The Effectiveness of Online Education: Can Online Learning Replace Traditional Classroom Teaching?

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Young teen doing schoolwork at home

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INTRODUCTION

There has been a significant rise in the adoption of online learning as an alternative to traditional classroom teaching. In an editorial, Shallendra et al. (2018) presented the trends in online learning from five regions of the world by describing the evolution of online learning from the days of telegraphy and concluded that online learning has gained traction all over the world and is here to stay. Various methods are being developed continuously to make this learning approach more intuitive and engaging for the students. Instructors are also being trained to help them attain the level of technological advancement required to provide engaging, intuitive, and creative content.

According to Nguyen, Tuan. (2015), it is possible to provide education for anyone anywhere in the world provided they are connected to the internet. The opportunity of online education exposes students to a wide array of quality online courses offered both locally and internationally. High-quality courses have been made available to students through online learning platforms without struggling with a geographic location or time difference.

However, Xu and Jaggars (2013) carried out research using a dataset of around 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 students in Washington state to know how well students performed in the online learning environment and found that all types of students in the online learning environment performed worse than their counterparts in the face-to-face courses. One of the reasons that they noted as a contributing factor to this performance is the negative peer pressure associated with the online courses.

It is no new fact that online learning has been given significant attention in recent years, especially due to the pandemic that hit the world in the year 2020. Therefore, it is important that we evaluate the effectiveness of online education today.

This paper would evaluate the effectiveness of online education by reviewing various findings and attempting to answer the question “can online learning replace traditional classroom teaching methods?”

DEFINITION

Online Education is a method of delivering learning materials through technological means with the help of the internet, personal computers, smartphones, and other media devices. According to Nguyen, Tuan. (2015), it is also referred to as a form of distance education.

ADVANTAGES OF ONLINE EDUCATION

It is cheaper. Many students can have access to quality materials at an affordable rate as long as they have access to the internet. One of the reasons why students don’t take courses they are interested in is as a result of the high cost of the course. William, Casement. (2013) also noted that online education could be cheaper for colleges as long as they embrace the use of technological means in a more different way to deliver courses online.

Students can also invest less and more effective time in learning courses as opposed to spending hours in classrooms, which sometimes does not hold or take up much time than specified. Xu and Jaggars (2013) also noted its popularity among non-traditional students, mostly the employed, people with health challenges, family obligations, etc. who tend to create a specific time frame for consuming content within their schedule.

Another advantage is the improved student attendance. Students are less likely to miss a class when accessing the classroom content remotely. It is as easy as accessing a link via an internet-enabled device anywhere in the world.

DISADVANTAGES OF ONLINE EDUCATION

Online learning tends to make instructors reduce the quality of communication they have with the student since it is difficult to manage them while they are in several geographic regions with different time zones. Hassenburg, Amy. (2009) also raised the issue of a certain “atmosphere” and human interaction crucial to learning that can only be achieved with a traditional face-to-face learning environment. For example, an instructor can easily organize a practical session and split the students into different groups and have them submit their findings immediately after the session as opposed to organizing breakout sessions with students in multiple time zones and availability.

Another disadvantage is the issue with technical faults which may arise as a result of poor internet connectivity, access to power supply, device failure, etc., which can affect both the instructors and students. Most of these technical faults can occur as a result of unforeseen circumstances or due to the area from which the content is being accessed e.g. villages.

In addition, there is a need to consider the institutional factors that affect this mode of education, such as the need to equip instructors with the necessary skills in creativity and understanding required to deliver courses online, institutional friction, discrimination by companies against online degrees, etc. Shallendra et al. (2018) also noted the tendency for reduced quality of education to occur since a lot of work and technical know-how needs to be applied to be able to achieve the best outcomes with online learning.

INDIFFERENT FINDINGS

While there are schools of thought that argue solidly for or against the notion of online education, certain findings could not take sides with any of the opposing notions but tend to consider a more hybrid approach to both traditional and online learning methods. These findings proposed a combination of the two methods into a “Hybrid” or “Blended” learning approach, which Zhao et al discovered that students who combined both methods of education performed much better than their counterparts who focused on one method only. To this effect, it is possible for students to grow even better, as both of these means of education are being improved significantly. For example, when students encounter blockers in some classroom topics, they can access a wide variety of other classrooms that treat the topic exhaustively online and narrow it down to the instructor and material of their choice. This would lead to a better understanding and even help the students hone their research and development skills.

It is also important to note how much research has gone into finding how both methods of education do not show much significance in comparison. Thomas Russell (1999) noted that there is a “no significant effect” of online learning over traditional classroom teaching methods in his work that collected around three hundred and fifty-five reports on the study of the two methods. Although he supports distance, online learning, he is more aligned to the “Blended” learning combination.

THE FUTURE OF ONLINE LEARNING

It is clear that people all over the world are facing revolutionary changes in the way they think about online learning. Although certain institutional discriminations are against it, it would get better with improvements in interaction management and the quality of content delivery. Nguyen, Tuan. (2015) also noted the possibility of a transformation in this area by gamification of the learning process, which can lead to improved communication, engagement, productivity, and course completion rate.

In the area of monitoring student performance, Villegas et al also discussed the possibility of introducing machine learning models and data science to help monitor student performance, as well as find students who pose the risk of low academic performance. This strategy can also be fine-tuned with criteria set by instructors, and the technology can help to improve student engagement, performance, and course completion rates.

SUMMARY

Considering the traction and support that online learning has gathered over the years, one might be tempted to assume that it would effectively replace the traditional classroom teaching methods in the nearest future. The low cost of accessing online courses and effective time management are factors that are key to the growing popularity of online learning methods but other factors like institutional discrimination, the potential for reduced quality of education via content delivered online can be a stumbling block to this growth. However, a certain school of thought encourages the hybrid model of learning which combines both methods for a more balanced academic experience.

CONCLUSION

With the growing amount of people completing online courses through various curated content and learning paths, one begins to ponder the subject of if online learning can replace traditional classroom teaching methods. From indications in this paper, it is difficult to provide a conclusive response, despite the fact that online learning has been radically used over the years. Online education is still undergoing various stages of development and acceptance, and it would be best to observe the trends as the future for this learning approach unfolds.

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