Online Education: A Student's Worst Nightmare!

I got together with an old friend, Pam, who recently seemed to have disappeared under the radar for several months. Upon meeting up with Pam for lunch, the first thing I asked her was why she had become so scarce. Her answer was that she had decided to go back to school.

Like so many people in this recession, Pam had been laid off from work. Luckily she found work again some months later, albeit at a much lower salary than she previously enjoyed. Again, like many others in this day and age, Pam seeks betterment of her career prospects through furthering her education.

In working full-time at her new job, taking care of kids as a single mom, as well as keeping up on critical relationships with immediate relatives and friends, it goes without saying Pam's schedule is very full. It only makes sense that she takes her courses online. In a form of online learning technology called "asynchronous" training (learning at one's own pace), Pam should have been able to tackle her courses more or less at her convenience in a given time frame.

Emphasis is on "should" - because what asynchronous online education should offer versus what Pam experiences are two very different things.

Online Education: Blessing or Nightmare?

Desiring myself to return to school sometime, the prospect of taking courses online sounded thrilling to me. However, my aspirations were dampened while spending the next hour and a half hearing Pam describe the endless nightmare her online education has become. Perhaps Pam could have used more caution in her selection process, but Pam is not of average intellect. A holder of an undergraduate degree cum laude, Pam strives for a Master's Degree in Business.

Pam points out to me, "What one frequently sees on the sales side of reviewing a product can stand in stark contrast from what you really get after purchase. It's just like interviewing for and getting hired onto to new job: you never really know what you've gotten into until you get your feet wet."

One Student's Nightmare Revealed

After what Pam describes as an intentionally misleading interaction with her school's recruiter (salesman), Pam's online education nightmare started almost immediately. Beginning with logging onto the internet-based portion of her course, she found that she was required to purchase hard-copy books as a required supplement to her course. In addition to the hundreds of dollars she already dished out for the course itself, Pam finds she needs to shell out two to three hundred more per course.

"Just as it was in my time in the traditional 'bricks-and-mortar' schools, this book-buying thing is all a scam," Pam relates. "The professors teaching the course either write or co-write these books. They make commissions from the sales of new books. Used books that could easily be sold back to the school's book stores are refused because the instructors cannot get commissions on used. So the professors either 'update' their books and declare the old ones as being outdated, or they write and publish a new one altogether - repackaged from the old book under a new title as an 'updated' book. All of this is a scam to suck students' dry of all their money."

Then It Gets Worse

"Funny books" are only the beginning of Pam's woes. Afterward comes the online experience itself. After using her ID and password to log in to her online profile in the school's online system, Pam clicks a link that leads her to her online course. Simple enough, but this is where the easy part ends.

At first glimpse the course is broken out as a downwardly cascading series of chunks as the course progresses. In clicking on these links, this is where the mess begins. Students have to make sense out of perhaps an innumerable maze of links entailing tasks that include:

• downloading mandatory readings from one area

• downloading assignments and any forms needed to fulfill the assignments

• mandatory online reading as static web content - some of which is so voluminous it may need to be printed (so much for not killing trees!)

• reading the forms

• filling out the forms

• writing essays

• answering questions on forms

• uploading the forms and essays in another area on the weblike maze of links

• participating in "discussions" in "discussion forums" in yet another area

• readings and assignments derived from $200.00 worth of hard copy books, too!

• etc...

While these are various forms of communication comprise the blessing that online courseware technology is, to have all of these show up as required activities for just one week's worth of assignments is overwhelming!
Pam complains that the course's claim to requiring only two to four hours per week of her time easily turns into eight to sixteen hours for a poorly planned course that proves difficult to navigate. Pam tells of frequent system outages, dead links to resources pointing outside of the learning management platform, and an overall lack of rhyme or rhythm to what the course is trying to impart, as well as how it claims it will do it.

The Culprit? No Quality Assurance

To sum up Pam's complaints, it sounds as if Pam's school has failed severely in one or more of its quality assurance processes. These manifest in the many problems she relates above.

Surprisingly the most basic of problems begin even before class starts. According to a 2010 report issued by the Instructional Technology Council, the highest ranking problem students face in online education is orientation and preparation given for taking distance education classes.

Great Technology! But How To Use It?

While there have got to be online courses out there that are well designed and actually do provide an engaging and enjoyable experience, students suffering experiences such as those which Pam relates are found aplenty.

While technology offerings can be leveraged to offer great features for online learning, exactly how they are implemented is an entirely different beast of its own. This said, educational institutions suffering from instructional design cramps would do well to consult those who may be the best doctors who specialize in these ailments: instructional designers.

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Source: Instructional Technology Council. (2010). Trends in eLearning: Tracking the Impact of eLearning at Community Colleges. Instructional Technology Council.