First year Philosophy students at Loyola University, ca. 1965. There is no way they could have received the quality education they did from any "online" college!
Well, believe it or not, we may actually have a valid explanation of why that fulsome fundie wasn't able to do the test on evolution provided some blogs ago! It seems that online colleges, I presume especially those like "Smoke House Online Bible College" in Okeechobee, Fla. aren't doing anywhere near as well at educating their minions. Certainly not like regular brick and mortar schools (say lke Loyola University, with students shown).
According to Columbia University ’s Community College Research Center , for example, about seven million students — about a third of all those enrolled in college — are enrolled in what the center describes as traditional online courses. These typically have about 25 students and are run by professors who often have little interaction with students. Over all, the center has produced nine studies covering hundreds of thousands of classes in two states, Washington and Virginia. The picture the studies offer of the online revolution is distressing to say the least.
First, student attrition rates — around 90 percent for some huge online courses — appear to be a problem even in small-scale online courses when compared with traditional face-to-face classes. Second, courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed.
In addition, the research has shown over and over again that community college students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return. Worse still, low-performing students who may be just barely hanging on in traditional classes tend to fall even further behind in online courses.
Most college students today, according to assorted surveys, claim an average of 15 minutes of writing per nightly homework, compared to nearly 2 ½ hours back in the 1960s. However, and this is important, not even that 15 minute threshold is met by the online for profit outfits like Udacity.
Interestingly, the Columbia research center found that students in hybrid classes, i.e. that blended online instruction with a face-to-face component, performed as well academically as those in traditional classes. But hybrid courses are rare, and teaching professors how to manage them is costly and time-consuming.
So it seems for the long time being, those accessing online colleges will suffer, not only in the depth of their knowledge, but in plumbing its weak links, poor assumptions and false biases.
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