Daily Times

A poorly implemented online learning could make a student feel isolated, making learning more frustrating and unpleasant, causing a student to fail. Failure is more likely when a student has limited opportunities to connect to classmates or the outside world. To know the problems of each student, an instructor must carefully analyze the data on each student, pay careful attention to any sign of difficulty and learning, and quickly provide support to help a student overcome any problem.

According to Catherine Cheney, if online courses are poorly designed, learning becomes difficult, especially for the least prepared students. These students’ learning and outcomes are persistently worse when taking online vs. face-to-face courses. A study by Fox and Taylor shows that online courses improve access but are challenging for the least well-prepared students. They found that these students perform worse in online courses compared to face-to-face. As a result, they are more likely to drop out.

The same study analyzed data of 230,000 students enrolled in 168,000 sections of more than 750 different courses of a for-profit university. They found that taking a course online reduces student grades by 0.44 points on the traditional four-point grading scale. That is, students taking the course in-person earned roughly a B- grade (2.8) on average compared to an online course in which they earned a C (2.4). Additionally, taking a course online reduces a student’s GPA the following term by 0.15 points; and if one looks only at the next term GPA for courses in the same subject area or courses for which the course in question is a pre-requisite, the study found larger drops of 0.42 points and 0.32 points respectively, proving that students learn less in the online setting. A drop in the grade in sometime related to the lowest-performing students. That is, students with below-median prior GPA, the online classes, reduce grades by 0.5 points or more, while students with the previous GPA in the top three deciles will have a much smaller effect. However, students with higher GPA show no difference.

The US has the technology, the software, and technology savvy participants that make it successful. They pay attention to students most at risk of failure and dropping out. They have advanced A.I. that can easily identify at-risk students

The study shows that taking an online course increases the probability of students dropping out and taking fewer courses in the future as well as receiving a lower GPA. Other studies have found similar results among students attending community colleges and highly competitive four-year colleges.

In developing countries, students learn better within a group compared to developed countries where the learning environment is more individualist and person-to-person contact. Therefore, many students and teachers in developing countries may not be willing to participate in online courses. Resistance may be hard to overcome until the experiment of online courses becomes more widespread and acceptable to students. Unfortunately, many educators in developing countries are unaware of this cultural resistance, which will be the most challenging to overcome. Therefore, any educator not understanding the underlying conditions prevailing in the country but who starts offering online courses should know the obvious consequences all the stakeholders will face.

Based on what I have written thus far, you might conclude that online courses should not be offered in developing countries without a proper understanding of the prevailing environment, is true. This does not mean that online courses do not work, however. As I had stated in my Op-Ed “Online Education: Good or Bad; Here to Stay!” published in Daily Times on April 23, 2020, millions of students in the U.S. take online courses and complete them successfully. However, the U.S. has the technology, the software, and technology savvy participants that make it successful. They pay attention to students most at risk of failure and dropping out. They have advanced A.I. that can easily identify at-risk students. With daily information provided by the A.I., the instructors are alerted to any indication of trouble, and they quickly intervene. As a result, most developed countries offer online courses successfully.

However, this means that developing countries should not jump in offering online courses without proper preparation and knowing the technological conditions existing in the country. Otherwise, the consequences will be disastrous for the institutions, the country, and students. The institutions will end up investing money in a project that is doomed to fail. Unprepared students taking online courses will cause many students to give up on education resulting in a country of ignorant, frustrated citizens. In addition, technologically illiterate and unprepared instructors will create a disaster for the students and the institution. Further, countries with limited resources will end up investing in a project that will certainly fail. Therefore, all educational institutions and countries must start slowly in a well-developed technological location to test the project before expanding on a large scale.

Because most developing countries do not have the required facilities for online courses, for now, they can only offer distance-education courses taught via a dedicated T.V. channel or radio station. However, for this method to succeed, the educational institutions, the country, and the families must make sure that students have exclusive access to T.V. or radio in a quiet environment that allows a student to concentrate without any interruption. Unfortunately, in many developing countries, low-income and middle-class families do not have either a T.V. or houses that have a secluded room for a student to concentrate on learning. Also, students must be provided with feedback on their work regularly. The question is, who is going to collect the homework assignments and return the feedback to the students? These problems have no solutions at present unless countries are willing to invest in the future of the children. However, if countries want to have educated citizens, they must understand their environment and find solutions quickly to educate their children.

The writer is Ph.D. (USA), Professor Emeritus (USA)