A new report reviews the advent of online courses for community college students.
It was prepared by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Online courses are popular because they seem to be a way to take courses at home, whenever it is convenient.
This is especially valuable for community college students because they are adults with multiple responsibilities.
What are the results?
Community college students who take online courses perform worse and persist less than those who take face-to-face classes.
This is the conclusion in the study:
“CCRC’s studies suggest that community college students who choose to take courses online are less likely to complete and perform well in those courses. The results also suggest that online courses may exacerbate already persistent achievement gaps between student subgroups.”
Online courses are not for everyone. They may actually be demotivating because of the lack of a personal relationship with an instructor. Once again, the hype is greater than the reality.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And the cost sunk into the online course can preclude the students from seeking a better alternative.
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Thanks for drawing attention to community colleges and the downside of online courses.
I cited the CCRC report in a recent essay I had at Inside Higher Education:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/05/09/faculty-who-teach-online-are-invisible-campuses-essay
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A bit off topic. As I was driving today I was listening to news radio. I did not catch the school’s name but, they would like to train teachers to administer an epi-pen The rational was that so many students suffer from severe allergies yet not all schools have a full time nurse available. It was touted as wonderful -“It would not cost the district additional money because teachers could be trained by watching a video.” I did not know a teaching certification allowed for the administering meds.
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You don’t even need to be a teacher to administer meds in Florida. Aides can do it after an 8-hour class. So can subs. Cutting nurses is another way to cut costs.
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P.S. I find it really sad since I’m in my first semester of a bachelor’s program to get my RN in nursing, and they won’t even allow nursing students to pass meds until the second semester. But I could do it as a $10 an hour sub in the schools…
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Ex-Teacher I agree this is a cost cutting measure!! I wouldn’t even give my child’s friend an OTC drug without parental permission. When my children went on over night school trips I needed to get a SIGNED DOCTOR’S note that said she could take ibuprofen when needed and a NURSE stored and administered on the trip! What is happening is very dangerous!! Insane!! I guess all one has to do is stay at a “Holiday Inn Express” these days to have any credentials.
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We just had an in-service from a nurse who told the teachers that they should know how to administer DIASTAT AcuDial in case a student experiences a breakthrough seizure. She brought a doll for us to practice on. She said we shouldn’t always call 911.
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I don’t understand why online classes are the same price as face-to-face classes. It seems like a rip-off: colleges save on building costs, but don’t pass that savings on to students. I recently returned to college to find that some of my classes had to be online, there was no face-to-face class offered. So much for caring for your student’s learning style.
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In Utah, the two required math classes for college graduation are ALL online now. I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence that most students are really struggling. I’ve been advised to have my children take those classes as high school seniors when they can have an instructor. Seems to me that universities are passing the buck to the high schools now.
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I took my undergrad and grad courses in a brick and mortar, or traditional setting.
I am taking other courses now online.
My conclusion is that it takes a focused and motivated learner to succeed with distance learning. It can be done but it really helps if you are motivated and already proficient with research and writing skills.
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Thank you for posting this. I’m anxious to read more about the participant demographics. Without knowing more, an application of findings to all community college students seems too broad. Will definitely check out the entire study, as I’m studying the effectiveness of the online format for the music education professional development of preschool generalists.
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Everything I have read about online programs, other than ads, say there is a motivation and persistence problem.
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A word in defense of online courses. I earned a masters in reading from SUNY Albany completely online. The program was identical to the brick and mortar program that was offered on campus. We had the same professors as those in the traditional setting. We, the students, developed friendships in the classes with classmates. We also developed a relationship with each professor. The course work was rigorous. We had deadlines to meet to post our work. I went to Albany for my graduation and met my professors in person and many of my classmates.
I could never have earned my masters at that point in time due to many personal responsibilities.
However, I don’t think this type of instruction is for everyone. But then again, I don’t think college is for everyone. I know people who go to brick and mortar schools who oversleep and miss classes and wait until the night before to do assignments. I have also taken PD online which were horrible and I was able to knit while watching videos and answer questions that were almost spoon fed. I lost interest almost immediately. Good instruction is good instruction and motivated students are motivated students.
This only works with real schools and not something thrown together to make a quick buck.
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Sheila I agree with your comments. I have taken 5 MOOC’s, and they are highly variable in quality. we have to stop just bashing on-line and start thinking about appropriate use and redesign to take advantage of its benefits, while realizing it isn’t the panacea.
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Diane,
Is it possible that the students applying to online colleges of dubious distinction are the same students who go to brick and mortar community colleges and need remediation and often drop out? The ads are slick and for someone who hasn’t grasped the understanding of college work, might fall for an ad that makes it seem so easy if you do your work online-work in your pajamas-work at 3 in the morning or whenever it’s good for you-
So just as charter schools cherry pick the best performing students, can it be that some online programs target students that know will most likely fail and drop out but not before paying substantial amounts of money upfront.
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I take online courses. It seems to me if Community Colleges
don’t trust “online courses” they should provide a test that those
who take such courses must pass.
I DON’T TRUST THEM BASED ON MY OWN EXPERIENCES!
Do they do that?
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When it is a choice between high quality traditional classes and on line classes I think high quality traditional classes are superior. When it is a choice between on line classes and no classes I think the online class wins. The balance point is somewhere between the two.
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As is so often the case, you’ve posed a false choice.
You seem to accept as a given the rationale that schools must impose these courses as a cost-saving measure, without questioning the political and ideological underpinnings of austerity that drive them.
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Michael,
The majority of high schools in my state are rural and have fewer than 250 students. The ability of those schools to offer a rich curriculum is not limited by political or ideological issues, it is limited by scale. Virtual classes have the advantage of eliminating the scale problem.
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Well, I have some experience in this. A few years ago at a former high school where I was employed, I was asked to run the “distance learning lab” for two weeks in the summer. It was easy money, and all I had to do was keep the kids quiet and make sure they had access to their online materials. For example, the kid will complete a unit in his online course, and then have to take the test at the end of the unit. The test is disabled unit he completes all the work, and then he must wait for the “teacher” to enable the test so he could take it. If they don’t get a score of 80 or above (I’m pretty sure that was the cutoff) then they retake it. Or maybe on that unit they had to get an 80 or above as an average, so sometimes I’d reset certain assignments or what-not so they could do them over for a higher score to improve the average. The students who took these courses over the summer were doing so because they failed the face-to-face course with a teacher, and now had to retake it online to get the credit. The rule was (is) that at least 50 percent of your lab time had to be at school, while the rest could be done at home.
For the two weeks I did it (I was covering for someone on vacation) here’s what I noticed. Out of 30 to 40 kids, only a few of them actually worked hard and completed what they needed. Most kids would come in an log in to their course, and then minimize their browser and play video games instead. That way, it looked like they worked on their course for 4 hours, when they really didn’t.
The online material was pretty good to be honest. But it required a lot of reading, discipline, and self-motivation…three things the majority of these kids lacked or would not do. Deadlines were extended, minimum scores adjusted, etc…just to get the success rates up. My educated guess would be less than 25 percent actually completed everything and passed the course.
A friend of mine in this school taught an online art course through NC Virtual Public Schools, and she told me the success rate was under 50 percent.
Could these courses be viable, economic options for some school systems? Sure. We had a few kids taking an online Chinese course, since there were not enough students interested in the class to create a demand and hire a Chinese teacher. However, these were motivated students. A lot of school systems will use these online courses for credit recovery or remediation, and the success rates a very low.
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I agree that it takes a more motivated student to make use of online courses and I am glad your students are able to take Chinese at a reasonable cost to the district.
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My husband teaches in a High School with a population in the moderate to low income range. Anyone who has worked with teenagers understands they tease each other when someone says or does something silly. The latest retort for such behavior is: “Did you learn that in an online class?”
Even teenagers understand how little cognitive effort is required to pass online classes.
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I think that depends on the individual courses.
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I took an online course and one of my former students also took an online. They were HORRID! No help line, person in charge had no clue about the issues and didn’t care. Believe me when I say that my former student became less and less interested, cried, and was frustrated. There was no interaction. My online course was also a bug fat joke. Lots of glitches, lack of help line support and the course was plain dumb.
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I have been doing some grad work online, and aside from the conveneince factor I LOATHE it. Loathe. It. No discussions, no human contact, just dry info delivery via moodle. I would argue that you’ve got to be more motivated for online learning to work for you.
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I teach AP Art History at the Worcester Art Museum as a district wide collaboration between the museum and the Worcester Public Schools. The Worcester Art Museum is world-renowned for its encyclopedic collection of over 35,000 paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photography, prints, drawings and new media. The works span 5,000 years of art and culture from Ancient Sumerian to the present day making it the most effective teaching tool I have had my hands on in my 15 years of teaching art.
At one point the district was considering AP Art History as an online selection instead of accessing our community resource for teaching this course. Instead of listening to Gregorian chant in the dimly lit Chapter House reconstructed in the museum, the students would be viewing a monks’ priory on a 14 inch screen. Instead of peeking at a Durer etching through a microscope from 10 inches away in the Prints and Drawing Gallery, they would see it distorted on an uncalibrated color monitor. Instead of knowing docents, curators, guards, educators, artists, directors, and conservators by name they might assume that the works exist in cyberspace and never know how the pieces they were looking at were nurtured by a network of talented, interesting family of people.
Most of these low income students had never stepped foot in a museum and an online course would continue that tradition. Now, they are studying architecture in the Czech Republic, plotting to open a gallery in NY, studying Art History at Notre Dame, and delighting in visits to other galleries to “annoy everyone around them because they can’t shut up about what they have learned.”
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I actually help a lot of students with these classes. While some are much better designed than others, many are terribly designed and full of bugs. Some invole third rate professors that go on vacation half way through the semester, barely speak English, and hate to fix students grades after glitches or difficulty with the design of the course. The glitches and poor design are by far the worst. If seen them flunk a students test because I so blacked out for a second, mark things wrong when the answer was off by .00001, and even have answers that were wrong.
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Sorry, isp blanked out*
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