The younger of my two sons was fascinated by mythology as a child. Many children seem to go through a dinosaur phase, but for him Greco-Roman and Norse mythology filled that niche. Later, in high school, he discovered and devoured the surprisingly large body of young adult genre fiction with mythological themes. I was originally trained in classics, so I was discreetly thrilled by his interest. When he went to college he chose to study engineering, which allowed for very little exposure to the humanities. For his one course humanities requirement, he chose a class on Greco-Roman myth. I had switched from biology to classics because of an epiphany in a course I took to satisfy a language requirement, so I wondered whether he might have a similar experience in this class. Part way through his first semester I asked how his myth class was going. “Pretty boring,” he said, “It’s just an online class.”
I thought of that when I read Joshua Kim’s critique of Jeff Kolnick’s piece “Generals Die in Bed.” Interestingly Kim agrees with much of what Kolnick said about the health and safety implications of having students in classrooms this fall, but objected to his assertion that online education is inferior to traditional, face-to-face education. Kim says that: “Reviews of the empirical literature consistently find “no significant difference” across instructional modalities.” As Donald Larsson points out in a letter to the editor, the article Kim cites here is actually quite ambivalent about the quality of this research and does not justify Kim’s sweeping claims about the equivalence of the two approaches to education.
But it’s not just the limited nature of the research and the paucity of randomized controlled studies that should concern us. In most of these studies of the two “modalities,” the point of comparison is learning outcomes. The assumption seems to be that the value of a course or program can be boiled down to the extent to which students meet the course or program’s stated learning outcomes. Anyone who has actually written learning outcomes knows that they are usually incredibly anodyne and insipid statements of the most superficial (but easily measured) aspects of a course. Even if the literature Kim cites is correct that online courses are roughly the same as face-to-face courses when it comes to meeting learning outcomes, that is not the same thing as saying the courses are really equivalent.
There are all kinds of things going on in a class that are not captured by learning outcomes. There is intellectual excitement, curiosity, community, engagement, doubt, skepticism, boredom, humor and who knows what else, that are not likely to be captured or measured by studies that depend on assessments of student learning.
I have no doubt that the online course my son took met it’s learning objectives. (Has anyone ever taught a course that did not?) Where it failed is that it had no spark to it. It failed to engage someone with a deep and abiding interest in its subject. It would be really interesting to survey students on courses that inspired them to change majors. I doubt that many students have identified their true callings or found a mentor in online classes.
In fact, it’s surprising that Kim singled out Kolnick for his transgressions against techno-utopianism. Certainly students and parents have been voicing their doubts lately about the value of online education. That students want their tuitions discounted if they have to take online courses and seem to be considering sitting out the fall rather than spending their money on online classes, suggests that they don’t share Kim’s optimism about online education. That our students, who surely have far more direct experience with the realities of online education than most of us, see it as inferior should tell us something.
A college degree says more about the person that earns it than just her capacity to meet a bunch of learning outcomes. Bryan Caplan has made a convincing case that much of the value of a college degree comes from things that have little to do with learning. He argues that the value of college derives partly (maybe mostly) from what is says about your character and habits. It shows that you can show up on time, are reasonably intelligent, and moderately conformist.
And it’s not just students who see online degrees as inferior. The unwillingness of colleges to indicate on transcripts that a course or a degree was taken entirely online suggests that colleges worry that employers harbor the same doubts about online education that students do.
I have a proposal for the advocates of online education. Once all this is over and people can actually choose between face-to-face and online, let’s require that college transcripts indicate whether a course or degree was taken entirely online. If the value of those courses and programs is the same (which may well be the case for some disciplines), then students and employers should eventually treat them as equivalent. If they don’t, well, maybe the “modality” that is having trouble attracting students or getting them hired will have to up its game or discount its programs.
Students have long distinguished between online classes and “real” classes. That both forms of delivery might be equally able to meet learning outcomes seems not to have affected their assessment of the value or effectiveness of these classes. This ought to give pause to the whole assessment movement and to the accreditors that enable it. That students, the people who have lived experience of online education, find the assurances of “experts” about the quality of these courses unconvincing should not be dismissed lightly. Rather it should make us all question the value of leaning outcomes assessment and the knowledge and expertise of the people who advocate for both online education and the assessment of learning outcomes as the be all and end all of higher education.
For once, let’s listen to our students.