Online learning holds promise.

Editor's Note:

A Classroom of One is a snapshot of the history and state of online education at all levels of learning. In this series of excerpts, the book's author offers his insight about virtual classrooms.

With the aid of technology, widerange one-on-one education may be closer at hand than ever before. An encounter between student and teacher via the Internet is very different from the exchanges in formal classrooms that have until now characterized education. This fulfillment of the classroom of one embodies an intimacy all its own.

Such a shift does not signify an end to education as it has existed but the coming of a paradigm in which a course offered to a classroom full of students may be less compelling than it has been. The question is not whether formal learning will continue--of course it will--but what forms it will take among a multiplicity of possibilities. E-learning has come on the scene to augment and sometimes supplant the traditional classroom.

Content and delivery

The virtual classroom is no less a legitimate place for learning than the actual classroom. It simply calls for a different mode of delivery. This has implications for course content, course design, and methods of instruction.

Nothing inherent in the technology precludes an online course from containing the same content as a course taught in a classroom. The design of the course to make it accessible from a distance is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of online learning. The role of the instructor can vary greatly from online course to online course. Some courses may have no instructor per se and others may have instructors who are as much of a presence as classroom teachers, except that students cannot see them.

Electronic interaction crucially enhances an online course. In good online education, it is not merely a way to keep in touch but also a prime component of the learning.

Student interaction

[A school or educational] institution strives to give students a chance to test their knowledge, demonstrate what they have learned, and gain new insights. Electronic interaction via bulletin boards, chat rooms, and e-mail can enrich a student's education, much as good classroom discussions do. Interaction of this sort can also increase students' participation in the learning process.

"Few university faculty have the interest or persistence to require every single student in their classes to participate in classroom discussions," said Ronald Legon, provost of the University of Baltimore, speaking especially of undergraduate (college) education but to some degree of the graduate level as well.

"The typical situation in the vast majority of classes that even provide the opportunity for meaningful student discussion is that a relative handful of students avail themselves of this opportunity to demonstrate what they know, contribute to the learning process, and hine their speaking skills," Legon continued.

Some students who would be among the silent majority in an actual classroom shine in the virtual classroom, according to Legon.

The business risk

Even for providers that have limited their programs to the nonprofit sector, there is a Wild West aura about the business of e-learning. This is a frontier of educational experimentation, replete with trial and error, as in any laboratory in which a new product is put to the test.

The pursuit of enrollment growth and the accompanying revenues stimulates colleges and universities in this endeavor. Institutions harbor vague hopes that somehow online courses will eventually lead to lower per-student costs and larger per-student revenues. Providers, both nonprofit and for-profit, concede in their less giddy moments, however, that they don't really know whether a substantial and enduring market will develop for their cyber wares.

Putting entire courses online is no more of a sure thing than the groceries, job searches, toys, discounted automobiles, books, or other goods that drove dot-coms into bankruptcy. The billions invested in start-ups could not save many of them that ultimately found no lasting market for their services or products, a fact that haunts those who hope education will be different.

Marketing issues

Both for-profit providers and traditional institutions of higher education have recognized that one of the best chances for early acceptance of online courses resides in offering them to people who most need them for instrumental purposes, courses with content to advance their careers or allow them to embark on new careers.

Some of the shrewdest, profit-oriented education entrepreneurs have seemed, in the best tradition of business, to coalesce around these career-oriented, professional-based courses tied to the needs of employers. Certificate and advanced study in business and other vocationally oriented offerings figure prominently in e-learning.

Not surprisingly, online courses in the humanities and the social sciences do not enjoy the same appeal. Working students, whether they attend classes in person or online, usually want courses that will advance them in the workplace, not in the marketplace of ideas. Philosophy, literature, and art history, for example, have a much smaller online following than management, finance, and marketing.

Evaluating learning

One of the most common questions about online learning is whether it is better than education in the classroom, implying that being as good is not enough. The question is not easily answered, and a large body of research that might speak to the issue is only now starting to emerge.

Much of the evidence is composed of anecdotal findings that tend to be unpersuasive. There are, however, some parameters that may be applied in evaluating online learning, and one need not be an expert to take this measure. Two of the most obvious yardsticks have to do with course design and the interactivity of the course.

... The happy medium in design reflects itself in a course that takes advantage of technology to deepen education, making it more memorable and providing learning experiences beyond those apt to be possible without the Internet. Interactivity ... should use technology to connect students in meaningful ways to the instructor and to each other.

Adapting to new frontier 

A new reality that eliminates geographic restraints on the formal distribution of knowledge is stretching regulations that were written for an industry in which the purveyors were tied to certain locales. Yet, some educators from traditional programs seem to resent efforts to yank regulation into the cyber age, evincing hostility toward measures that would allow institutions to follow approaches different from prevailing practice.

... Educators tend to find comfort and reassurance in the familiar and feel less threatened by what they already know. There are few rewards in schools and universities for those who take risks.

Opposition of this sort slows the advance of online education. Trying to hold back e-learning, though, will be futile.

Many of the laws and regulations affecting education will have to change.... Online courses demand new ways to deal with funding formulas, attendance and time requirements for courses, residency rules, eligibility for financial aid, the mandated size of library collections, standards for academic credits, student-teacher ratios, and pay scales.

Beyond brick and mortar 

If nothing else, the availability of online learning may force schools and colleges to reflect on their missions and on how they discharge their responsibilities. Physical plants worth tens of millions of dollars depend on students continuing to come to campus for their programs. A virtual institution of learning, largely devoid of brick and mortar, has no such capital investment. The threat posed by online learning may lead traditional schools and colleges to make themselves over in ways more friendly to students and more closely aligned with students' actual needs, in and out of classrooms.

The changing structure

It will not be so easy to recognize an educational institution if it has no campus and its faculty and students are out of sight. Online learning should lead to a reappraisal of what defines a school, college, or university.

How widespread will the stripped-down version of an educational institution become? What beyond the courses themselves will remain? Institutions are always changing and colleges and universities are overdue for some revisions. Older Americans can remember when a soda fountain and a counter that sold ice cream sundaes and milk shakes defined a drugstore. Try to buy a milk shake today at Rite Aid or CVS, which have replaced soda fountains with electric can openers, hair dryers, and a host of products seldom seen in the drugstores of yore.

It could be that online learning will prove to be a lifeline for some small, remote educational institutions that have had an increasingly difficult time attracting students.... When students don't have to travel to campuses and locale no longer matters, as happens with distance education, some of the institutions at out-of-the-way places may find new ways to compete. They could try to reinvent themselves in the cyber age. On the other hand, they will face new competition from bigger, wealthier institutions, including ones in the for-profit sector, who can more easily afford to incur the costs of online learning.

Purposes in public school

While the purposes of education, beyond the academics, may be less clear today in colleges and universities, the situation at the elementary and secondary levels is another matter. There still is widespread agreement, though the specifics may be a matter of dispute, that schools for younger pupils should play a role in character development, socialization, transmission of a common culture, and preparation for citizenship.

Two of the main reasons why critics wonder about the appropriateness of online courses below the college level are because of these objectives and because of doubts about the suitability of e-learning for less-mature students who may not so easily function on their own.

... The role of schools in socialization gets taken for granted, but it is crucially important. Face-to-face interactions in both academic and nonacademic situations in schools teach children lessons in getting along with others. Personal confrontations force them to tolerate disagreement, to compromise, to reach consensus. While not all pupils benefit equally from these lessons, they nonetheless gain experiences.... They hone listening and speaking skills. They learn the give-and-take of conversation--though clearly not all students learn these skills with equal results. [Still, students outside of a classroom] don't have to deal with bullies, and they don't run the risk of rejection and being left out of activities in favor of those who are more popular.

Some of the largest reservations about online learning for the youngest students have to do with the civic values that many citizens would like the public schools to help children develop. The flourishing and survival of a democratic society depend on young people's learning the responsibilities of citizenship. Lessons in books, no doubt, figure in this process, but probably are insufficient in and of themselves.... [P]ersonal face-to-face contact may make the passion for democracy more palpable.

... While the content of online courses might train a young person for work, one wonders about the preparation for life, citizenship, and a shared culture when a student's education occurs in isolation. This is less of an issue for the many high school students whose online courses are an addition to a schedule of classroom-based courses. An online course or two for a student who otherwise attends regular courses is unlikely to interfere with the larger purposes of education. But what of pupils whose entire schedules are online? Can they learn how to live a life, as they must, eventually, in the presence of others ...?

Therefore, it is not so clear that an entire schedule of online courses will prepare pre-collegiate students fully for the future.

... The challenge presented by students who exhibit little academic initiative raises serious questions, of course, about the appropriateness of online learning for them. How will students take responsibility for learning in a classroom of one if they barely function in a classroom of 25, which at least has a teacher on duty? The easiest response to that question is that distance learning is not for everyone, that those who cannot work on their own are not candidates for this sort of education.

The head of the Florida Virtual School proposed that secondary school students "self select" their way into online learning, where, according to her, success has more to do with personality than with previous grade-point average. Her suggestions to students making this choice were that they be able to manage time well, have self-motivation, and not need a teacher in the room in order to get their work done....

Just as it is thought at this juncture that online learning is appropriate for only some students, some believe that online learning lends itself only to certain kinds of courses. Proponents of this view recognize that courses built around gaining a command of facts and procedures may be taught more easily online than other kinds of courses. Critics maintain that disciplines that seek to convey deep understanding of complex ideas do not lend themselves to instruction at a computer. They say such courses require face-to-face contact and a setting that allows for in-person dialogue. This ideal, however, does not always comport with the reality of the many classrooms in which courses fraught with complexities are taught by the lecture method to students who seldom engage in conversation with teachers or classmates. Surely, some students in online education are no worse off than some of their peers whose education takes place in such classrooms, regardless of subject matter.

On the other hand, online learning should try to be at least the equal of good classroom practice, not an emulation of the worst that the classroom has to offer. Courses over the Internet may not suit all students, but such courses have already shown that they can and do serve the needs of some students under certain circumstances. Any conversation about the purposes of education must take note of the need to make formal learning convenient for students. Online learning does this. One may safely conclude, even at this early juncture, that this new delivery system has already staked out a permanent place in education. Its role will be as lasting as that of the computer itself.

Gene Maeroff is the founding director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has written numerous books on education. E-mail [e-mail]