5 Disadvantages of Online Learning

5 Disadvantages of Online Learning

I am a massive advocate of distance learning and the entire blended learning movement, in fact I have wholeheartedly embraced it, never more so than in the past year. I love the ability to have groups of students from all walks of life on a course together. It is exceptionally interesting to have been able to form friendships with students and clients I have actually never met in the flesh and have them return to do more studies. Of course, in addition, the technological side of learning makes a teacher’s life far easier with the use of super interactive learning management systems (LMS) to control attendance, collate assignments and supervise classroom progress.

Since the Covid pandemic began however, I have to say I have noticed a number of disadvantages from a Teacher’s perspective, and I know I’m not alone.

1.       Accountability: By far the biggest disadvantage from my perspective has been accountability. Since you never actually meet your students face to face there is a part of the personal connection which is lost somehow. It is partly because of this, students find it far easier to absent themselves from class without notice; to consistently break deadlines and forget to submit assignments.

I have struggled with rising absenteeism recently and students rarely show remorse for not turning up and even worse, not contacting us in advance to advise of their inability to make class – in fact, they seem to feel like their teacher’s time is irrelevant. Perhaps their ‘virtual’ teacher doesn’t matter as much to them as a real life one?

Since you are chasing them to submit assignments, complete projects, reschedule sessions electronically it would seem that it is far easier for students to ignore. Unfortunately, it means that students are not submitting their final assignments, not completing courses, nor forwarding valuable classroom feedback or testimonials.

E-learning requires strong personal motivational and time management skills on the part of the learner and it is all too easy to allow their studies to fall by the wayside.

2.       Personal Connection: In a classroom environment there is nothing like the feeling when a student or several students feed off one another, and you suddenly see the penny drop. That light bulb moment. That moment when everything becomes clear is lifechanging and a huge buzz for a teacher to see occur. It’s often really not possible to sense that virtually.

Most of us never meet our students these days – you may be managing them virtually or meeting them online – although you may be able to form a relationship of sorts it is far more difficult to build up such a connection that you feel you fully recognize change occurring in them.

3.       Accuracy: Online it’s really difficult to see and hear clearly. It therefore makes it too easy for students to be selective about what they do/say. My yoga teacher is not a fan of online teaching because she finds it exceedingly difficult to see the extent to which her students are striking the poses. This can happen for assorted reasons, one being that students can’t work the technology well enough to ensure the focus is on the right place, another being that the connection is just not clear enough. If you undertake the classes virtually, without the help of a real-life online teacher, you can not be 100% sure that you are striking the correct poses. Therefore, online teaching tends to focus far more on theory than practice and can be limited to certain types of learning.

4.       Talking over one another: This is something I am finding increasingly frustrating these days, especially in group seminars. There is no ability to use cues of any kind, verbal or otherwise, so we constantly talk over one another; missing important points, apologizing, and hesitating. Is the future of important debate and discussion really to use a waving hand emoticon to show the group that you wish to speak?

There is a severe lack of inter-personal communicational skills being demonstrated more as a result of the upsurge in online communication.

5.       Cheating: As a result of cheating during online assessments students can no longer be trusted to sit an online examination alone. Many educational awarding bodies and establishments have stopped online assessments from taking place or being honored because they know that the test results are just not valid.

Students have to go along to a training establishment to have their IDs checked and sit their online examination in a booth in the classroom. It almost defeats the purpose of creating an online assessment process which was designed to be lean and efficient. There is therefore a severe lack of credibility and quality assurance when it comes to online learning because of this mistrust of the process.

How can we start to get around these issues?

We can encourage an increasingly blended learning environment – a mixture of online, video conferencing and face to face where possible. Deciding upon a classroom contract at the beginning of the course and signing of terms and conditions may not guarantee compliance but may make students feel better compelled to attend class and submit on time.

If possible, build Online Communications Skills Training into each course and encourage specific types of interaction in the learning environment. Discussion boards, chatrooms and private groups are a wonderful way of encouraging diverse types of social interaction.

Implementing 1:1 mentoring as part of each course may increase costs but for the more practical aspects of learning it may be a necessary addition to ensure students get the practical expertise they require.

Lastly, in terms of the possibility of cheating, there are several anti-cheating tools becoming available in the online learning environment which help with ID verification and fraudulent online usage. This will take time to perfect though and until then a blended approach will be necessary.

If you have been struggling with implementing online learning recently, I would love to hear from you and learn about the issues you are facing. Let me know what solutions you have put in place in your establishment. Get in touch here for more information.