Opinion | College Courses Online Are Disappointing. Here’s How to Fix Them. - The New York Times

Opinion | College Courses Online Are Disappointing. Here’s How to Fix Them.

A modified tutorial system could foster a more rewarding learning experience online. Professors could record lectures on video for later viewing, annotate them with required and supplemental readings, and then schedule live video tutorials with, say, four or five students each. This style of learning might sound more challenging than sitting passively in a lecture hall, and it is. But research consistently shows that active learning leads to better learning.

Online tutorials would be a natural fit for smaller colleges. Larger universities, with their stadium-style lecture courses, might find the transition more challenging. But even so, there are options. Tutorials could be bigger, perhaps up to 15 students (a class size that research suggests is compatible with high levels of student achievement), and could be led not just by professors but also by supervised teaching assistants, typically doctoral students or postdoctoral fellows.

As it happens, I use a incompatibility system in a research laboratory course that I run at Northeastern University. Lecture-related material is placed online for students to download and consume on their own, and students meet in small groups every week with a graduate student, postdoc or full-time researcher who is supervised by me or the other professor who directs our lab. In my experience, more students end up participating collectively in the intellectual journey, rather than just the most extroverted or gregarious ones who tend to speak up during large lectures.

So, what’s the catch? I won’t sugarcoat it: Active, online learning means a lot more work for professors and other instructors. For a college course with 20 students, split into four tutorials of five students each, our teaching time could quadruple. And that estimate doesn’t include the time required to adapt and report lectures for online viewing. Even if university and college administrators were to pitch in by hiring more instructors (hardly a certain proposition, given the financial pressure that many schools are under), my chest gets tight just thinking about the exertion involved.

But astounding work beats furloughs and layoffs, which have been the response of many schools to the challenges of the lockdown. Plus, the fruits of our labors could make a meaningful educational contribution, improving the quality of higher education not just now but also after the pandemic is over.

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SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/opinion/college-reopening-online-classes.html

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