online education disadvantages

The pros and cons of online learning

What to look for in an online course.

By: MIT xPRO

If you’re at a point in your life where you’re considering continuing your education, you may wonder if online learning is the right path for you.

Taking an online course requires a notable investment of time, effort, and money, so it’s important to feel confident about your decision before moving forward. While online learning works incredibly well for some people, it’s not for everyone.

We recently sat down with MIT xPRO Senior Instructional Designer and Program Manager Luke Hobson to explore the pros and cons of online learning and what to look for in an online course. If you’re waiting for a sign about whether or not to enroll in that course you’ve been eying, you just might find it here.

Pros of Online Learning

First, let’s take a look at the true value of online learning by examining some of the benefits:

1. Flexibility

Online learning’s most significant advantage is its flexibility. It’s the reason millions of adults have chosen to continue their education and pursue certificates and degrees.

Asynchronous courses allow learners to complete work at their own pace, empowering them to find the optimal time to consume the content and submit assignments.

Some people are more attentive, focused, and creative in the mornings compared to the evenings and vice versa. Whatever works best for the learners should be the priority of the learning experience.

2. Community

When Luke asks people about their main reason for enrolling in a course, a common answer is networking and community.

Learners crave finding like-minded individuals who are going through the same experiences and have the same questions. They want to find a place where they belong. Being in the company of others who understand what they’re going through can help online learners who are looking for support and motivation during challenging times and times that are worth celebrating.

Some learners have created study groups and book clubs that have carried on far beyond the end of the course-it’s amazing what can grow from a single post on a discussion board!

3. Latest information

“Speed is a massive benefit of online learning,” and according to Luke, it often doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

“When we say speed, we don’t mean being quick with learning. We mean actual speed to market. There are so many new ideas evolving within technical spaces that it’s impossible to keep courses the way they were originally designed for a long period of time.”

Luke notes that a program on Additive Manufacturing , Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality , or Nanotechnology must be checked and updated frequently. More formal learning modalities have difficulty changing content at this rapid pace. But within the online space, it’s expected that the course content will change as quickly as the world itself does.

Cons of Online Learning

Now that we’ve looked at some of the biggest pros of online learning, let’s examine a few of the drawbacks:

1. Learning environment

While many learners thrive in an asynchronous learning environment, others struggle. Some learners prefer live lessons and an instructor they can connect with multiple times a week. They need these interactions to feel supported and to persist.

Most learners within the online space identify themselves as self-directed learners, meaning they can learn on their own with the right environment, guidance, materials, and assignments. Learners should know themselves first and understand their preferences when it comes to what kind of environment will help them thrive.

2. Repetition

One drawback of online courses is that the structure can be repetitive: do a reading, respond to two discussion posts, submit an essay, repeat. After a while, some learners may feel disengaged from the learning experience.

There are online courses that break the mold and offer multiple kinds of learning activities, assessments, and content to make the learning experience come alive, but it may take some research to find them-more on what to look for in an online course later in this article! Luke and his colleagues at MIT xPRO are mindful of designing courses that genuinely engage learners from beginning to end.

3. Underestimation

Luke has noticed that some learners underestimate how much work is required in an online course. They may mistakenly believe that online learning is somehow “easier” compared to in-person learning.

For those learners who miscalculate how long they will need to spend online or how challenging the assignments can be, changing that mindset is a difficult process. It’s essential to set aside the right amount of time per week to contribute to the content, activities, and assignments. Creating personal deadlines and building a study routine are two best practices that successful online learners follow to hold themselves accountable.

Experience the Value of Online Learning: What to Look For in an Online Course

You’ve probably gathered by now that not all online courses are created equal. On one end of the spectrum, there are methods of online learning that leave learners stunned by what a great experience they had. On the other end of the spectrum, some online learning courses are so disappointing that learners regret their decision to enroll.

If you want to experience the value of online learning, it’s essential to pick the right course. Here’s a quick list of what to look for:

Feedback and connection to peers within the course platform. Interacting regularly with other learners makes a big difference. Luke and the MIT xPRO team use peer-reviewed feedback to give learners the opportunity to engage with each other’s work.
Proof of hard work. In the online learning space, proof of hard work often comes in the form of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or specific certifications. MIT xPRO course participants who successfully complete one or more courses are eligible to receive CEUs , which many employers, licensing agencies, and professional associations accept as evidence of a participant’s serious commitment to their professional development.

Online learning isn’t for everyone, but with the right approach, it can be a valuable experience for many people. Now that you know what to look for in an online course, see what Luke and the MIT xPRO instructional design team have to offer by checking out the latest MIT xPRO courses and programs .

Originally published at http://curve.mit.edu on August 8th, 2022.

The pros and cons of online learning was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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What We’re Learning About Online Learning

As virtual classrooms and online learning proliferate, researchers are working to quantify what works and what doesn’t.

By Benedict Carey

Over four days in mid-March, Cindy Hansen, an 11th grade English teacher at Timpanogos High School in Orem, Utah, had to go fully virtual, and took her class of some 30 students reading “The Great Gatsby” online.

Ms. Hansen had no experience with virtual courses and, like teachers around the country, had to experiment. She decided to upload video lessons — presenting the text of “Gatsby” along with a small window in the corner of the screen, in which she read aloud key passages and assigned essays.

The transition seemed to be proceeding smoothly until, after several lessons, she received a note from a student who rarely spoke up in class.

“He’s one of my sweetest students, and he wrote, ‘Ms. Hansen, those videos are glitchy — I can’t really see the text,’” she said in a phone interview. “I had just assumed they were fine. Well, they were horrible, and the poor kid felt frustrated. I’m glad he said something.” She quickly fixed the problem, she said, by reshooting the videos directly on the teaching site instead of uploading them.

After this spring’s on-the-fly experiment in online classes, teachers and school districts across the country are preparing for what will be anything but a normal fall semester. Some districts stumbled in the transition, with classes zoom-bombed and interrupted ; many strained to address serious inequities in access to computers . Recent research finds that most students fell months behind during the last term of the year, with the heaviest impact on low-income students.

Other schools, like Timpanogos, transitioned with less disruption, in part by mobilizing facilitators, coaches and other staff members to support both teachers and students who were in danger of logging off and checking out, according to a report by researchers.

Now, most districts are facing a future in which online courses will likely be part of the curriculum, whether that entails students returning in shifts or classrooms remaining closed because of local outbreaks. And underlying that adjustment is a more fundamental question: How efficiently do students learn using virtual lessons?

“What we’re finding in the research thus far is it’s generally harder to keep students engaged with virtual lessons,” no matter the content, said Jered Borup, an associate professor in learning technologies at George Mason University. “Over all, though, that is not the distinguishing feature here. Rather, it’s what supports the student has when learning virtually. That makes all the difference.”

Research comparing in-person to online learning comes from many disciplines and does not benefit from the kinds of controls that scientists prefer; courses, teachers, students and class composition vary too much to make comparisons easily.

Physical presence matters, in ways that are not captured by the scientific method. “Look, I did fine in Ms. Hansen’s class — I just bought the audiobooks and read ‘Gatsby’ on my own,” one student, Ethan Avery, said in a phone interview. “But in some other classes. … I’m personally a terrible procrastinator, and not having that physical reminder, sitting in class and the teachers grilling me, ‘Ethan, this is due Friday,’ I fell behind. That was the rough part.”

The two most authoritative reviews of the research to date, examining the results of nearly 300 studies, come to a similar conclusion. Students tend to learn less efficiently than usual in online courses, as a rule, and depending on the course. But if they have a facilitator or mentor on hand, someone to help with the technology and focus their attention — an approach sometimes called blended learning — they perform about as well in many virtual classes, and sometimes better.

One state that has applied this approach broadly, for nearly two decades, is Michigan. A state-supported nonprofit institute called Michigan Virtual offers scores of online courses, in languages, the sciences, history and professional development. It also offers 23 virtual advanced placement (A.P.) courses, for college credit.

“We find that if students have support and a schedule — they do the lesson every weekday at 9 a.m., for instance — they tend to do better than just tuning in here and there,” said Joe Freidhoff, vice president of Michigan Virtual. “The mantra of online learning is, ‘Your own time, your own pace, your own path.’ In fact, each of these factors matter greatly, and some structure seems to help.”

In 2012, the institute added a research arm, to track the progress of its students. In the 2018-19 school year, more than 120,000 students took at least one of its virtual courses; the vast majority of students were in high school. The pass rate was 50 percent for those living below the state’s poverty line, and 70 percent for those living above it, averages roughly in line with the public high schools.

The story was different for Michigan Virtual’s A.P. students. In the 2018-19 academic year, 807 students took least one of its virtual A.P. classes. The final exams are graded on a scale from 1 to 5, with scores of 3 or above having a chance to earn college credit. The virtual learners’ overall average score was 3.21, compared to 3.04 among Michigan peers who took the course in a classroom. The national average on those same tests was 2.89.

“On these exams, our students consistently exceed state and national averages,” Dr. Freidhoff said. “Of course, being A.P. students, they tend to be very self-directed, motivated students.”

In its scramble to shift courses online in mid-March, the Timpanogos district put facilitators in place, both for teachers who needed them and to check in on some students. It lent Chromebooks to every student that did not have a computer at home. And it implemented a policy that, by all accounts, took pressure off the sudden transition: Students could opt for a “P” for pass, if struggling with a virtual class, without taking a hit to their G.P.A.

“It was a little overwhelming at first,” said Briley Andersen, another of Ms. Hansen’s students. “My physics and computer science classes were taking almost all my time, so I ended up taking a P in those.” She added, “As long as there’s good communication with a teacher, you get the hang of it. If not, it takes too long to figure out what you’re supposed to do.”

Michelle Jensen, who is employed by the district as a learning coach, provided guidance to teachers — including Ms. Hansen — and to students when possible. “The rationale was, do no harm,” she said. “These students are going to have 13 years of education, at least, and our approach to this one term was, help them learn how to make this adjustment.”

In a review of Timpanogos’s transition, a research team led by Dr. Borup and Ms. Jensen found that it was largely the nondigital measures that mattered most. Teachers offered virtual office hours to students, and contacted them when activity fell off. When those interventions weren’t effective, counselors worked with the family.

The last term of the 2020 school year was, in effect, a hard lesson for much of the educational system in what virtual classes could and could not provide. The content is there, and accessible, in any well-prepared course.

But if the evidence thus far is any guide, virtual education will depend for its success on old-school principles: creative, attentive teaching and patient support from parents. As “The Great Gatsby” concludes: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

[ Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. ]

Benedict Carey has been a science reporter for The Times since 2004. He has also written three books, “How We Learn” about the cognitive science of learning; “Poison Most Vial” and “Island of the Unknowns,” science mysteries for middle schoolers. More about Benedict Carey

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Published: 25 January 2021

Online education in the post-COVID era

Barbara B. Lockee 1

Nature Electronics volume 4 , pages 5–6 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The coronavirus pandemic has forced students and educators across all levels of education to rapidly adapt to online learning. The impact of this — and the developments required to make it work — could permanently change how education is delivered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to engage in the ubiquitous use of virtual learning. And while online and distance learning has been used before to maintain continuity in education, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes 1 , the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented. Speculation has now also begun about what the lasting effects of this will be and what education may look like in the post-COVID era. For some, an immediate retreat to the traditions of the physical classroom is required. But for others, the forced shift to online education is a moment of change and a time to reimagine how education could be delivered 2 .

Looking back

Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3 .) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4 ). In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective.

The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. F. Skinner 5 , who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6 , in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. A personalized system of instruction was designed on the premise that initial engagement with content could be done independently, then discussed and applied in the social context of a classroom.

These predecessors to contemporary online education leveraged key principles of instructional design — the systematic process of applying psychological principles of human learning to the creation of effective instructional solutions — to consider which methods (and their corresponding learning environments) would effectively engage students to attain the targeted learning outcomes. In other words, they considered what choices about the planning and implementation of the learning experience can lead to student success. Such early educational innovations laid the groundwork for contemporary virtual learning, which itself incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and combinations of delivery modes.

Online learning and the pandemic

Fast forward to 2020, and various further educational innovations have occurred to make the universal adoption of remote learning a possibility. One key challenge is access. Here, extensive problems remain, including the lack of Internet connectivity in some locations, especially rural ones, and the competing needs among family members for the use of home technology. However, creative solutions have emerged to provide students and families with the facilities and resources needed to engage in and successfully complete coursework 7 . For example, school buses have been used to provide mobile hotspots, and class packets have been sent by mail and instructional presentations aired on local public broadcasting stations. The year 2020 has also seen increased availability and adoption of electronic resources and activities that can now be integrated into online learning experiences. Synchronous online conferencing systems, such as Zoom and Google Meet, have allowed experts from anywhere in the world to join online classrooms 8 and have allowed presentations to be recorded for individual learners to watch at a time most convenient for them. Furthermore, the importance of hands-on, experiential learning has led to innovations such as virtual field trips and virtual labs 9 . A capacity to serve learners of all ages has thus now been effectively established, and the next generation of online education can move from an enterprise that largely serves adult learners and higher education to one that increasingly serves younger learners, in primary and secondary education and from ages 5 to 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a lasting effect on lesson design. The constraints of the pandemic provided an opportunity for educators to consider new strategies to teach targeted concepts. Though rethinking of instructional approaches was forced and hurried, the experience has served as a rare chance to reconsider strategies that best facilitate learning within the affordances and constraints of the online context. In particular, greater variance in teaching and learning activities will continue to question the importance of ‘seat time’ as the standard on which educational credits are based 10 — lengthy Zoom sessions are seldom instructionally necessary and are not aligned with the psychological principles of how humans learn. Interaction is important for learning but forced interactions among students for the sake of interaction is neither motivating nor beneficial.

While the blurring of the lines between traditional and distance education has been noted for several decades 11 , the pandemic has quickly advanced the erasure of these boundaries. Less single mode, more multi-mode (and thus more educator choices) is becoming the norm due to enhanced infrastructure and developed skill sets that allow people to move across different delivery systems 12 . The well-established best practices of hybrid or blended teaching and learning 13 have served as a guide for new combinations of instructional delivery that have developed in response to the shift to virtual learning. The use of multiple delivery modes is likely to remain, and will be a feature employed with learners of all ages 14 , 15 . Future iterations of online education will no longer be bound to the traditions of single teaching modes, as educators can support pedagogical approaches from a menu of instructional delivery options, a mix that has been supported by previous generations of online educators 16 .

Also significant are the changes to how learning outcomes are determined in online settings. Many educators have altered the ways in which student achievement is measured, eliminating assignments and changing assessment strategies altogether 17 . Such alterations include determining learning through strategies that leverage the online delivery mode, such as interactive discussions, student-led teaching and the use of games to increase motivation and attention. Specific changes that are likely to continue include flexible or extended deadlines for assignment completion 18 , more student choice regarding measures of learning, and more authentic experiences that involve the meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge 19 , for example, team-based projects that involve multiple creative and social media tools in support of collaborative problem solving.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and administrative systems for implementing online learning, and the infrastructure that supports its access and delivery, had to adapt quickly. While access remains a significant issue for many, extensive resources have been allocated and processes developed to connect learners with course activities and materials, to facilitate communication between instructors and students, and to manage the administration of online learning. Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education.

Before the pandemic, the primary purpose of distance and online education was providing access to instruction for those otherwise unable to participate in a traditional, place-based academic programme. As its purpose has shifted to supporting continuity of instruction, its audience, as well as the wider learning ecosystem, has changed. It will be interesting to see which aspects of emergency remote teaching remain in the next generation of education, when the threat of COVID-19 is no longer a factor. But online education will undoubtedly find new audiences. And the flexibility and learning possibilities that have emerged from necessity are likely to shift the expectations of students and educators, diminishing further the line between classroom-based instruction and virtual learning.

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The Pros and Cons of Online Learning—and What to Look For in an Online Course

By: MIT xPRO on August 8th, 2022 5 Minute Read

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The Pros and Cons of Online Learning—and What to Look For in an Online Course

Online Education | Professional Development

If you’re at a point in your life where you’re considering continuing your education, you may wonder if online learning is the right path for you.

Pros of Online Learning

First, let’s take a look at the true value of online learning by examining some of the benefits:

1. Flexibility

Online learning’s most significant advantage is its flexibility. It’s the reason millions of adults have chosen to continue their education and pursue certificates and degrees.

Asynchronous courses allow learners to complete work at their own pace, empowering them to find the optimal time to consume the content and submit assignments.

Some people are more attentive, focused, and creative in the mornings compared to the evenings and vice versa. Whatever works best for the learners should be the priority of the learning experience.

2. Community

When Luke asks people about their main reason for enrolling in a course, a common answer is networking and community.

Some learners have created study groups and book clubs that have carried on far beyond the end of the course—it’s amazing what can grow from a single post on a discussion board!

3. Latest information

“Speed is a massive benefit of online learning,” and according to Luke, it often doesn't get the attention it deserves. “When we say speed, we don’t mean being quick with learning. We mean actual speed to market. There are so many new ideas evolving within technical spaces that it's impossible to keep courses the way they were originally designed for a long period of time.”

Cons of Online Learning

Now that we’ve looked at some of the biggest pros of online learning, let’s examine a few of the drawbacks:

1. Learning environment

2. Repetition

There are online courses that break the mold and offer multiple kinds of learning activities, assessments, and content to make the learning experience come alive, but it may take some research to find them—more on what to look for in an online course later in this article ! Luke and his colleagues at MIT xPRO are mindful of designing courses that genuinely engage learners from beginning to end.

3. Underestimation

Experience the Value of Online Learning: What to Look For in an Online Course

If you want to experience the value of online learning, it’s essential to pick the right course. Here’s a quick list of what to look for:

Reputation and expertise. With so many online courses available these days, an easy way to narrow down your options is to consider courses offered by reputable institutions. Next, learn more about the instructors teaching a course of interest. Are they well-respected experts in their field of study?
Engaging curriculum. It takes a variety of learning methods to keep people engaged and interested in learning. Many online courses stick to a standard selection of readings, videos, and quizzes. Look for courses that include practice questions, reflection questions, group-based work, simulations, polls, discussions, and other interactive or hands-on activities.
Flexibility in content delivery and deadlines. Whether an online course is fully asynchronous or not, flexibility is a green flag. In practice, this could look like having all the assignments due at the end of the course so that learners can create their own schedules or providing suggested deadlines that aren’t set in stone.
Feedback and connection to peers within the course platform. Interacting regularly with other learners makes a big difference. Luke and the MIT xPRO team use peer-reviewed feedback to give learners the opportunity to engage with each other’s work.
Proof of hard work . In the online learning space, proof of hard work often comes in the form of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or specific certifications. MIT xPRO course participants who successfully complete one or more courses are eligible to receive CEUs , which many employers, licensing agencies, and professional associations accept as evidence of a participant’s serious commitment to their professional development.

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How does virtual learning impact students in higher education?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, stephanie riegg cellini stephanie riegg cellini nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

August 13, 2021

In 2020, the pandemic pushed millions of college students around the world into virtual learning. As the new academic year begins, many colleges in the U.S. are poised to bring students back to campus, but a large amount of uncertainty remains. Some institutions will undoubtedly continue to offer online or hybrid classes, even as in-person instruction resumes. At the same time, low vaccination rates, new coronavirus variants, and travel restrictions for international students may mean a return to fully online instruction for some U.S. students and many more around the world.

Public attention has largely focused on the learning losses of K-12 students who shifted online during the pandemic. Yet, we may have reason to be concerned about postsecondary students too. What can we expect from the move to virtual learning? How does virtual learning impact student outcomes? And how does it compare to in-person instruction at the postsecondary level?

Several new papers shed light on these issues, building on previous work in higher education and assessing the efficacy of online education in new contexts. The results are generally consistent with past research: Online coursework generally yields worse student performance than in-person coursework. The negative effects of online course-taking are particularly pronounced for less-academically prepared students and for students pursuing bachelor’s degrees. New evidence from 2020 also suggests that the switch to online course-taking in the pandemic led to declines in course completion. However, a few new studies point to some positive effects of online learning, too. This post discusses this new evidence and its implications for the upcoming academic year.

Evaluating online instruction in higher education

A number of studies have assessed online versus in-person learning at the college level in recent years. A key concern in this literature is that students typically self-select into online or in-person programs or courses, confounding estimates of student outcomes. That is, differences in the characteristics of students themselves may drive differences in the outcome measures we observe that are unrelated to the mode of instruction. In addition, the content, instructor, assignments, and other course features might differ across online and in-person modes as well, which makes apples-to-apples comparisons difficult.

The most compelling studies of online education draw on a random assignment design (i.e., randomized control trial or RCT) to isolate the causal effect of online versus in-person learning. Several pathbreaking studies were able to estimate causal impacts of performance on final exams or course grades in recent years. Virtually all of these studies found that online instruction resulted in lower student performance relative to in-person instruction; although in one case , students with hybrid instruction performed similarly to their in-person peers. Negative effects of online course-taking were particularly pronounced for males and less-academically prepared students.

A new paper by Kofoed and co-authors adds to this literature looking specifically at online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in a novel context: the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. When many colleges moved classes completely online or let students choose their own mode of instruction at the start of the pandemic, West Point economics professors arranged to randomly assign students to in-person or online modes of learning. The same instructors taught one online and one in-person economics class each, and all materials, exams, and assignments were otherwise identical, minimizing biases that otherwise stand in the way of true comparisons. They find that online education lowered a student’s final grade by about 0.2 standard deviations. Their work also confirms the results of previous papers, finding that the negative effect of online learning was driven by students with lower academic ability. A follow-up survey of students’ experiences suggests that online students had trouble concentrating on their coursework and felt less connected to both their peers and instructors relative to their in-person peers.

Cacault et al. (2021) also use an RCT to assess the effects of online lectures in a Swiss university. The authors find that having access to a live-streamed lecture in addition to an in-person option improves the achievement of high-ability students, but lowers the achievement of low-ability students. The key to understanding this two-pronged effect is the counterfactual: When streamed lectures substitute for no attendance (e.g., if a student is ill), they can help students, but when streaming lectures substitute for in-person attendance, they can hurt students.

Broader impacts of online learning

One drawback of RCTs is that these studies are typically limited to a single college and often a single course within that college, so it is not clear if the results generalize to other contexts. Several papers in the literature draw on larger samples of students in non-randomized settings and mitigate selection problems with various econometric methods. These papers find common themes: Students in online courses generally get lower grades, are less likely to perform well in follow-on coursework, and are less likely to graduate than similar students taking in-person classes.

In a recent paper , my co-author Hernando Grueso and I add to this strand of the literature, expanding it to a very different context. We draw on data from the country of Colombia, where students take a mandatory exit exam when they graduate. Using these data, we can assess test scores as an outcome, rather than (more subjective) course grades used in other studies. We can also assess performance across a wide range of institutions, degree programs, and majors.

We find that bachelor’s degree students in online programs perform worse on nearly all test score measures—including math, reading, writing, and English—relative to their counterparts in similar on-campus programs. Results for shorter technical certificates, however, are more mixed. While online students perform significantly worse than on-campus students on exit exams in private institutions, they perform better in SENA, the main public vocational institution in the country, suggesting substantial heterogeneity across institutions in the quality of online programming. Interviews with SENA staff indicate that SENA’s approach of synchronous learning and real-world projects may be working for some online students, but we cannot definitively call this causal evidence, particularly because we can only observe the students who graduate.

A new working paper by Fischer et al. pushes beyond near-term outcomes, like grades and scores, to consider longer-term outcomes, like graduation and time-to-degree, for bachelor’s degree-seeking students in a large public university in California. They find reason to be optimistic about online coursework: When students take courses required for their major online, they are more likely to graduate in four years and see a small decrease in time-to-degree relative to students taking the requirements in-person.

On the other hand, new work considering course completion during the pandemic is less promising. Looking at student outcomes in spring 2020 in Virginia’s community college system, Bird et al. find that the switch to online instruction resulted in an 8.5% reduction in course completion. They find that both withdrawals and failures rose. They also confirm findings in the literature that negative impacts are more extreme among less-academically-prepared students.

Online learning in the fall and beyond

Much more research on virtual learning will undoubtedly be forthcoming post-pandemic. For now, college professors and administrators should consider that college students pushed online may be less prepared for future follow-on classes, their GPAs may be lower, course completion may suffer, and overall learning may have declined relative to in-person cohorts in previous years. These results seem particularly problematic for students with less academic preparation and those in bachelor’s degree programs.

The research is less clear on the impact of virtual instruction on college completion. Although course completion rates appear to be lower for online courses relative to in-person, the evidence is mixed on the impact of virtual instruction on graduation and time-to-degree. The negative learning impacts, reduced course completion, and lack of connection with other students and faculty in a virtual environment could ultimately reduce college completion rates. On the other hand, there is also evidence that the availability of online classes may allow students to move through their degree requirement more quickly.

As the fall semester approaches, colleges will need to make critical choices about online, hybrid, and in-person course offerings. Maintaining some of the most successful online courses will enhance flexibility at this uncertain time and allow some students to continue to make progress on their degrees if they get sick or cannot return to campus for other reasons. For those transitioning back to campus, administrators might consider additional in-person programming, review sessions, tutoring, and other enhanced supports as students make up for learning losses associated with the virtual instruction of the past year.

10 Biggest Disadvantages of E-Learning

These disadvantages of E-Learning must be addressed to ensure the legitimacy and longevity of the online learning industry.

By Sander Tamm
Jan 10, 2023

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“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela

We already analyzed the numerous benefits of E-Learning in our previous article. Now, it’s time to cover the opposite side of the coin. E-Learning has some significant drawbacks, and these problems often get pushed aside in online discussions. After all, who would want to put the brakes on educational innovation?

Looking at the industry as a whole also reveals plenty of enthusiasm, with the statistics of the E-Learning industry in 2022 showing massive growth. However, educators worldwide still recognize some major issues plaguing the industry. Let’s have a closer look at these problems.

These are the disadvantages of E-Learning:

Disadvantages of E-Learning

1. online student feedback is limited.

In traditional classrooms, teachers can give students immediate face-to-face feedback. Students who are experiencing problems in the curriculum can resolve them quickly and directly either during the lecture or during dedicated office hours. Personalized feedback has a positive impact on students, as it makes learning processes easier, richer, and more significant , all the while raising the motivation levels of the students.

E-Learning, on the other hand, still tends to struggle with student feedback. Students completing regular assessments become dissatisfied when they experience a lack of personalized feedback . The traditional methods of providing student feedback don’t always work in an E-Learning environment, and because of this, online education providers are forced to look towards alternative methods for providing feedback. Providing student feedback in an online setting is still a relatively unresearched topic area, and it might take a while for any specific strategies to become fully research-based and proven to be effective.

Solution: Researchers have demonstrated successful examples of peer feedback systems in online learning, which could be a potential solution to the problem of limited student feedback in e-learning. Additionally, this disadvantage of E-Learning is sometimes solved through video chats with professors , which function similarly to the professor’s office hours during on-campus training.

2. E-Learning can cause social Isolation

The E-Learning methods currently practiced in education tend to make participating students engage in solitary contemplation without interaction . As a result, many students and teachers who inevitably spend much of their time online can start experiencing signs of social isolation due to the lack of human communication in their lives. Social isolation and lack of communication often lead to several mental health issues, such as heightened stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts.

Solution: Some of the ways to combat loneliness and social isolation in online learning could be:

Promoting increased interaction between online students.
Utilizing blended learning environments.
Monitoring the students for signs of social isolation.

3. E-Learning requires strong self-motivation and time management skills

Lack of self-motivation among students continues to be one of the primary reasons why students fail to complete online courses. In traditional classrooms, there are numerous factors that constantly push students toward their learning goals. Face-to-face communication with professors, peer-to-peer activities, and strict schedules all help keep the students from falling off track during their studies.

In the setting of an online learning environment, however, there are fewer external factors that push the students to perform well. In many cases, the students are left to fend for themselves during their learning activities, without anyone constantly urging them towards their learning goals. Students taking E-Learning courses will find that they are often required to learn difficult materials in a comfortable home setting without any of the added pressure normally associated with traditional colleges. As a result, keeping up with regular deadlines during online studies can become difficult for those students who lack strong self-motivation and time management skills.

Solution: Building strong self-motivation and disciplinary skills is key to succeeding in an online learning environment. Additionally, face-to-face communication with professors can be substituted with online communication, and peer-to-peer activities should be promoted between online students similarly as it would be in traditional classrooms.

4. Lack of communicational skill development in online students

E-Learning methods are proven to be highly effective at improving the academic knowledge of students. However, developing the communicational skills of the students is an area often neglected during online lessons. Due to the lack of face-to-face communication between peers, students, and teachers in an online setting, the students might find that they are unable to work effectively in a team setting. Neglecting the communicational skills of the students will inevitably lead to many graduates who excel in theoretical knowledge, but who fail to pass their knowledge on to others.

Solution: Peer-to-peer group activities and online lectures which require communication must be used even in an online learning environment. In doing so, we can ensure that E-Learning does not fail to teach students the communication skills necessary to succeed in real working environments.

5. Cheating prevention during online assessments is complicated

Unfortunately, one of the biggest disadvantages of E-Learning continues to be cheating through various methods. Compared to on-campus students, online students can cheat on assessments more easily as they take assessments in their own environment and while using their personal computers. The students cannot be directly observed during assessments without a video feed, making cheat detection during online assessments more complicated than for traditional testing procedures. Additionally, without a proper identity verification system in place, students taking online assessments might be able to let a third party take the assessment instead of themselves, resulting in a wholly fraudulent test result.

Solution: To protect the authenticity of online education, anti-cheating measures must be put in place by any online education institution. The most popular anti-cheating tools currently used in E-Learning are online proctoring systems such as Examity , which use various anti-cheating measures, including automated ID verification and machine learning to detect fraudulent test-takers.

6. Online instructors tend to focus on theory rather than practice

Although this drawback of E-Learning is starting to be addressed and fixed by some of the more innovative online learning platforms, the problem has yet to disappear completely. The problem is that many E-Learning training providers focus largely (in many cases entirely) on developing theoretical knowledge rather than practical skills. The reason for this is evident – theoretical lectures are considerably easier to implement in an online learning environment than practical lectures. After all, without face-to-face communication and physical classrooms to use as a workshop, implementing practical projects in an online course requires significantly more prior planning than theoretical training.

Solution: Implementing hands-on student projects in conjunction with 1:1 mentorship is some of the most effective ways of developing practical skills in online students. There are several successful practice-based online courses on platforms such as Udacity and Springboard .

7. E-Learning lacks face-to-face communication

The lack of face-to-face communication ties together with many previously mentioned disadvantages of online learning. A lack of face-to-face communication with the instructor inhibits student feedback, causes social isolation, and could cause students to feel a lack of pressure. A lack of pressure is a disadvantage because it causes students to abandon their studies more easily. Constant nudging by professors may be undesirable for many, but it’s an effective method for improving student retention.

Solution: In E-Learning, face-to-face communication must be substituted with another method of communication. For example, video chats, discussion boards, and chatrooms could help with the adverse effects of a lack of face-to-face contact during online learning.

8. E-Learning is limited to certain disciplines

All educational disciplines are not created equal, and not all study fields can be effectively pursued via E-Learning – for now, at least. E-Learning tends to be more suitable for social science and humanities rather than scientific fields such as medical science and engineering, which require a certain degree of hands-on practical experience. No amount of online lectures can substitute an autopsy for medical students or real-life industrial training for a budding engineer. While this could change in the future, we are not yet at a point where we can teach all professions solely through E-Learning.

Solution: For some disciplines, such as medical education , blended learning could be an excellent alternative to fully online learning. In the case of nursing students , research showed that blended learning courses achieved similar post-test results as traditional course formats while increasing the satisfaction ratings of the participating students significantly.

9. Online learning is inaccessible to the computer illiterate population

96% of Americans own mobile devices , and around 73% own a personal computer . Therefore, it would be easy to argue that online education is accessible to most people. However, these statistics don’t paint the whole picture. Despite the booming growth in technological capabilities, computer literacy rates are still far from perfect. The OECD average percentage of computer-illiterate people hovers around 25%, meaning that a quarter of the population will have considerable trouble accessing E-Learning as an educational method. And these are OECD countries we are talking about, considered developed countries with high-income economies.

In other parts of the world, the situation is often direr. In India, for example, despite the country being one of the major players in the world of E-Learning, there is still a large gap in computer literacy in the population. As long as such gaps in society exist, online education will not be able to reach all citizens. Therefore, we must look at online learning as a supplement rather than a replacement for traditional education.

Solution: Finding a solution to the complex problem of raising computer literacy is no easy task. However, initiatives such as Digital India show promise in improving the computer literacy rates amongst the population.

10. Lack of accreditation & quality assurance in online education

If E-Learning is to be considered as effective and authentic as traditional learning, it must be ensured that all online schools are qualified and accredited. Unfortunately, at the current point in time, there are still a vast number of online learning platforms which are unaccredited and where all the materials are quality checked by no one besides the instructors themselves. As such, poor quality assurance and a lack of accredited online learning providers continue to weaken the legitimacy of online education.

Solution: There are numerous considerations for the quality assurance of E-Learning , and they must be followed to ensure the authenticity of E-Learning. Additionally, accreditation management systems such as Creatrix provide a centralized solution for the accreditation process.

Sander Tamm

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The Negative Effects of Remote Learning on Children's Wellbeing

Posted February 18, 2022
By Jill Anderson
Counseling and Mental Health
Disruption and Crises
Human Development
Online Education

Before COVID hit, Professor Stephanie Jones and Lecturer Emily Hanno were already tracking young children's development as part of the Early Learning Study at Harvard . As the pandemic began unfolding, they started to see shifts among the thousands of families and children participating in the study.

In their newest findings , they share that families reported a rise in temper tantrums, anxiety, and a poor ability to manage emotions, especially among the young elementary-aged children during remote learning. These findings may not come as a surprise to the many families who endured remote learning with their children, however, Jones and Hanno say these experiences remain important now, even as we inch toward a possible endemic.

“We have to be ready to support children as they transition between these different things — these different modalities, these different experiences — and support adults in kind of learning about enacting strategies that support children as they navigate the changes,” Jones says. “Those are things that we know about ... from work in social and emotional learning, in supporting positive behaviors, and supporting the wellbeing of adults.”

In this episode of the Harvard EdCast , they talk about how educators and families need to invest in social-emotional learning before learning loss or lost classroom time. They share ways to support educators facilitating classroom experiences for children that allow them to process the experiences they've had. They also offer easy strategies for families to check in with their young children's wellbeing.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson. This is The Harvard EdCast.

Harvard Professor Stephanie Jones and lecturer Emily Hanno's recent study explored how remote learning negatively affected children's behavior. This probably doesn't come as a surprise to the many families and educators who endured remote learning, yet it was another piece for Stephanie and Emily in understanding children's wellbeing, and a cue for schools and families to embrace social and emotional learning. They had begun tracking children's development years ago, as part the Early Learning Study at Harvard. When the pandemic hit, they started to see a shift in wellbeing and behaviors among the elementary aged children and their families in the study. They say it's important now, more than ever, for parents and educators to pay attention to children and help them navigate their emotions. I wanted to hear more about this and strategies adults can use with kids. First, I asked Stephanie what made remote learning affect children so negatively.

Stephanie Jones: I think it's a couple of things going on. What I don't think is that there's something about the screen itself. So the experience is remote learning, and I think it's association with some of these more challenging behaviors that parents observed, suggests that there's sort of a signal about what's going on generally for families and for children during the periods of time when remote learning is necessary. So I think it's a signal about the strain that families are under when remote learning has to happen, when those conditions are such that children have to be at home. For many parents, having a six or a seven year old at home on a screen learning while one is working and managing a household and doing all of the things that adults do, that is really very stressful. We know that strain is tied to challenging behavior among children.

So I think the remote learning is more of a signal about the other kinds of things that are happening in families. The second thing is that I think it's hard for six and seven year olds to learn on a screen as their main modality for learning. It's hard. They have to learn how to do that, and that, of course, comes with all kinds of challenges. Sometimes when kids are struggling and they're frustrated, their behavior shifts. It can look more negative, more dysregulated, they fall apart more often. Emily, what do you think?

These findings aren't necessarily going to be a surprise to anyone who's weathered remote learning with a child at home. So in some sense, this is meant to be confirmation of what many of us have suspected, that, yes, these are things that we're observing at scale on a more systematic way. Our hope is to draw attention to the fact that children's behaviors are shifting and that we may expect to see children coming back to school and behaving and operating in different ways than they did before the pandemic. So I think there's a risk of jumping immediately into trying to address learning loss or lost time in classrooms with children to focus on academic skills, but if we understand that children's behaviors have shifted in negative ways, we can support educators in facilitating classroom experiences for children that allow them to process the experiences that they've had, as well as support and scaffold behaviors in the classroom.

Jill Anderson: Does this mean remote learning just needs to be taken off the table altogether?

Stephanie Jones: I don't think that that's something that we can say, given that we are still in this situation, for sure. I think what these findings tell us is that we have to be ready for the challenges that come along with these various decisions. So for young kids, for kids who are six and seven years old, for adults, disruption can be really challenging. Changes to routines sets everybody off. Young children in particular, because they're just learning how to manage all the changes that are just part of life. So I don't think it means that remote learning is off the table, because that should be driven by public health considerations. I think what it does mean is that we have to be ready to support children as they transition between these different things, these different modalities, these different experiences, and support adults in kind of learning about enacting strategies that support children as they navigate the changes. Those are things that we know about from work forever, from work in social and emotional learning, in supporting positive behaviors, and supporting the wellbeing of adults. We have material we can draw upon to support kids and adults.

Jill Anderson: So you're talking about strategies and things that can be done to manage some of these pivots. Can you talk about what that might look like for educators and parents?

Stephanie Jones: There are lots of things. Some seem really sort of overly simple, and in their simpleness, they are profound. So asking children, asking adults how they're feeling. So, "What has it been like for you, as you went from being at school to being at home? How are you feeling as you're coming back to school? What is it like for you to go through this?" So just allowing some time and space for processing what's happened and the feelings that go along with it. We're really talking about how to support young children as they move between all these situations, but truly it's about the adults too, who need as much support and care as do the children. So one strategy is to really just open up space for processing and talking about how everyone's feeling, and it doesn't have to take a long time. It can be really quick, but it's really important.

Emily Hanno: Another simple, yet profound strategy is routine. We know that children thrive with predictability and that's what's been so hard about this whole pandemic, is that we've had little ability to predict what's coming next and how long it's going to last. So both families and educators can support children's wellbeing by creating predictable routines that are going to happen no matter what's happening in the broader ecosystem of children's lives. So small things like family walks, consistent mealtime routines can really make a difference for children, and I think back to what Stephanie said, sometimes these more break-like or fun family routines can present space for children to have the sorts of open conversations about how they're doing. So while you're doing a puzzle together, or cooking dinner, those might be spaces where children feel most comfortable talking about how they're doing.

Jill Anderson: A lot of these strategies sound like the things that we should just be doing in general, even whether the pandemic existed or not, right?

Stephanie Jones: Yeah. One of the things that we've learned in this experience, and we certainly hear from educators and from parents increasingly about their interest in this field, which is that adults and children, the world of social, emotional, and behavioral wellbeing are really important, and these experiences have sort of made that ever clearer. There's lots of interest in strategies and supports for those areas in particular. So I would say, as someone who works in that area, I would say, "Yes. This is always important. Children really benefit from routines and it's always helpful to share how you feel. It builds relationships and it brings everyone into the space together." But right now, when we're facing these kinds of challenges, it is particularly important. As we get back into it, we address some of the real issues that we're facing, which is that children need some catch up, there are things to be learned and done.

If we leave out a focus on the core social, emotional, and behavioral supports and skills, we'll struggle to address those other things. So we'll set ourselves back even more, and so taking time and thinking about how to bring children and adults back into a more regular routine of teaching and learning, and school, family and relationships, taking time to do that well and focusing on how people are feeling and what they've experienced is so important. It will help us in the long run, it'll move the other work forward faster.

Jill Anderson: Is there really a resistance to it, or is it kind of a case of there's so much that people are trying to do and mitigate, that it kind of might be falling by the wayside? I'm talking about social and emotional learning.

Stephanie Jones: I think that there is a great deal of belief and buy-in. I think when it comes down to the pressures of school and schooling, and the enormous challenges and pressures that educators are facing right now, it's hard to set aside time for these kinds of things because there's such a press to get back to normal, to get on with things. It's a tough moment and a conundrum. My advice is always, "Spending a little time here will accelerate your other efforts," because children and adults will feel more ready for it. So it's like, "Put time here," it feels like you're taking away from something else, but it will benefit the "something else" in the short and the long run.

Jill Anderson: I know my own kid has a class every week, that I suspect is social and emotional learning, called Nexus, and she loves it.

Stephanie Jones: Yeah.

Jill Anderson: It's her favorite class. We don't know what the heck happens in there, but this isn't happening everywhere, I suspect.

Stephanie Jones: It is varied, how it happens in different places. I think one thing you're highlighting that's so important, and something that we would all do well to remember, which is that children love to talk about how they feel and their relationships with others. It's a really important part of their life. It's what's in the front of their minds. You can take advantage of that and say, "Let's really think about how to support that. They're so engaged in that world. Let's think about how we can support that in other areas of instructional work." So let's bring in that interest in the social world, the emotional world, and see where it fits in these other instructional domains, because kids are really... They care about that stuff and they want to talk about it.

Jill Anderson: It was fun when she brought the trigger sheet home and I was listed as one of her triggers, but that's okay.

Stephanie Jones: All parents are a trigger.

Jill Anderson: Dad didn't make it on there, but I did. I know I'm taking us way off course there, because I think a lot about social and emotional learning, and I ponder how much parents really know and understand about that.

Stephanie Jones: Yeah. But just as you described, you see it in your relationship.

Jill Anderson: Right.

Stephanie Jones: Many parents feel it, it's intuitive, and sometimes it's not always clear from a kind of surfacing and explicit standby, like, "Which part of this is actually that social and emotional learning that they're talking about in school?" So making that connection sometimes doesn't happen, but in its core, it's really about forging connected, close, high quality relationships between adults and children, and children and children, and sort of in the whole ecosystem.

Jill Anderson: To get us a little bit back onto the pandemic, talk a little bit about some of the changes in behavior that you were seeing in these studies among children.

Emily Hanno: Just quickly to go back to Stephanie's point, I think one of the things that she's highlighting, and in our work together we've thought a lot about, is how do you integrate social and emotional learning into everything that you're doing in classrooms and at home? There's a potential hazard of thinking of social and emotional learning as having to be a specific learning block, or an hour a week, when in reality, it's happening every moment of every day that we're interacting with children and interacting with each other. One of the things that we've thought a lot about is how do you develop supports for families, supports for educators that allow them to integrate more explicitly social and emotional learning themes throughout the day when they're with children? Going back to your question around what behavioral changes we observe and parents observe, we saw that parents were reporting that their children's behavior tended to be more dysregulated when they were in remote learning.

So they're having trouble putting the brakes on and switching between activities flexibly. We saw parents reporting that children were having more temper tantrums, and more anxious and removed behavior, so a whole slew of different types of behaviors. It doesn't mean every child that we learned about was experiencing these specific behaviors, but what it does indicate is that the response can look a lot of the different ways. It can be in more internalizing symptomatology, where children are a little bit withdrawn or quiet, or it can be in externalizing symptomatology where children's behaviors are really quite prevalent and you're observing it in a more dysregulated behaviors too. So we saw a diversity of responses.

Stephanie Jones: So that's a good point, the diversity of responses to sort of challenge and disruption. We often get the question, from parents and from educators, "What should I notice and pay attention to?" Building on what Emily just described, it's really sort of a change in your child's behavior from what you're used to. So for some children, and even for adults, it can be this kind of drawing back or withdrawing, and for others, it can be a form of sort of falling apart, and yet others, it can be a form of kind of externalizing or acting out and responding to big emotions in big ways. So it's really the kind of shift that is the thing to look out for, and then, "How are you feeling? What's happening with you?", getting into a conversation about what's going on.

Jill Anderson: It sounds like it's important for parents to carve out time every day to just sort of have these little check-ins, that that could be the most important thing to do.

Stephanie Jones: As you said before, there are many of these things that are sort of great all the time, but especially when things really feel like they're tense and out of control, and having that little check-in can be the routine. So every day at this time, we're going to have our chat. We're going to sit together and hold hands, or it can be anything. We're going to sit with the stuffed animals and talk with them, find out how they're feeling during this unusual time. So there are lots of little strategies, little ways to check in with children, and I would say, again, with other adults, that just open up that place for sharing something that might be going on. Doing it in a regular way increases the likelihood that a child who is uncertain is going to share something. So it might not be the first time, "I'm feeling okay," but the next time, "Actually, it's kind of hard for me. I don't know what to do when I have to be on the screen. I'm nervous about that, or that makes me bored, or overly excited," or whatever it is.

Emily Hanno: Some of these routines may feel unnatural at first, and making them part of daily behavior takes time to build the habit and to make it integrated into your normal everyday life. I would just underscore a theme that we've touched on over and over and over again, is that here, we're talking a lot about child wellbeing, but the adults' wellbeing, whether that's at home or at school, is so foundational to the child's wellbeing. Many of us have just been doing what we need to do to survive, to get through this current moment, but allowing and giving ourselves time to pause and think about how we're doing and how we might do more self care.

Jill Anderson: We're in this really weird space in the pandemic right now where things aren't back to normal, but we're kind of pretending they're going to go back to normal. We don't know what the normal is anymore. Some of the work that you do explores the role of parents and caregivers modeling positive behavior through adversity. Why is that important, and what does that look like?

Stephanie Jones: One of the primary ways that children learn how to manage their own experiences, their own emotions, their frustrations, their excitement, is by watching others do it. Children learn from the adult around them in every kind of way, and so how adults model their own management of stress and disruption is really important. That doesn't mean that it's terrible if an adult falls apart, that's a learning experience for a child too, which is that sometimes we fall apart and then we put ourselves back together. That's an important thing to see. A strategy for adults who really feel like they need a tool to manage some of those up and down kind of moments might be to do some out-loud self talk. So, "Gosh, I am feeling so frustrated right now because I can't get this computer to turn on. When I feel frustrated, I really want to hit the table, but I take a deep breath and I keep trying."

So here I've just narrated something that happens to me all the time. I get frustrated by something and I want to fall apart, but I have to do something to help myself not fall apart. What we've found in our work is that young children are captivated by the internal world of adults. They don't hear about it all that often, and when they do, they really pay attention. So once an adult starts to sort of narrate their own internal world, those little ears are perking up and it can be really influential. So in a funny way, it's a way to do two things at once. It's a way for an adult to manage what's happening with themselves, self-talk can be a useful strategy, but also to model a way to manage for a young child who's having some trouble and listening closely.

Emily Hanno: We also know that there can be cascades between how adults and children are doing. If an adult is feeling really stressed and frustrated, they can maybe respond more tersely to children, and that in turn feeds into the child's behavior, who's also responding shortly with their adult caregivers, and then that in turn exacerbates adults' behaviors and feelings as well. So I think it's important to understand that feedback loop between adult behavior and child be behavior, to be able to stop and see it happening, and then do something about it. As the adult, take a moment, stop, and address the burnout cascade.

Jill Anderson: So what are you looking at now, and just what to keep in mind going forward?

Emily Hanno: So we're continuing to follow these children for as long as they'll have us follow them, and our hope is to continue to understand how children's behavioral wellbeing and general wellbeing is shifting over time as we hopefully return to normalcy, so we understand whether or not these changes we've observed are enduring over time. The other thing that we're starting to do right now is to go back to our families and assess the children, not just in the areas of social and emotional learning, but also in more traditional academic areas, language development, literacy development, math skills, to understand whether or not we've also seen changes in those areas and how they align to changes in children's behavioral health. So is it that children whose behaviors have suffered more during the pandemic are also those that are struggling academically as well?

Stephanie Jones: Yeah. Exactly. Overall, we're really interested in connecting children's experiences, families' experiences to their trajectories over time, across all sorts of areas. So we'll do that forever, as Emily said, if we can, and feed the information back to educators, to systems, to families.

Jill Anderson: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Stephanie Jones: Thank you.

Emily Hanno: Thank you.

Jill Anderson: Stephanie Jones is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a faculty director of the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative. Emily Hanno is a postdoctoral researcher with the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative. She is also a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They are working on the Early Learning Study at Harvard, a population-based study that examines children's development in context of their early education and care. I'm Jill Anderson. This is The Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

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Five concerns about the mass rush to online learning that shouldn’t be ignored

The rush to put education online amid the coronavirus pandemic — in this country and around the world, from K-12 to graduate school — is unprecedented. Districts that have little to no experience with it are, within days or weeks, throwing together online programs for students to learn for an undetermined amount of time. As a result, complexities that ordinarily would be considered for such a shift may not have been given much early thought.

Basic technical issues are front and center, by necessity: the availability of online devices and Internet access; how lessons can be moved from face-to-face to virtual; how students can receive and turn in assignments; and how students will be “held accountable” by grades or papers now that the government has waived federal mandates for annual standardized testing.

Other complex issues may be getting short shrift in the immediate mass move to online and distance education. Here are some of them, along with what some schools and districts are doing to address them:

1. Security

Security is always a big concern in the world of online education, and it’s heightened now with most of the nation’s schoolchildren doing some form of online schooling. Even before the mass rush to virtual education, security breaches with online learning were not uncommon. Now school districts and teachers are, in some places, offering students online portals that may not have been put behind strong filters.

That’s what Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, says he is worried about. Carvalho, who leads one of the largest school districts in the country, started his district’s online program a few weeks ago. He says he had already thought through the security issues, as the district worked in recent years to bring digital education into the regular school day. Collaboration with the FBI and the Secret Service to learn how to monitor the district’s digital assets was part of that work.

“Trust me, online predators are aware of what is happening around the country, and they are aware that children of all ages are somehow connected,” he said in an interview. “It is really unprecedented. My advice to my colleagues is to do what we have done. We have strong filters to keep out adult content. And we are allowing students access only to our portal. They have to sign into our portal with a password and can’t engage in a chat with someone that isn’t in our suite of offerings.”

2. Ergonomics

School districts have been providing laptops for students for years, but many of them — and probably most — give short shrift to the proper way children should be sitting when they use them. The same goes for how kids use their computers at home.

Although businesses have been creating ergonomically correct workplaces for their employees, students are asked to sit at a regular desk and use devices without thought being given to strain on their necks, shoulders and backs.

Although students often exhibited poor posture in school before the advent of computers, doctors for years have reported an increase in back strain and other physical problems as a result of poor ergonomics in schools where students are doing work digitally. According to Princeton University’s Health Services:

Without proper computer setup and use, there are many injuries that may result. Tendinitis is the most common problem, involving tendon inflammation and localized pain in the elbow, forearm, wrist or hand. Bad posture can cause fatigue, muscle strain, and, in later stages, pain. Back pain, one of the most common complaints of older men and women, is usually the result of years of faulty posture. In addition, poor posture can affect the position and function of your vital organs, particularly those in the abdominal region. Stand up straight to promote health and good appearance. You will exude confidence and dignity as you hold your back up straight using abdomen and back muscles.

Stephen Dare is head of the Hong Kong Academy, a private International baccalaureate pre-K-12 school in Hong Kong, where students have learning online since February because of the virus. He said that not long after the campus closed, administrators surveyed children and their parents and learned of back and neck problems because of the way students were sitting.

“We’ve become conscious of how students are setting up [laptops] in their bedrooms, and we try to make sure their postures are good and what the ergonomics of this are,” he said.

“Sometimes we make them aware that they are sitting for a long time or their posture is incorrect,” he said. “The teachers are constantly reminding them of the need to take breaks and the opportunity to do something different. Parents are getting into this as well."

You may be surprised by how much data about your child is being collected by schools and their vendors when your child is online. There’s the basic information — name, email address, grades and test scores — but also things you may not expect.

In 2018, the FBI issued a warning to the public about cyberthreat concerns related to K-12 students. Data that can be collected on students includes personally identifiable information; biometrics; academic progress; behavioral, disciplinary and medical information; Web browsing history; geolocation; IP addresses used by students; and classroom activities.

Data breaches are not uncommon, and concerns are rising with the rush to online learning by millions of students.

As schooling rapidly moves online across the country, concerns rise about student data privacy

Three Democratic senators last week urged the Trump administration to take steps to protect student data, saying in part:

Many ed tech offerings collect large amounts of data about students and do not employ adequate privacy or security measures. Experts have found ‘widespread lack of transparency and inconsistent privacy and security practices in the industry for educational software and other applications used in schools and by children outside the classroom for learning.’ And the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned that ‘[m]alicious use of [student] data could result in social engineering, bullying, tracking, identity theft, or other means for targeting children.’”

Personal data is collected on kids at school all the time. Here’s help for parents to protect children’s privacy.

4. Isolation

If you ask kids what they most dislike about being forced to stay at home during the pandemic, they probably will say how much they miss their friends. It’s no small thing.

In classrooms, education is a social process, with students having to learn how to deal with one another and adults in ways that allow them to learn without having to be separated or sent home and for misconduct. A student’s experiences at school are among the most influential factors in their socialization.

This affects young people of all ages. Michael Hynes is the superintendent of the Port Washington Union Free School District on Long Island in New York. His 7-year-old daughter, Sadie, a first-grader who has Down syndrome, misses her fellow students terribly.

“She has the class picture that everybody gets, and she carries it around with her,” he said. “I could cry even thinking about it.”

Older students may suffer even more from social isolation, experts say, because friends play a far more important role in their lives.

Principals and teachers are working online to try to bring students together outside of class to continue to foster relationships. Daniel Mateo, principal at BioTECH @ Richmond Heights 9-12 in Miami, said during lunch period, when classes shut down online for about an hour, they sometimes offer online activities. One was a virtual escape room, where students had to team up to get out of a room. “We just wanted to have fun,” he said.

5. Effectiveness

There are excellent online programs and lousy online programs, and it is difficult to paint all virtual learning with a single brush, just like it is to do for brick-and-mortar schools.

Some kids are comfortable with being online or will learn quickly and have teachers who know how to translate classroom activities into virtual ones. Some students won’t be comfortable. Some teachers just aren’t tech-savvy.

What does the research say? That, too, is complicated. Available research looks at online programs, not unexpected shifts. Much of the research comparing the effects of online education with in-person schooling shows a negative effect on outcomes. But it depends on the population of students, and online education, relative to bricks-and-mortar, is still young.

If you ask Jay-len McLean, an 18-year-old student in New York City who plays the saxophone, clarinet and flute, he will tell you he is finding online learning “rather unproductive at the moment.” He attends Talented Unlimited High School in Manhattan’s District 2.

“I feel like I’m not learning anything because all I’m being asked to do is go onto Google Classroom, look at the assignments and finish them by a certain due date. So it’s like I’m teaching myself rather than being taught.” The senior takes a mix of academic and music classes and is spending “significantly a lot less time at home” working on assignments than he does in school because they are easy and short.

What he misses from being in class, he said, is “human interaction.”

“Just talking to your friends, listening to them reasoning out their answers. Why they thought this interpretation for something was this and not something else. The constant push of the teachers looking at your work, pushing your ideas. That’s all important.”

The advantages and disadvantages of online education

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If you’re seeking an edge on your competitors, additional education is ideal to hone your skills and make connections. Here’s an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of online education.

Shifting perspectives in a fast-changing world

The recent changes in our society have forced us to reimagine some of our most basic, day-to-day tasks. Jobs that were once always done in person are now being performed online; we forego the crowding of supermarkets and restaurants for the safety of delivery and homemade cooking, and face-to-face conversations have been relegated to our phones and computers. We are forced to reflect upon our own communities, even as we are unable to see them.

Online education , once considered a niche area, is now becoming a much more appealing option for university and post-graduate students around the world.

Online education programmes are particularly suited for those who:

need flexibility in their coursework
are looking to continue their current jobs
have families to look after
want an internationally recognised course without having to relocate
wish to travel while continuing to train in their field or acquire new skills

E-learning: the new normal?

Advantages of online learning

An aspect often overlooked by many online courses is that of developing relationships between the students and professors, experts, other students, etc. Collaboration and community are an essential part of the learning process. A solid, defined community within an online course gives students access to:

Structured opportunities to work with other students , and experiment with various projects
Significant improvements in collaboration skills, especially in the context of an international cohort and using online tools
The ability to have one-on-one discussions with teachers , in order to better understand and explore subjects
Relief from stress caused by technical issues or administrative procedures by having someone available to help
Engagement and idea exchanges with other students on topics such as how to juggle timetables with work and family, searching for career opportunities, and progress support throughout the course.

Other pros of online education are the following:

Online education provides high-quality programmes while remaining cheaper. A high-quality online programme is able to maintain the most impactful elements of in-person programmes and offer them in its online instruction. This does not mean a simple transference of coursework; quality programmes utilize state-of-the-art tools and techniques to create unique material specific to online learners. A face-to-face programme is much more expensive than its online equivalent, due to associated costs and money spent on commuting.
Online learning is more flexible and convenient . Indeed, you have the opportunity to learn at (almost) any time, at your own pace and anywhere you want.
Distance education can improve your career prospects. Even while working full-time, you can enroll and complete an online programme that can further your career prospects.
Distance learning can improve your technical skills – To complete an online course, you need to know something about computers because you have to navigate various learning management systems (LMS) and different other programs. The computer skills you learn to finish your online course helps you in all your future endeavor.

4 hidden advantages of online learning

Main disadvantages of online education

While the concept of online learning is a great choice for many, some online programmes can be prone to common downfalls :

Some online courses are solitary. For instance, MOOCs don’t provide the same level of connection and collaboration as in-person courses would. Interaction is usually not a real-time process. Unless direct messaging is enabled, questions for the teacher must be submitted online, with answers typically received later. In a classroom setting, students can interact with teachers more spontaneously.
Online education often involves a bigger workload – Since institutions that offer online courses know they cannot monitor their students effectively, they assign more tasks and assignments. This can be a serious problem for students pursuing a degree while working full-time.
Access to comprehensive materials and support can be difficult. When online courses are particularly static, all of the material is uploaded onto a single server for the student’s open access, without interactions with real humans. This can be problematic for those of us who need live clarification, technical support, or real-time adjustments.
Online education requires self-discipline – When you are in a classroom, you are expected to follow rules and regulations – which instills a sense of discipline. Without the structure of a physical classroom and class schedule, it can be easy to lose focus and not devote the necessary time to course work.

Although there are online schools which are able to address these issues, it’s important to thoroughly review an online programme’s content to determine whether or not it’s at risk of these downfalls.

How EDHEC Online creates support and community

EDHEC’s online programmes are unique in that they are industry leaders in computer-based learning. Coursework is designed with maximum flexibility in mind. Expert professors who teach in-person at our world-renowned international school also teach online and are actively involved in designing courses that are specifically tailored to online learning.

Direct coaching is integrated into all of our courses, with professional coachs for career guidance, academic mentors available for direct contact on Slack, and admin and IT help desks specifically assigned to address the technical and logistical needs of online students.

EDHEC programmes also implement small, consistent workgroups to allow students to foster close working relationships with each other. All students, from the moment they register, are instantly integrated into the alumni network .

There are certainly online learning disadvantages to be aware of when pursuing an executive education online. An excellent programme, however, can avoid common problems with online learning and soar above and beyond expectations.

Embrace online learning!

Join the EDHEC community by enrolling in one of our online programmes .

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20 Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Classes

Online learning has become more accessible in the past decade as potential students discover that they can find ways to obtain a preferred degree while handling their daily obligations. It is a way that encourages post-graduate learning while staying within life and career schedules. Most accredited colleges and universities are now offering programs that make it possible to take some, if not all, of the required courses on the Internet.

Public and private institutions offer online classes more today than ever before in history. This education format is a way to reach students who may have social or economic situations that don’t allow them to enjoy the traditional on-campus learning lifestyle.

As more people have access to high-speed Internet connections, online education opportunities have continued expanding. It has become acceptable in most circles to earn a degree at any level with these opportunities, allowing students to have legitimacy and more accessibility with what they earned.

The advantages and disadvantages of online classes continue to evolve, but these are the current key points to consider if you’re thinking about becoming a student.

List of the Advantages of Online Classes

1. Online classes provide more flexibility to incorporate multiple learning styles. Although you can earn a healthy salary without going to college in some trades, many employment opportunities require an undergraduate degree or higher to obtain a position. That means it can be challenging to get through classes when your learning style might be different than what a local institution offers. Taking an online class allows you to have more control over how you retain the available information.

You can listen to music while you are writing a paper. Online classes let you interact in forums while watching television. Instead of being stuck in a stuffy classroom listening to a lecture, you have the flexibility to learn using the style that works best for your needs.

2. Your classes can fit better into your schedule. Online classes are the perfect solution for anyone who works a full-time job, has a family to raise, is housebound for some reason, or lives in a rural area. These obstacles can make it challenging to enroll in a traditional institution. As long as you have an Internet or data connection, then you can access your study materials whenever you need them. Many professors are even uploading lectures or providing texts that supplement the learning process.

If you have a busy lifestyle and want to get ahead in your career, then learning at your own pace with an online class is an intelligent way to obtain your next college or university degree.

3. It takes advantage of technology innovations. Online classes at many institutions take advantage of the technological innovations that occur every year. These changes get applied in convenient and practical ways, such as the implementation of a rolling semester. Some colleges and universities make their courses dominant from an independent standpoint, making it possible for students to complete their curriculum based on a schedule they said instead of what the professor requires.

As more degree programs become 100% online opportunities, many colleges and universities are finding that the independent and innovative approach makes it easier for modern students to achieve their goals.

4. Online classes are typically cheaper than traditional enrollment. Students that take online classes find that the cost of their college degree is usually less expensive than it would be if they took courses on campus. There are usually fewer textbook purchases to consider, travel cost reductions, and room and board considerations that can cut the cost of a college or university degree by 50% or more. That means each person who uses this opportunity can start their career with lower debt levels.

5. It teaches students how to be disciplined and responsible. If you can access the Internet, then your online course work is immediately available. That means each student must have the discipline to maintain the continuity of their schedule while keeping themselves on track for a successful outcome. The freedom that comes with classes that you take online comes with the need to have higher levels of responsibility. Students must stay organized and adhere to a workable schedule.

Putting all of your time to the completion of an online degree can backfire if you neglect the other critical areas of your life. Take advantage of the flexibility that this option provides so that you can spend some time with your family members and friends.

6. You can receive a degree from an accredited institution. A degree that you earn online from an accredited institution has the same weight in today’s career marketplace as one earned from the traditional approach. That means your credentials and applications will get taken seriously when you are ready to pursue new career opportunities. This advantage also means that you can take the credits earned to other programs, pursue graduate-level courses, or go after that doctorate degree that you’ve always wanted.

7. Online classes offer location independence. Some students may not have access to the program that best fits their needs. It might be across town from them, in another state, or even on the other side of the world. The availability of online classes makes it possible for students to participate in and graduate from their preferred program with less difficulty. These programs do not generally have the same geographic restrictions that you’d find with a traditional institution.

Since moving isn’t an option for many of today’s students, especially adult learners who have career and family responsibilities, online classes allow each person to enroll in the program that’s right for them regardless of where they live.

8. It provides students with real-life career preparation opportunities. When students go to college, then it can feel like you’re living in a bubble. You receive the necessary and valuable information that will let you establish a career one day, but it is not always easy to start developing the practical skills necessary to become good at your future job. Online classes require the same skill sets that many people use every day when working, which means you can enter a job market better prepared for what to expect.

An online class is quite similar to a desk job at almost any company. You must stay in touch through email, manage software solutions, and keep track of your time to ensure that you’re fulfilling all of your obligations. You get tasked with remote work while still engaging with a team to complete projects before a deadline.

9. You form social connections with your classmates. Although it is more difficult to make social connections with an online class, it isn’t an impossible circumstance. Today’s technology makes it possible to form relationships that go beyond sitting behind a computer. Your digital classmates could organize a group video hangout, facilitate conversations, and even do icebreakers that help everyone get to know each other better.

It may not be exactly the same as a face-to-face connection, but technology makes it very close. Video calls and other tools can help you to see each other even if you live on the other side of the planet.

10. It eliminates the need for verbal expression in a classroom environment. Many online students find that it is easier for them to express their opinions in this structure because there isn’t a public speaking component to the education process. You don’t need to worry about a professor calling you up to the front of the classroom to explain a concept or create a diagram. You can express yourself through writing instead, which means if something can get fixed if it doesn’t sound right in the first draft.

This advantage often leads to high-quality dialogs where each learner can carefully reflect the quality of their thinking on each comment, chapter, or project. Then you can move on to the next one whenever you feel like you’re ready.

11. Online classes create more opportunities for a varied learning experience. An online course makes it easier to include guest experts or past students in the classroom environment. Even people from other institutions can get involved in the conversations that take place to facilitate the learning process. Students can receive exposure to a worldwide perspective in their preferred subject instead of being limited to the local point of view. That means the experience has more value to potential employers in the future.

List of the Disadvantages of Online Classes

1. It can take longer to earn a degree when using online classes. If a student is not thoroughly committed to earning their degree, then it can take several years for that person to complete their online classes. Everything that the course requires is up to you. That means you must complete your assignments, read the required materials, interact with your professor, talk with your peers, and take exams according to the rules presented upon enrollment. It can be tempting to ignore your obligations when there isn’t a direct line of accountability as there is when you attend a physical classroom.

2. Some of your required course work might require in-person activities. If you are taking online classes, then there may be some stipulations where you must attend classes or take tests in a proctored environment. If a third-party observer is necessary, then it is up to each student to find an organization that will monitor this process. That means the cost of your classes each semester will go up based on the number of exams you must take.

Some institutions will even require a specific amount of on-campus time before they will award a degree. This requirement can last anywhere from two weeks to two months for U.S.-based colleges and universities.

3. You still need to take the time to fulfill your classroom requirements. Online classes can help students save a lot of time on their learning obligations, but the structure will not eliminate the need to put in some work. If you do not have a lot of free time during the day, then it may be impossible to fulfill the obligations of your enrollment. That’s why the flexibility of this arrangement can be an advantage since you only need to take one class at a time – but that can still be problematic for some people.

It is possible to avoid some of this disadvantage by taking independent learning courses online. When you can complete the work at your own pace, then the pressure of deadlines can disappear. You must still have trust in the program and remain dedicated to a result to turn this education opportunity into a real investment for you.

4. Online classes don’t provide the same face-to-face connections. Colleges and universities provide numerous opportunities for in-person social networking. When you can have face-to-face conversations with your professors and peers, then it can enhance the educational foundations that you receive. Networking functions can serve as essential connections for future career opportunities. The structure of online classes negates many of those potential advantages.

Even though you might have an institution that focuses on small class sizes and curriculum requirements that mandate interaction, a forum conversation or online chat isn’t the same as sharing coffee or lunch with someone.

5. Some online institutions don’t have full accreditation. You must verify that the college or university providing the online classes you want has full accreditation. Many facilities are not accredited even with the expansion of Internet access. That means your degree and qualifications might not receive the recognition you expect from potential employers. It may not receive serious consideration from other professionals in your preferred industry. This disadvantage also means that any credits earned might not be transferable to another institution.

The outcome of this disadvantage can be a costly mistake in terms of time and money. You’ll want to make sure to verify the specific accreditation of any school you’re considering before you even turn in an application.

6. You must have access to the Internet to complete your work. Online classes require you to have access to the Internet so that you can complete your assignments on time. If you don’t have the equipment at home to do the work or a connection that is fast enough to handle your course work, then it may be challenging to have a successful experience with this learning option. You’ll need a computer or tablet PC, a home-based ISP, and any peripherals necessary for your degree program.

Some public libraries and other institutions may offer computer access, but it may come with limited time or additional costs. You would also need to access that equipment during their regular working hours, which may not be possible with your specific schedule.

7. Many online classes require students to complete more work. The average online course in the United States requires a greater amount of reading and student interaction than a traditional class. Students must prove remotely that they have mastery over the material in question, which means your curriculum will involve a lot of independent study and Internet-based group work. Although the average amount of time one needs to dedicate to their course work is about 10 hours per week for each class, it is not unusual for individual courses at accredited colleges and universities to require 15-20 hours per week of work.

8. Technology scheduling issues can limit learning opportunities. Students must ensure that their computer is updated frequently with the latest operating system and software components to facilitate their learning. Some people may need to learn new or enhanced troubleshooting skills to manage their boot-up time, Internet connection, or software platforms that a professor requires. If you are a person who considers themselves to be technically challenged, then the tasks of this disadvantage could be a significant barrier to your current and future learning opportunities.

9. Time variations could be problematic for some students. Students who take online classes must plan and adjust their schedules to meet the deadlines set by their professors. American institutions often base deadlines on the time zone of the institution, so a West Coast student would need to account for the three-hour difference for an East Coast deadline. If international students are taking online courses, then this disadvantage could be significant.

This issue becomes problematic for students with opposite schedules. If you study at night and your partner works during the day, then there will be significant lag time between each response.

If you have a hectic schedule or zero access to a college or university, then online classes are a way to pursue your academic goals. It only requires Internet access or a data connection, and then you can begin fulfilling the requirements of your course work. The modern structure of this learning opportunity does an excellent job of simulating the traditional classroom experience.

This option may not be a first-choice selection for someone who struggles with their organization or focus. If you’re already putting in 40 hours each week with your job, then it may be unreasonable to put in another 20-40 hours after you get home to fulfill your learning obligations.

These advantages and disadvantages of online classes must receive individualized consideration. If you live at home full-time and want a self-directed education, then this innovation can be a positive experience. When you prefer social interactions and a traditional classroom, then it may not be the best choice to pursue.

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The Pros and Cons of Online Learning: 10 Advantages & Disadvantages

Last Updated: 10/25/2023

By Anneda Nettleton

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‘Online learning’ is a phrase that has taken on new meaning over the past couple of years. When traditional learning shifted to online learning at the start of the pandemic, the pros and cons of online learning gained much discussion and debate.

As a seasoned educator, I specialize in using technology in the classroom to keep students engaged, but also realize that online learning comes with some distinct challenges. While the ability to utilize technology, like screen sharing software , for maximizing instruction has greatly enhanced the process, it’s not without some disadvantages.

After a few years of online education becoming more prevalent in our culture, we now have plenty of data and experiences to understand the good things and the bad things about learning in an online environment.

Let’s take an in-depth look at the pros and cons of online learning so we can better create strategies to improve the eLearning experience for all.

Online Learning Pros and Cons at a Glance

Advantages:.

Flexibility: Learn anywhere, anytime.
Pace: Review content and learn at your own speed.
Quality Dialogue: Enhanced discussions and peer reviews.
Resources: Access to a plethora of online materials.
Innovation: Encourages creative teaching methods.

Disadvantages:

Tech Access: Not all students have equal access to devices or the internet.
Discipline: Requires self-motivation and time management.
Social Growth: Limited face-to-face interactions.
Distractions: Home environments can be less conducive to focus.
Immediate Help: Delays in feedback or assistance.

Advantages of Online Learning

Online learning offers many advantages, and its potential to change the landscape of education in the future is undoubtedly incredibly exciting to many of us.

To better understand the strengths associated with learning using online mediums, let’s take a closer look at what I consider 10 advantages of online learning.

The benefits of online learning are varied and can certainly equate to a successful experience.

1. Anywhere, anytime.

Today’s families are busier than ever before.

College students are trying to balance working, studying, and attending classes.

Asynchronous learning or online learning makes it possible for students to attend classes and participate in high-quality learning situations on a schedule that meets their needs. This advantage is also applicable to high school students who may be trying to balance a heavy workload too.

The statement ‘anywhere, anytime’ applies to younger students too.

Technology has made it possible for participants to access online classes via Learning Management Systems (LMS) from anywhere they have an internet connection.

Going to class can happen at home, on the bus, on vacation, in the office, or just about anywhere else you can imagine with the ease of access of online programs.

2. Work at your own pace.

In a traditional class, a student hears an educator teach the lesson one time.

When online lectures are recorded and/or hosted via Google Meet or some other video presentation software , learners can go back and review lectures in a way that in-person learning does not provide.

In many ways, online classes make it easier for students to review content, gain a greater understanding of tough areas, and access resources multiple times as needed.

Continuous access to lectures, online course materials, and other reference materials can make online learning very beneficial.

3. High-quality dialogue.

The ability to discuss and reflect on learning takes on a different perspective and design via online learning.

Replying to discussion boards, commenting on classmates’ work, and other dialogue-driven tasks can improve the synergy in a classroom.

Imagine the synergy that comes from having a student review their classmates´ projects and reviews them using an evaluation rubric. Following peer reviews such as this one the type of conversation that can occur is a benefit of online learning.

This is only one example of how much the discussion process can be improved with online classes.

4. Greater focus on learning.

The distractions that occur on a day-to-day basis in person can be greatly reduced when using online learning correctly.

For example, students are no longer concerned with other students’ clothing, physical appearances, etc. My years working in a middle school setting have shown me that many of these focuses can divert attention away from learning and cause instructional time to be lost dealing with conflicts.

When students are free to focus on lectures, assignments, and other learning tasks, everyone will feel that their knowledge is improving.

5. Access to more resources.

Online learning provides access to resources that may be overlooked or not utilized in a physical classroom setting.

Educators can work to compile a resource section online with links to a variety of useful materials. Having in-depth resources available can allow students to explore content in a new and meaningful way.

6. Creative teaching.

Online learning encourages educators to try something new.

Rather than teaching that unit about Colonial America in the same way they have done it for the past ten years, an online learning approach encourages a more interactive learning environment.

Educators can find the best LMS that works for them to deliver online classes.

Furthermore, they can find a wide variety of resources that can transform units of study. Teachers may even be reenergized to restructure their curriculum with an online platform.

7. More communication options.

Online learning provides a way for students to communicate with their teachers using multiple methods.

To be specific, students can reach out to their instructors via text, audio, video, and LMS commenting options.

Some students may not be comfortable asking questions in class, so these online options will generate participation from the shyest students.

The flip side of that is also that more outspoken students may not monopolize class discussions, since more reserved students will feel ´able to speak up´ using online methods.

8. Working from home can reduce anxiety.

Attending classes in public can prompt a lot of anxiety.

When students can complete learning in the comfort of their homes (or some other location), they may feel more comfortable and less anxious about what other people may say and/or how they may react to them.

Since anxiety is a huge obstacle for many students this benefit to online classes cannot be overlooked.

9. Hands-on learning can be taken to the next level.

There are so many hands-on learning options available when teachers don’t have to guide dozens of students to do them together with only one adult present.

Taking a walk to take pictures of a science topic, completing a how-to project while videoing it in the quiet space called home, and so on all represent hands-on learning that is much easier to do in an online learning environment.

10. One size does not fit all.

It is easier for teachers to modify the learning process to aid students with special needs and/or challenge gifted learners via online learning. These differentiated learning tasks can be completed without other students asking ‘why is he doing that?’ or ‘why does she get to do that instead of this?´

Disadvantages of Online Learning

Online learning requires some creativity, regrouping, and planning to maximize the process; nonetheless, disadvantages do exist.

Let’s explore some of these disadvantages of online programs and what can be done to overcome the barriers associated with each one.

1. Equal access to technology.

Students must have access to a reliable device and the Internet if they are going to succeed in an online learning environment. This can be a significant issue in rural and lower socioeconomic areas.

Working out a way to address technology-related issues is a must if an online learning platform is going to be successful.

2. Computer literacy.

Having students use an online learning platform requires computer literacy. This applies to students and parents alike.

Hosting a virtual conference session to familiarize everyone with the process is an integral part of success with an online learning environment. Taking this proactive approach can decrease this specific disadvantage to online learning.

3. Requires discipline.

The freedom that comes with online learning in an asynchronous learning environment can be a double-edged sword.

This means that having the flexibility to do classwork during free time requires making time to complete learning tasks.

As the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.

Students must be ready for the challenge of making time to complete assignments, view lectures, etc. As a parent, it is vital to keep students actively engaged.

Also, rather than taking their word for it that everything is done, visually checking that work is completed is a major step to overcoming this potential drawback to online classes.

4. Supervision required.

In some cases, families’ lives can be greatly impacted by online learning.

When working with younger children, an adult will be needed at all times when online classes are taking place.

This disadvantage to online learning can be challenging to overcome, so strategic planning will be necessary.

5. How much screen light is too much?

Today students use devices for schoolwork, entertainment, and communication.

The reality that too much blue light can lead to sleep disturbances requires taking a proactive approach. In other words, don’t wait until it is almost bedtime to complete school work.

Furthermore, limiting screen time for other purposes will help balance out the extra time spent on a device because of online learning. For more information, you can check out this guide on how much screen time is too much.

6. Supporting social-emotional growth.

Online learning does not provide social-emotional learning in the same manner as in-person learning. Making connections with students via online learning platforms requires a special educator who is dedicated to getting to know his or her students.

Using appropriate strategies will aid students in feeling the connection that in-person learning brings. This connection is vital, especially for younger students.

7. How interactive can online learning be?

Some people say that the hands-on/interactive nature of in-person learning is lost during asynchronous instruction; nonetheless, I feel that it is not entirely true.

The use of technology to form groups, have students completing interactive activities in their homes that require them to explore content in new ways, and remaining active during Zoom sessions (or some other comparable platform) makes it possible to overcome what initially be seen as a disadvantage of online learning.

8. Distracted learning.

Let’s face it, learning in our own homes can be distracting. It is easier to think about all the fun things one might be doing while at home and those can take priority over paying attention in online classes.

It’s one of the biggest challenges of virtual learning for students .

For these reasons, it is necessary to think about a routine and how to reward oneself when a task has been completed. Making a routine will ensure that there is still time to do the fun things that can be entertaining and used for downtime.

9. Getting immediate help can be difficult.

When learning using an online platform, getting immediate help may be difficult. The immediate feedback gained in the classroom will require a wait for the teacher to respond via one of the established communication methods.

Utilizing the communication methods made available can aid in overcoming the frustration that may be associated with ‘but I need help now!’

10. Overcoming isolation.

Learning in an online learning environment can equate to isolation. Finding ways to stay in touch with friends is important when participating in online programs. Working to establish regular playdates, study sessions, or other social activities can help address this disadvantage of online learning.

Taking Online Learning to the Next Level

Through exploring the pros and cons of online learning, one can see that there are various topics of interest. Exploring these issues and being prepared to maximize the benefits of online learning will enable students and teachers to continue the process of preparing students for their futures as adults.

Rather than thinking about the obstacles associated with online learning, educators should see that the benefits are quite significant.

Finding a way to work around the disadvantages and help students succeed in an online learning environment will aid students in maximizing their potential.

What are some other pros and cons of online learning? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

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The advantages and disadvantages of learning in online classes in 2023, share this article.

Whether you’re taking a school class remotely or trying to learn a new skill just for fun – online classes can be a great option. They work well for people that can’t always commute, those who work better independently, or simply if you can’t or don’t want to be around a group of people all day. But, it’s not to say that online classes are designed for everyone either. In this blog, we’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of online classes, as well as help you decide if online learning is the best choice for you.

Advantages of online classes
Disadvantages of online classes

Are online classes for you?

Read more: Top Challenges with Online Learning For Students (and Solutions)

8 advantages of online classes

The explosion of online learning has been a fantastic shift for many people. Students who may have had to waste hours commuting to class can now attend right from their homes. And anyone struggling to take in content at the same speed as a class can now go at their own pace – in a way that works best for their learning requirements. The pros of online classes make learning a positive experience for countless students. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages here !

1. Accessible to anyone with an Internet connection

More than 20 million new users signed up to a Coursera course in 2021, for a total of 92 million users on the platform! Since online courses are accessible to nearly anyone with an Internet connection, it’s helped to close the global education gap significantly.

Online classes make learning accessible to those with disabilities and cognitive delays. For example, deaf students can simply turn on closed captioning (CC) to read the conversation and participate in class online. Many video conferencing platforms and learning management systems (LMS) support accessible hardware technology to further increase engagement in online classes.

Students with cognitive or motor skill disabilities have the option to work at their own pace or take lessons when it is convenient for them. For example, if a student with dyslexia is having a difficult time reading assigned textbook chapters, they can choose to listen to it instead with an option like audio textbook versions.

2. Flexible scheduling

A major benefit of online learning is the ability for students to attend classes from anywhere. This means students in rural areas no longer waste time driving long distances or riding the bus to get to school. Or , students who need to work to support themselves through school also have an easier time fitting both class and work schedules into their lives.

This also applies to adult learners that may be juggling responsibilities such as children, work, home management, and more. With busy schedules, it might not be possible to make time for an in-person class. Beyond the time to commute, busy adults might need to be on standby for their children – something that is much harder to do when they’re in a physical classroom.

The flexibility of online classes has a huge benefit for mental health. It’s been proven that job autonomy leads to mental well-being in employees . For full-time students, schooling is much like a job that takes at least 40 hours of the week. Having the autonomy to choose when and where they attend class can help mitigate common mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and stress. Better mental health leads to happier students – which is definitely something teachers, parents, and students alike should all strive for!

3. More affordable than in-person classes

Online learning makes higher education like university much more accessible to the wider population. University degrees offered online are an average of $10 to 11,000 cheaper than in-person equivalents . This number does not take costs like on-campus food or housing into account – it only reflects tuition differences. So you can imagine how significant that difference would become with all expenses accounted for!

Learning management systems like Thinkific and Udemy are great places to look for affordable (and sometimes free) classes. Industry experts, entrepreneurs, and coaches all offer their knowledge through self-created courses, meaning these courses are often more accessible in terms of pricing while also providing super relevant and realistic course lessons. Students can go directly to the source of knowledge, rather than having to pay expensive tuition fees to big institutions .

There is also a huge amount of free knowledge on websites like YouTube. Channels such as Crash Course and Khan Academy provide high quality content at no cost!

4. Ability to connect globally

It’s possible to connect with teachers and learners all around the world with online courses. Before online learning was widely accessible , you would have had to travel to Hawaii to learn about Hawaiian traditions and cultures, for example . Now, you can join Ka hale Hoaka online school and learn right from your home.

Even if you’re learning something that isn’t necessarily culture or country-specific, learning with people from different backgrounds can lend fascinating perspectives and discussion to the topic. With so many courses implementing learning communities, it’s easier than ever to connect with fellow students and hear different points of view.

Read more: 10 Different Types of Online Learning Communities

5. Facilitated peer and teacher interaction

At first , it might seem like students don’t get a lot of interaction in an online course as compared to in-person classes. This can definitely happen – but there are many online courses that prioritize student interaction with each other, and with the instructor.

For some students, it is easier to communicate through virtual mediums such as forums, discussion boards, or direct messaging than it is to speak up in an in-person class. Through these channels, they still get the benefits of group discussion without having to sacrifice the flexibility of online learning. Dr. Michelle Gottlieb, a psychologist and owner of EMDR Professional Training , also engages with her students by frequently commenting in her course’s online communities and providing advice to students as needed. Many instructors even offer 1-1 coaching sessions for students that are looking for additional learning support !

6. Encourages independence and self-pacing

Many online courses offer students the option to take the course at their own pace. This can take away worries that the student might not have time in their hectic life to fit multiple hours of coursework in each week consistently . Self-paced courses are extremely adaptable to busy schedules. However, it does take a fair amount of self-discipline to actually complete self-paced courses.

If students find they are lacking discipline and are unable to complete courses that are self-paced, there are online courses that put students into cohorts with set deadlines. This is a great option for students and teachers that benefit from a more traditional class structure. Instructors that follow this model will often use the drip method, a microlearning approach , to release content at a slower pace.

Read more : 2023 e-Learning Trends Report

7. Improved tracking and facilitation

If you’re easily disorganized or have trouble remembering what you learned last week, online classes can help you in this area. Most online classroom systems will keep track of which topics and resources you’ve already read, and will point you to which ones you need to do next. It will also automatically file your assignments, keep track of your grades, and calculate your total GPA to date. In comparison, learning through a physical classroom would require you to manage a lot of papers, heavy textbooks, and physical equipment.

Online classrooms also have the ability to launch virtual labs, which makes it easier to facilitate interactive learning sessions. Quizzes and feedback surveys can also be launched through the learning management system by the teacher, and you can see your results almost instantly. Overall, it’s much faster to see information and results in virtual classrooms.

8. Adaptive to multiple learning styles

Everyone has a slightly different preference when it comes to how they interpret information. There are generally three types of learning styles:

Auditory learners – who prefer to learn by hearing. This includes listening to podcasts, lectures, and audiobooks. Any verbal explanation goes a long way for this learner!
Visual learners – who prefer to learn by seeing. Animations, movies, hand movements, drawing, and writing are useful tools for this type of learner.
Kinesthetic learners – who prefer to learn by doing, or using their hands. Any opportunity to touch, feel, build, and see something in 3D will help this learner interpret information well.

Most people have some combination of learning style, making them hybrid learners. With online classes, there are a lot of ways that students can choose to take in information. For example, a course may offer a video (appealing to visual learners) with a voiceover (for auditory learners) and instructions on how to do the science experiment with home materials (for kinesthetic learners).

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6 disadvantages of online classes

While there are many advantages to online learning, it’s important to also consider the disadvantages. Some people may find that online learning isn’t for them, so let’s explore some of the reasons why.

Often requires a lot of screen time

Staring at digital screens all day long has a myriad of negative effects for both adults and children. These effects include eye strain, disrupted circadian rhythm, headaches, and neck and back pain. Learners taking online classes need to take measures to avoid symptoms of too much screen time, especially if they are already working remotely , in addition to taking classes. Some ways to prevent the negative effects of screen time include:

Using blue-light glasses
Taking a break every 20 minutes to look at something different
Change up your working environment every few hours
Avoid turning up your screen too bright
Lower the contrast on your screen

2. Less opportunity to connect with peers

While online classes can actually be quite social in nature, the fact is that you’re still usually completing them on your own most of the time . This can be a major disadvantage – especially for students that already spend a lot of time by themselves at home. Students can combat this feeling of isolation by working on their online classes in coffee shops or libraries where there is a more lively environment . Additionally, they can sign up for classes that have thriving online communities to connect virtually with other students.

It’s important to keep in mind that many people enroll in university, college, or even community classes as a way to meet friends. Proximity to the same people is a leading indicator that you will befriend those people – just because you see them a lot! If you’re taking classes online, you’ll miss that natural proximity and connection with your peers. It will take more effort to form real-life friendships with online peers (but it is still possible). One way to get a similar level of social interaction in online courses is by opting for a class that has a lot of group project work.

3. Harder to access technical equipment

At a minimum, students need a device with an internet connection to take online classes. Realistically, students will need a device they can also type assignments on such as a laptop or tablet with a keyboard. It’s costly to purchase these devices upfront , especially if you have multiple children in online classes who each need their own devices to complete school work.

More often than not , in-person classes have a responsibility to provide equipment so students can participate. This keeps class accessible for lower-income students. To circumvent this issue with online learning environments, some school districts provide laptops or tablets so that students can participate even if they can’t afford to purchase devices themselves. Unfortunately, this is in no way a global solution as many school districts don’t have the funds to provide devices. This problem is even more true for students with learning disabilities who require specialized accessibility hardware.

4. Creates extra work for teachers

Teachers become teachers because they love to teach – not necessarily because they have an affinity for technology. This became extremely clear when teachers were first tasked with moving entire courses and curriculums into online formats . For many teachers, this meant lots of extra work recording lectures, moving tests and assignments online, and organizing video call live lessons and homework submission portals. However, once the courses are built, there is only a small time requirement to maintain the content with up-to-date material.

Teachers might also run into issues with students not participating as much online and not having as much opportunity to collaborate. While there are online solutions to both of these issues, it is a learning curve for teachers to adapt to online teaching. It may take extra time to collect feedback from students in these early learning stages, but this time commitment should decrease over time.

5. Requires more self-control and harder to focus

Online learning can certainly make focusing for long periods of time a challenge. Students are no longer in an environment dedicated to learning and are surrounded by distractions like phones, delivery people , or chores like doing some laundry or walking the dog. The lack of structure means students need to be good at their own time management. This is an added challenge on top of learning that students don’t need to think about during in-person classes.

Students may also find they run into challenges or don’t understand the material when learning online. Hopefully, the instructor has set up a way to contact them to answer questions, but if not, this will become frustrating for students and will likely cause them to lose motivation for learning.

6. Lack of hands-on learning

Certain information lends itself better to online learning than others. For example, learning math or biology online will be relatively easier online since it involves a lot of visual or auditory explanations. However, learning things like medical examination, dental work, or even pottery or another trade might be tough because of the hands-on components. For kinesthetic learners, it might be more practical to learn in-person or purchase the training equipment you would need to practice your new skill hands-on at home.

After reading through the advantages and disadvantages of online classes you probably have a good idea if online learning is for you. If you’re disciplined, self-motivated, want to learn something that doesn’t need hands-on practice, or if you need flexibility, online learning is right for you! However, if you need lots of structure, want to learn a hands-on concept, and want to meet people face-to-face , you would probably benefit more from in-person classes.

This article was originally published in 2022, it has since been updated in March 2023 to include the newest info.

Maddie is a content marketer at Thinkific. When she isn't zealously writing about all things online learning, you can find her glued to a good book or exploring the great outdoors.

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Colleges don't have to refund tuition because COVID moved classes online, Texas Supreme Court rules

Students play football on the lawn in front of Dallas Hall at SMU.

Texas universities aren’t liable for the experiences students lost when college campuses shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.

Luke Hogan , a former Southern Methodist University graduate student and football player from Keller who was finishing his final semester in 2020, sued the school in state and then federal court. He alleged SMU stripped him and other students of an in-person classroom experience — for which he paid about $25,000 in tuition and $3,180 in fees that semester — when the school moved classes online as the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic.

Hogan argued it’s unconstitutional for a 2021 state law protecting public and private schools from liability during the pandemic to retroactively apply to his case.

Upon a request from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to weigh in, the state’s highest court sided with SMU.

“Hogan cites no precedent in which a student in his position has obtained monetary damages from a school in the event of the campus’s unexpected closure for any reason — much less its forced closure at the hand of the government,” the opinion reads.

Hogan's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Republican-backed Pandemic Liability Protection Act also applies to businesses and health care providers. The Legislature outlined the law as being necessary specifically because of the toll the pandemic took on physicians and health care workers.

As of 2021, 28 other states have passed similar laws. That legislation has failed in at least one state: in September, Arizona’s state appeals court struck down a pandemic liability protection law because it violated their state’s constitutional right for anyone to pursue damages for injuries.

The Fifth Circuit is weighing the appeal of a similar Texas case filed by two students against Baylor University.

A federal district judge ruled last year the PLPA, “protects compelling public interests through a narrowly tailored shield against only monetary remedies.”

Organizations including the Texas Civil Justice League voiced their support of the bill in Austin. George Christian, TCJE’s senior counsel, said lawmakers felt like everyone just had to take a hit in an act of God situation like this — college students included.

“If they had, you know, been put in a position of having to refund tuition to tens of thousands of students, I think very likely many of them could not have done that,” he said. ”That would have bankrupted them.”

But the former Baylor students disagreed in their brief supporting Hogan.

“The Legislature made no finding that the PLPA was necessary to ensure that its citizens are educated, because it made no finding that lawsuits against educational institutions threatened their ability to continue to function,” they wrote. “And a statute forbidding lawsuits for monetary relief after the fact has at best a remote connection to the public’s health or safety.”

Got a tip? Email Toluwani Osibamowo at [email protected] . You can follow Toluwani on X @tosibamowo .

KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today . Thank you.

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Online learning in the fall and beyond

10 Biggest Disadvantages of E-Learning

Disadvantages of E-Learning

2. E-Learning can cause social Isolation

3. E-Learning requires strong self-motivation and time management skills

4. Lack of communicational skill development in online students

5. Cheating prevention during online assessments is complicated

6. Online instructors tend to focus on theory rather than practice

7. E-Learning lacks face-to-face communication

8. E-Learning is limited to certain disciplines

9. Online learning is inaccessible to the computer illiterate population

10. Lack of accreditation & quality assurance in online education

Sander Tamm

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Advantages of Online Learning

1. Anywhere, anytime.

2. Work at your own pace.

3. High-quality dialogue.