Can Online Education Work?

We are talking about the future of education on this planet. It may be worth a few moments' consideration.
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Can Online Education Work? Well, can it? We are discussing here the future of education on this planet. Here are a few notes about online learning that may be of interest. I know the faculty is generally dead-against it, but it is coming, maybe like a plague, maybe like salvation. 'Tis a juggernaut. It is incumbent upon schools and colleges to make it work. Administrators think of dollars, faculty think of self-interest. Compromise is needed.
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Online education is here, and it is here to stay. Many issues, particularly costs, mandate continuance of this new venue. I'm for it, make no doubt. But we must be at least a little critical. So, I mention a few factors, mostly technical with the title, "What is wrong with online education?" Here are a few factors that speak against the purely online format, bare and un-enhanced.

1. Sociability. Students need to work together in a collective way, exploring new ideas, challenging or agreeing on premises, clarifying key or muddy points, reflecting with colleagues on the day's work, working with colleagues on assignments - not to cheat but to consider and enhance meaning. This is just like in my college days. Online learning creates or is sustained in a venue of isolation.

2. Multiple channels of learning. The traditional lecture is not all that bad, though it has obvious defects. Boring, or poor presentations, unsuitable class times and sizes are just a few. One true values of the lecture is in the note-taking of students. Why? Because note taking stimulates at least two channels of memory, writing (tactile) and hearing. Also, and this is most important to some, there is the visual impact of the physical presence of the professor giving the lecture. This should be concatenated with actually "being there." Singularly, this has high learning value. Online learning gives only a rather passive environment.

3. Spatial. The constant spatial location of the lecture gives a type of constancy of the learning. When in the classroom, the student is tuned to the environment and learns partly in that context. This is not to diminish independent learning outside the classroom, but is yet another factor to consider. When someone learns at home or wherever, this essential factor is diminished. Spatial effects and even odor have been connected with permanence of memory.

While online learning can deliver content, we ask: Can it deliver the critical values students learn from the social, multiple channels of learning, and spatial effects so important to sustained memory and long term recollection? For online learning to be successful, it must address these points. Are chat rooms enough? Are YouTube videos enough? We know nothing beyond anecdotal examples. Can online learning be better? Will it be worse? We don't know. It is important to be mindful of the admonition by Lee Shulman,
past president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who gives us, The plurality of anecdote does not equal evidence. Research needs to be carried out on the "permanence of learning" in the new online world.

In all of this, we ignore the obvious and rampant aspects of online cheating - a growing concern.

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