.g. take classes in a different time zone so that their parents can help), offer a wide selection of second languages by connecting kids to foreign teachers, do virtual exchanges, etc. The reality: most kids don't even have computers. Actually I was shocked to learn that many kids don't even have chairs and desks at home. This is in Canada by the way. My wife was teaching K-8 online classes to kids lying on their beds, propping up their mom's borrowed iphone on their bellies, trying to not fall asleep as the front camera streams a dimly-lit view of their chin. So to summarize, we start with the same in-person learning, from the same teachers to the same class, remove all of the blackboards/manipulatives/etc., reduce the child's field of view to a 6" screen streaming a laggy 480p video with horrible sound, delete all friendships by enforcing quarantine both during and after school, and finally conclude that online learning doesn't work!

gabelschlager 4y ago
It doesn't even need to be that complicated. Starting out with good software that tracks exercise progress of the students, giving them exercises on a suitable level and immediate feedback would already go a long way. And teachers could use it to see, how the students perform and know what to teach in more detail.
kelvinquee 4y ago
We do exactly this at the startup [1] that I'm running. Depending on their level and the equipment they have, young children learn Chinese online with native teachers using Zoom on their phones or StoryLand (eg Gather) on their laptops. Many commenters have mentioned that socialisation and its associated obligations are beneficial to learning, and this is what we are reminded of everyday among our students. Kids learn best when they see other kids learn. And kids learn best when they are able to directly apply what they learn into a project that they own. We enable our own students to publish their own books and to perform in musicals that they produce. Many online education companies fail because they think that all online education ("edTech") is simply digitising the school. It's not. To succeed, we need to think deeply about what online and physical education does best. Hit me up if you want to learn more. [1]: https://storychopsticks.com https://storychopsticks.com

gcheong 4y ago

I'm curious how something like Chemistry is going to work. I was able to take 3 years of it at my high school and can't imagine not having a full hands-on lab component as part of the experience.

bstar77 4y ago

You are correct, applying traditional education methods to online/home school is unlikely to work well. Concepts like "homework" are generally obsolete at the home school level. Independent learning replaces the antiquated idea that our children need to be preoccupied with boring, grindy work when they are out of the "classroom". Children will have plenty of time to grind when they get older. Building a love for learning is 100x more important than rote memorization. The child's age is also significant... I certainly would not have a child under 12 working under the the same expectations as a teenager. Additionally, every child develops at a different rate, so finding that sweet spot is an important part of home schooling. These are all things that the public school mentality finds incredulous. So I agree with what you are saying, but so many people still think the model for home school should be the same as a public/private school situation, which is where things fall apart. It's obvious to me that children always need to be well socialized and have a variety of teachers and experiences, but that can be achieved if the parent is proactive and willing to spend the required time and money to foster learning over optimizing for succeeding in the public school system.

rmason 4y ago

There's some truth in what you're saying but I've got to disagree. Right now there's a kid in a Lagos or Harare slum who will find the cure for cancer. This boy or girls parents will spend their life savings on a Chromebook for this child who will trek to an Internet connection in a library (or a McDonalds like in present day Detroit) and they will acquire a high school education and with that credential be accepted into a top university. It may not prove to be the best choice for some but for many kids in the third world it's that or nothing.

screye 4y ago

I have been sceptical of online schools and will continue to be a sceptic. Khan Academy is one of the most competent organizations to try such a thing, but I deem the problem to be completely intractable. In person learning is about learning from your peers as much as it is about learning from your instructors. People are quick to point out that the commonly occurring bad in-person instructor can be compared to online-learning. But, they leave out the fact that online-learning completely sidelines any prospects for peer-learning. I am not even bringing up the role schools play in socialization, physical health and as day-care. No amount of online-anything is going to replace that.

ipaddr 4y ago

What if you and your colleague and alike were replaced with the best couple of teachers in the state with the rest of the money spent on eas who could help directly. We might see two full grade improvements. Trying to replicate the in person experience online is going to be a worse experience. The benefits, reduce costs and chances for a better education are there.

mindcrime 4y ago

IMO the lesson of the pandemic is “no it’s not and it’s never going to be.” The "it's never going to be" part does not necessarily follow from any of the data presented so far. Perhaps we simply need a better understanding of how people learn online, and get better at using technological tools to facilitate learning? I mean, is there any particular reason to think we've reached the pinnacle of what learning software and online educational platforms can do?

PolygonSheep 4y ago

I was homeschooled after 8th grade due to social problems at school (I was bullied to the point of being suicidal for being fat). This was entirely by choice on my part and this was back before online learning was a big thing (early-mid 00s) so it was all in paper books then. I did quite well in the program and on the SAT I took to get into college in lieu of a high school diploma. I did okay in college too, graduating with honors. I really can't see what I lost by basically doing high school alone in my bedroom reading books and taking self-graded exams. I think it can work with the major caveat that it has to be both voluntary and the student has to bring a genuine desire to learn to the table. Not all students do. I think Khan World School will work very well but for maybe 10% of students leaving 90% worse off. Conversely I think in-person traditional schooling will work well for 90% but make 10% worse off due to stuff like bullying. It would be unconscionable to withhold something like Khan World School from the people it could benefit. It's okay that it doesn't work for everyone. Neither does the traditional system.

skyde 4y ago

why do you care about student "coming to class and doing homework" if they can learn the subject and get 100% of the exams without it ?

mbrodersen 4y ago

Have you considered that you might have to drastically change how you teach to be effective online? Simply trying to copy what you do offline to online will most definitely not work well. Doing live online lectures for example is frankly a waste of time. So perhaps instead record your lecture once and let the students watch it offline, submit questions, and only then discuss those questions online. Or even better: find the best online recording of your subject matter and let the students watch that instead. The likelihood of you being the best lecturer to present the material is low. So go find the best one out there and use that instead. And customise your online interactions to the specific problems your students have instead.