Blog Post #7

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Why_Online_Programs_Fail.html

For my article I chose “Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It” by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel. In this article, the authors discuss the difficulties with online education programs and explain why they aren’t very successful, as well as offer some potential solutions to the problem.

I thought this article was interesting because I have taken several different online and hybrid classes in a variety of different subjects at CSU Chico, and never had much success with any of them. I found that when I took classes in my major, I didn’t get the full extent of learning that I would have received in the classroom, especially when it came to interacting with other students and group discussion which I believe is very valuable. The GE classes that I took weren’t very successful either, because I felt extremely disconnected from what I was learning and ended up doing the bare minimum of work without being inspired to put any creative thought into what I was doing.

This topic is extremely relevant to what we are working on in class. One of the main ideas that has come up over and over again is computer literacy, which directly applies to online classes. Our new technology and literacies allow us to explore new ways of learning through the internet, but at the moment, our current systems are only providing students with a tiny fracture of the experience that they could be having in a physical classroom with their peers. The main problem that the authors of the articles have identified, is that there is no infrastructure between the students or the classes that each student is taking. People are isolated and have little to no interaction with each other. The classes are extremely linear and students can simply complete the work in each link one at a time without digging in deeper to the subject they are studying.

The authors suggest that in order to fix the current problems, we should do several things: design a new learning model rather than basing online learning off of our current school programs, incorporate more technological pedagogy (because many of the people designing these programs don’t have extensive knowledge of the tools available for their online class), stop worrying about online learning overtaking traditional learning, take more risks with the programs, and finally, hold group sessions to develop much broader learning strategies.

I personally think that developing online learning is an extremely important area for us to focus our energy in. I personally like the idea of online classes and enjoy the convenience of being able to “attend class” around my work and other activities, I just have never felt that I received a quality education from any of them. It would be great to see some changes that helped bring online learning up to par with traditional learning so that more students would feel like online learning is an option for them.