Advantages and disadvantages of online education

Advantages and disadvantages of online education

Potential advantages:

• Personal circumstances or health disruptions, specifically contagious viruses such as COVID-19 and the common cold, or injuries will not halt learning since the physical demands are much less.
• Digital transcripts of lessons can additionally help absent students with learning missed curriculum.
• Online learning is ideal for students and families who need flexible arrangements. However, synchronous learning does impose limits due to time zones.
• The integration of Internet resources provides a huge library of content, and students quickly become proficient with online research, resources, and tools.
• Greater flexibility enables independent students such as self-learners or gifted students to explore learning beyond the standard curriculum, pursue individual skills and ambitions, or develop at their own preferred pace using online resources. Part-time students with jobs or family commitments may benefit from the flexibility of online schedules.^[12]
• Online schools can be equalizers, as age, appearance, and background are far less obvious, and therefore this can minimize harassment, prejudice, or discrimination. Instead, groups are categorized by personal ability.
• Students may benefit from exposure to others in different cultures of the world, which can enrich their understanding of history, geography, religions and politics, and develops social skills.
• Online education may collaboratively engage in or discuss universal or real-world issues, which are necessary skills for a successful career.^[13]
• Increased accessibility to remote education for poor or rural areas where commuting to schools or lack of resources are concerns.^[13]
• Increased opportunities may allow a student to take more courses they are interested in that are not offered near them.
• Cost-effective for schools or districts since it allows teachers to instruct more students than in a face-to-face classroom setting.^[14]
• Online courses may be less expensive for students than traditional classes since less resources may be required. Additionally, many learning resources online are free, easy to access, self-paced, and beginner-friendly.^[15]

Potential disadvantages:

• Remote learning can reduce engagement, interaction, and lead to a lack of socialization, which can potentially decrease a student's social competence or skills such as their ability to cooperate with others.
• A home or online environment may potentially be more distracting or disrupting than a physical school environment.
• Organizing an online school may be more expensive and more complicated to organize or lead.
• Those without access to technology or devices would not have access to virtual education. Although some schools may offer students borrowed devices, those who do not have access can easily fall behind.
• Many virtual schools are relatively new and inexperienced, and therefore may be unfit for educating students properly.
• Technology or the Internet can be more unpredictable since it may be vulnerable to power outages, Internet outages, hacks, exploits, online trolling, glitches, or errors that can potentially be more difficult to fix or deal with when online.^[15]
• Potential employers may be skeptical of the credibility of online degrees and virtual programs.^[15]
• Cheating online may be easier or more tempting since online resources may be more accessible and restrictions or consequences may be more lenient.^[15] The increased anonymity online may further encourage or allow the continuance of misbehavior such as trolling.
• Online schools may be too lenient or disengaging, thus may potentially encourage or harbor potentially damaging and undisciplined behavior that could threaten a student's future or career.
• Not using the physical tools might diminish a student's ability or competence.^[16]
• Online can be potentially limiting since physical activities or hands on activities, specifically for courses like physical education, Art, and Chemistry, may be more difficult to engage in or occur less frequent. Online classes might take away the value of the active elements that some courses require, and do not offer the same teacher-student relationships. Students might also not experience the same critical thinking, observation, and creative skills.^[17]
• Because online learning has 24-hours flexibility, work-life boundaries can be difficult to establish which can cause mental and emotional health issues to arise.^[18]
• The immediate availability of AI technologies to assist with students' coursework leads to less interactions with course staff. This also leads to the student not properly learning the material and not properly developing study skills.^[18]
• For students with certain intellectual and/or physical disabilities, online learning platforms can be difficult to access and use.^[19]

Studies

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United Kingdom and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate. (June 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

WebCT, now called Blackboard, was developed by the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Colombia (UBC). It was one of the first online learning platforms created that resembles present-day online learning platforms. UBC conducted a study in order to test the effectiveness of WebCT by implementing it in different ways in each of three sections of a computer science course. One section of the course used WebCT in conjunction with in-person lectures, one section used WebCT as the only instructional method, and the last section used only in-person instruction. By the end of the semester, it was found that the section of the course utilizing WebCT with in-person lectures had a significantly higher average performance, while the other two sections which used only one instructional method, were found to have average academic performances approximately equivalent to each other.^[20]

Due to the results from the UBC computer science course, a course titled "Electric Circuits" at Morgan State University made the decision to add the use of WebCT to the lectures. This change was made for the Fall 1997 semester. After a semester of using WebCT in the course, it was found that average grade had gone up since the previous two semesters. In the Fall of 1996 and the Spring of 1997, the average grade in the course was an 82%, whereas in the Fall of 1997, the semester where WebCT was used, the average grade was 86%.^[20]

Online Education providers in the United Kingdom are not currently eligible for accreditation by the Department for Education and therefore it is difficult to measure quality of providers. Following a consultation process that began in 2019, The DFE and Ofsted are currently working towards a pilot online education provider accreditation scheme using a variation of the Independent School Inspectorate Inspection framework.^[21]

As claimed in a study done by Eric Bettinger and Susanna Loeb, on average, online students "do substantially worse than students in the same face-to-face course".^[14] Furthermore, students who attend K-12 online consistently perform worse on state tests than their peers in brick and mortar environments, even when taking into account prior achievement.^[22]

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