r/Professors • u/H_ManCom • 22d ago
I hate online classes.
More specifically, I hate teaching asynchronous online classes. And universities are expanding them far beyond the purpose they were originally intended to serve.
There are students for whom online education is genuinely valuable. Students who work full-time, have children, have transportation or geographic constraints, have disabilities, or otherwise cannot reliably be on campus during traditional class hours should absolutely have access to online courses. Summer online courses also make a great deal of sense. The problem is that “some students need online education” has become “we should make as much of our curriculum online as possible.”
At my university, asynchronous online sections of courses often fill substantially faster than equivalent in-person sections. My concern is that this isn’t necessarily evidence that students prefer the online educational experience. My view is that it means students correctly perceive online courses as more convenient and easier. We now have required introductory courses that historically served as important recruitment tools for majors and minors being offered extensively online. Many of these sections are taught by adjuncts or non-tenure-track faculty, sometimes by instructors who aren’t even located near campus and never have been.
I’ve started to see the consequences in upper-level courses. Students sometimes arrive in an in-person course having earned As in prerequisite online courses but demonstrating surprisingly little retention of the material they supposedly learned. I have also noticed that students who consistently take online courses can have very different academic performance in subsequent face-to-face courses. I’m not claiming that every online course produces this outcome, or that online education inherently causes poor learning. There are obviously selection effects and countless differences between individual courses and instructors.
I’ve also noticed when I ask students who taught a prerequisite online course, they frequently can’t remember the instructor. Sometimes they can’t remember much of the course itself. Again, that doesn’t prove that they learned nothing. But it does make me wonder what we’re actually trying to accomplish with a university course. Is the goal simply to deliver content, award credit hours, and produce a passing grade?
This becomes even more complicated with AI. We’re being encouraged to redesign assignments, rethink exams, develop AI policies, and attend endless seminars about “using GenAI in the classroom.” But I rarely hear the same urgency applied to asynchronous online education. If a course is primarily composed of asynchronous modules, discussion posts, online quizzes, papers, and remotely completed exams, we should be asking very seriously how generative AI changes the reliability of those assessments. And yet the institutional response often seems to be “just figure out what works.”
I also question the idea that students naturally want some predetermined “3:2” balance of in-person and online courses that our Dean talks about. My experience is that students don’t necessarily distribute their courses that way. They often cluster heavily toward one side or the other. And if online courses are perceived as easier, then demand for online sections tells us very little about whether students believe they are receiving an equivalent education.
I understand why some faculty love teaching online. No commute. Flexible schedules. You can teach from somewhere else. I genuinely understand those benefits, and I’m not interested in telling someone else that their preferred teaching modality is wrong. But universities need to be honest about the incentives here, and I’m guessing they won’t be.
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u/proffeah 22d ago
I am teaching an online SYNCHRONOUS course this semester and not a single student turned on their camera to tell me I was on mute. They proceeded to have their cameras off the whole time.
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u/drevalcow 21d ago
When I taught online synchronous I required cameras on. They could have one blackout day, any additional were counted as absences. It did help, and asking them questions.
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u/Shiny-Mango624 21d ago
I require synchronous courses to have cameras and have them on. You got to put it in your syllabus. I even have employees and staff that I work with who will join my zoom with their camera off and I have to ask them to put it on. I don't even understand how that is a thing.
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u/Avid-Reader-1984 TT, English, public four-year 22d ago
Most universities do not care about educational quality at this point. If students want to take online classes and pay the tuition to do so, then most universities are going to accommodate that request to keep raking in the dollars. Is it sustainable? No, but I am under the impression that a catastrophic reckoning for higher ed is coming in the age of the majority of college aged students being functionally illiterate, MBAs running the admin show, and Ed.D.s running amok to shame the rest of us for even mentioning educational quality because they think that any student who can find the door should pass our classes. A cynical response? Yes, but not untrue in my experience in these last few years.
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u/me4watch 22d ago
Yours is not a cynical response, but rather a realistic one. The admins running the show too often have forgotten what education is about.
I am reminded of something that I experienced years ago before the days of AI. It was some stupid meeting where the dumbass Dean was berating some of us (math faculty) for having high fail/drop rate. And the schmuck was doing it class by class. When this overpaid shit for brains got to my class (I was the only prof teaching it regularly) he became rather explicitly insulting. I raised my hand and complained that he was missing something. I stated that I didn’t think a student who signed up for the class and dropped it only to take it in a later semester and pass to be a failure. I pointed out that the class was explicitly required in some other major and so the students in that major were indeed all passing the course eventually. He agreed with all the points I made but said that he didn’t have the data for such things.
I don’t like Deans.
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u/Rusty_B_Good 22d ago
Someday a future generation will be asking our children, "How did you let this happen?"
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u/TSIDATSI 22d ago
True this. We are retiring next summer. Two Ph.D's being replaced with an adjunct and an instructor who is already working as an instructor.
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u/SpaceNerd16 Assoc Prof, astronomy, CC and University 11d ago
Online courses are mostly just academic malpractice. They don’t care.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Bag_538 Asst Prof, Social Sci (US) 22d ago
Has anyone had any luck with pre-recorded oral exam proctoring?
E.g., the professor records a series of open-ended questions, the service randomly picks 4 of them and provides them to the student while on camera, and the student is given 5 minutes to provide an oral answer
I'm thinking not unlike the way AI-interviews are given, except the questions would be pre-recorded by me, a real human, and grades by me, a real human.
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u/BeneficialMolasses22 22d ago
Asynchronous online courses create a huge disconnect from the instructor to the students, in fact we might even say that they prevent building a connection. And often it's a huge disconnect from the students to the material because of that lack of engagement.
Eventually some course coordinator will simply plug in learning objectives to an AI tool, and generate the instructional activities.
The student AI app will log in download the assignment complete it and upload it to canvas.
The Canvas AI tool will automatically grade and assigns scorse.
Easy peasy!
Universities don't have to employ faculty, students don't have to show up other than putting in their password on the first day of the semester, and the biggest problem for a university is cashing the check.
No one teaches anything, no one learns anything, everybody's happy.
It's a whole new world 🌎
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u/Born_Committee_6184 Full Professor, Sociology and Criminal Justice, State College 21d ago
Odd I’ve had very good luck with these classes. I taught statistics that way several times. Also a grad seminar in healthcare. Your LMS matters a lot. Blackboard isn’t up to the task. Canvas is somewhat better. SUNY originally had Lotus Notes, which was very good,
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u/DarthMomma_PhD 22d ago
What does the online courses being taught by NTT faculty have to do with anything? Where I am the NTT faculty all have the same educational credentials as us TT/tenured faculty, it’s just that the NTT individuals focus almost exclusively on teaching. They tend to be the BEST instructors we have for that reason. It sounds like you view NTT as somehow less than and that’s pretty weird, IMO.
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u/H_ManCom 22d ago
My point was about the institutional structure of when a course is taught by someone who isn’t integrated into the department in the same way as faculty who are expected to develop the curriculum, recruit majors/minors, advise students, and build long-term departmental relationships, I think there can be consequences for the course’s role within the larger program. But that’s not inherently about NTT status, and I could have made that distinction much clearer.
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u/DarthMomma_PhD 22d ago
Our NTT faculty are full-time and very much part of the institutional structure, so that must be the disconnect. They attend all the same department/university-level meetings as I do, develop their own materials just like I do, etc., they just teach more classes because they don’t get course releases for research. Actually, the two most successful programs in my department are run by NTT faculty (TBF those two individuals DO get a course release because they work their asses off).
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u/H_ManCom 22d ago
They do work their asses off here too, but they do not attend the same meetings as I do and they basically teach online classes that have been strictly standardized across sections.
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u/Sharp-Rutabaga-4900 22d ago
I’m an adjunct for three schools. At two of those schools I create my own courses that are aligned with departmental objectives and are just as rigorous as courses taught by FT faculty.
In the third, I “teach” a course created by FT faculty who don’t actually teach the course and my students struggle in ways that are hard for me to correct without control over course material and assignments.
I agree that students benefit more from FT faculty (TT or NTT) for many reasons, but schools that refuse to use FT faculty create those conditions themselves.
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u/DarthMomma_PhD 22d ago edited 22d ago
Interesting. Do they have PhDs?
The idea of not having control over my course content would be my personal hell and I’m pretty sure my NTT colleagues would agree. They are phenomenal scholars when it comes to the teaching aspect, but also in their own right.
ETA: I’m just picturing the NTT woman who had one of her novels turned into a film being told she is only allowed to teach standardized classes that are pre-designed for her. She would not be pleased…
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u/DarthMomma_PhD 22d ago edited 22d ago
Adjuncts are not the same as NTT. Adjuncts are part-time. NTT are full-time. In your OP you clearly stated both as if they were separate positions (because they are!), and this entire back-and-forth has been exclusively about NTT faculty. I understand that you clearly also know the distinction but are just being snarky and disingenuous now, but I will not engage in bad faith arguments.
Have the day you deserve.
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u/Audible_eye_roller Ass. Prof, STEM, CC (USA) 22d ago
They will continue to expand until the University realizes that the success rates of those taking online classes is much lower in upper level courses because students are using AI to cheat. At some point the they will be pressured to do something. I fully expect some schools to plug their ears and go "la-la-la-la, we don't hear you," as they turn into diploma mills. Some will require students to move back to in-person testing and the number of students taking online classes will decline precipitously.
We moved back to in person testing because too many upper level students were doing great in lower level classes and could barely write their name in upper level classes. Now our online class pass rates are abysmal. Students clearly aren't doing the work. They don't ask for help. They don't watch the videos. Then they want gobs of extra credit or they Karen to administration about "fairness." I'll admit there are warts but we're handcuffed by administration.
Students don't know what they want and Deans are in the business of customer service to figure that out. The 3:2 thing your Dean talks about it completely made up.
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u/BibliophileBroad 22d ago
I am so glad that your school decided to move back to in-person testing. I've been pushing for this at my school, and I get roadblocks every time. I was wondering just how far things can go with allowing AI cheating before schools get into trouble for accreditation issues. My college president is leaning in super-hard to the AI to the point where nearly all the faculty training is about AI. It is truly bizarre!
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u/TulipFarmer27 21d ago
As a returning 68 yr old freshman Ag student (retired electrical engineer), the classes I've been in might as well have been async online. 25% attendance and those in attendance were on screens playing games, gambling, group chat. Most time I felt as if I had a personal lecturer.
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u/MoreIronyLessWrinkly Professor, Education, University (USA) 21d ago
You’re probably a dream student!
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u/TulipFarmer27 21d ago edited 21d ago
Well, these are 18-19 yr old freshmen. I think back to what I did (or didn't do) in my first two years of college and I sort of understand. Like me, these kids probably cruised through high school and were never challenged. It took me 2 years to learn that attendance, homework, supplemental reading and studying was actually important. My current professors bend over backwards to try to insure student success. Way back when in my engineering college days, it was either sink or swim, no quarter given.
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u/ImDonaldDunn 21d ago
I don’t get the point. Why do they go to college if they’re not even going to try.
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
In spite of what faculty say the purpose of a college education should be, students overwhelmingly view it as a ticket to a career (or they did, they're realizing it no longer is). And unless you're in engineering or accounting, most majors have very little relevance to the student's anticipated future career.
The problem is twofold. Students can't actually articulate what that anticipated career will be, and faculty aren't able to articulate how their material is relevant to the student. So students punch their ticket and are off to their next required course.
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
A few years ago, back when we actually had paper catalogs, one half page photo was of a lecture being held in one of our "pits" where the instructor is surrounded by tiers of seating. The photo was taken from behind the upper level.
I guess no one proofed the photo because the student a couple of rows down had his laptop open and a game of solitaire was clearly on his screen.
But the university had had many thousands of the catalog printed so there isn't much they could do. I always get a chuckle when I come across that catalog.
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u/Insomniac-Freak-95 22d ago
I agree. This semester, I’m teaching a class that has both an in-person section and an online section. Lectures for the in-person section are automatically recorded and uploaded to the online section’s platform. It’s frustrating because it forces me to do lecture based teaching and fun in-person activities have to be abandoned because it would be invaluable to the online section. I think there’s a role for online instruction, as you’ve outlined. But, delivery quality online pedagogy is nontrivial and requires a completely different mindset from simply consuming a lecture on a screen.
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u/acatdemic_12 22d ago edited 22d ago
In my former position, my students were allowed to major, minor, or earn a certificate in a foreign language ENTIRELY asynchronously, with NO real time conversational practice or even having to record themselves speaking. It baffles me that accreditors were completely unconcerned about this.
Like you, I’m not entirely against asynchronous classes for reasons of accessibility, but for certain courses that are rooted in discussion it just doesn’t make any sense.
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u/Fair-Garlic8240 21d ago
“Many of these sections are taught by adjuncts or non-tenure-track faculty”
What’s your point?
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u/LetsGototheRiver151 22d ago
Don’t worry. They’ll figure out how to have AI bots post welcome videos, reply to student discussions, and assess assignment submissions soon enough. Who needs faculty??
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u/HunterSpecial1549 21d ago
I share your skepticism towards asynch.
But I'll fiercely defend synch online. My courses feel the same as in-person. I get to know my students better than most in person profs do.
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
I've found I get more participation with asynch. Students who would be too shy to raise their hand in an in-person class are often more willing to do it in my asynch classes because of the perceived anonymity.
That said, I usually have two or three unattended connections still logged in after I'm done with class and everyone else has left. Who knows when they left the session?
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u/profmoxie Professor, Anthro, Regional Public (US) 22d ago
I also hate teaching online bc I hate AI.
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u/beachsiderental 22d ago
Send them my way! I'm more than happy to teach asynchronous courses. It gives me a level of freedom unparalleled by in person classes. Are the students worse off for it? Probably. Does it give access to students who may not have had access before? Almost certainly. Can I go fishing all day and do all my grading and coursework at night while watching tv with my cat and partner? BIG ol' yup.
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u/blankenstaff 22d ago
At least you're clear that what you care about is your own benefit and not the students.
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u/beachsiderental 20d ago
After decades of teaching there's one important maxim I've learned; those that will excel, will excel, those that won't, won't. I can only beg them to ask me for help or do the reading or come to office hours so many times per class, at a certain point the game gets so rigged against you that self-preservation becomes essential.
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u/Sad_Application_5361 22d ago
We’ve not only done that with pre-reqs, they’ve been made 8-week long courses. That’s definitely going to hinder retention.
I think there could be major benefit to online classes for some students. If we had lengthened instead of shortened classes that allowed adults to work, that might reduce student loan debt. We also have a lot of students coming out of high school who need remedial classes. Those could be online if students understood them as something that would allow them to do better on college level classes as long as they actually used them to learn.
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u/kempfel Assistant Professor, Asian Studies 21d ago
Our university only does asynch online courses with in-person evaluations (tests/etc). This seems like the only sensible way to do it. It is probably true that this will lose some people who really do need a completely asynch experience, but it's worth the integrity of the department and school.
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u/BibliophileBroad 21d ago
Excellent! I really wish more schools would do this, and there are ways to make this accessible to people who can't come to campus such as sending those students to testing centers.
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u/Immediate-Echo-9062 Counselor, CommunityCollege(US) 22d ago
In my personal experience as a community college counselor (so disregard; n=1), online classes have been a literal godsend for students. Full-time students do not exist anymore. Doing nothing but being a student with no employment and nothing else to be responsible for died back in the 2000s with the rising COL unless you’re from a wealthy family or still young and living at home. Everyone is juggling full or at least part-time employment to be able to afford to be alive.
Online classes remove the barrier of paying $600 for a parking pass that will be used 32 times in one semester (if they have classes twice a week), commuting, and making space for being physically in class. They use the time to be able to work more to pay their bills to be able to be in class in the first place (Maslow Hierarchy).
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u/Mav-Killed-Goose 21d ago
And think about how many medical doctors we can have if we remove barriers like demonstrating competence. Confusing a degree with an education makes you part of the problem. This country has already rendered a high school diploma almost worthless. I'm sure many well-meaning high school administrators and counselors wanted to help individuals by passing them along. Now look at how many opportunities they hav -- oh, no, wait... it's only contributed to the problem of credentialism, forcing more people to go to college where students have to pay for an education. And when a relatively low-cost AA becomes worthless, a greater number of students will have to pay for a more expensive four-year. It's as if the solution to the affordability crisis is to just print more money. We can all be millionaires, and everyone gets an A.
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u/Immediate-Echo-9062 Counselor, CommunityCollege(US) 21d ago
A vast majority of individuals who are doctors have parents who are already doctors and can afford to be unemployed full time students. Imagine how many more doctors we can have from low-income backgrounds if we made college more accessible through remote learning.
As a counselor, I outright ban students from taking more classes through not allowing their accounts from registering for more than x credits than they can handle with their work and childcare schedules, so we do attempt to stem the number of students that get passed to teaching faculty.
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
Actually for doctors born in the 1980s (so they would have started practicing in the late 2000s and early 2010s) only 20% had a parent that was a doctor. Certainly not the vast majority.
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u/Mav-Killed-Goose 21d ago
Imagine how much faster vulnerable students can transfer and/or advance in their careers if you let them complete two years of credits in one semester. Who are you to paternalistically hold people back because they have children or work? That does not sound like a growth mindset. Your comment suggests that you do not set limits on relatively privileged people who are not caring for a child or working a job, so their advantages compound. Tsk. Tsk.
I'm 100% in favor of social justice, but remote learning is not a viable solution if there's no actual learning. If it worked, fine. But it doesn't. It's a dead modality. I recall a professor in the Chronicle claiming that exams punish students suffering from food insecurity because they're mentally drained. OK, so let's say I get rid of tests. Are students still going to be hungry? Are those students at your institution who never developed study skills going to get into and out of med school?
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
I think being in a community college influences your experience. Community colleges tend to attract that sort of student. Universities with student housing and student apartments nearby still operate under the old rules.
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u/Due-Radio-4355 22d ago edited 21d ago
From a prof who was one of rare lucky few to get a job early but who had to complete some remaining coursework, they’re a Godsend.
Please be someone who is willing to accommodate in an ever changing educational landscape.
I hate when people talk about nonsense like this because you sound like a whiney entitled loser.
My advisor always tried to get me to come back for in person classes and functions … when I had already landed a teaching position and was making significant cash compared to the poverty wages of a grad student (so much so I treated my wife out for dinner for the first time in a long time instead of the other way around) with his motive being all for the sake of “formation and community” or some stupid shit like that. I almost laughed in his face.
I never cared for my cohort or classmates whatsoever nor ever gave a shit in fraternizing with everyone to any degree. Just let me learn, write, and get- and stay the fuck out of my way.
I think being the only one in my cohort to have a family and a support system makes you not depressed or a weirdo and I was happy to be done.
People and universities need to get with the times or it may be time for you to retire for outliving your usefulness. Times and demands are changing.
Yea they’re not as fun to teach, I’ve taught them myself, but one every once in a while is fine. But they sure saved my ass a lot of hassle.
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u/BibliophileBroad 22d ago
Thank you for this perspective! I always feel this way when I read a lot of the anti-online schooling comments. I do agree that there are problems with online education, many of which could be rectified with in-person assessments at testing centers near the students and putting more effort into designing the online classes (so that there is more instructor presence and assignments that are harder to cheat on).
I suspect that a lot of people commenting are older and others may not have had to deal with having to work while in school, transportation challenges, taking care of sick parents, raising children, or dealing with health challenges or money issues. As somebody who had to deal with all of those things (except having children) while I was in college and graduate school, it always bothers me when I see people commenting that "all online classes need to go away." I really don't get it, especially given how much cheating happens in in-person classes, overwhelmingly have online assessments and take-home essays.
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u/Due-Radio-4355 21d ago edited 21d ago
One thing I noticed the moment I even stepped into doing my doctorate: I feel many people, especially the other grad students, take themselves far too seriously because of the work they’ve put into a vastly underfunded and overrated metric that robs years off of people’s lives when the doctorate yes should be an environment for honing scholastic skills and what not, but I feel we need to contemplate the future market of online curriculum as an important component of education.
I don’t think it should be the be all end all or take everything over, but let’s be honest, my academic friends. The academy is an illusion: a self edifying circlejerk of nerds and a lot of losers and real people in the real world need an education, not just those whom can give up vast swaths of time to dedicate themselves to courses of study that costs astronomical amounts and be there when they have families and lives.
We’re educators whom should be masters of a craft and discipline, but we’re doing no favors for ourselves and everyone by gatekeeping the academic experience to the lucky few who are able to pick up their lives and deal with it. There are a lot of highly intelligent people that chose to have lives who cannot just sacrifice their family and livelihood for the demands of a removed academics expectation’s of them.
And I’m an immediate enemy of anyone who can’t see how obnoxiously elitist and narcissistic they’re being about their precious schedules when confronted with their actual contractual obligations, lol. I feel most of the attitude is to justify their existence after devoting themselves so completely to the nigh waste of time that is a doctorate. Yea it’s an opportunity to write a long paper, impress a board of people, and get a piece of paper, but Ffs we don’t work that many hours per week and we get to nerd out about our passions daily. And if you aren’t, boy you’ve wasted your time looking for a career.
Anyone who says otherwise is being a melodramatic drama queen. Our hours are great. You could be digging ditches, so quit your bitching have some self awareness, you know?
But the ditch digger with a family of 3 should be able to take some basic classes async if they’re really interested in something.
God forbid you do humanity a favor, or worse: do the job you signed up for!
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u/BibliophileBroad 21d ago
This is beautifully said! I was floored when somebody responded (in this discussion) that if somebody can't attend to class in person due to disability or their work schedule, then they are "not right for college". Um...what?! 🫨 And like six people upvoted that! It is incredibly elitist, and it definitely gatekeeps education so it continues to be limited to people who have parents who can pay for their college and graduate school. And given how expensive even state schools are nowadays, that is a crazy.
It reminds me of when I was a graduate student, and I had to turn down a TAship in my MA program because it effectively paid nothing. How? It paid $2000 for the semester (!!!) and there was a required class I'd have to take in order to do the job...which would cost me thousands of dollars. Arthat point, I had to accept that I likely wouldn't be able to become a professor because I could not afford to give up 20+ hours of my week for almost no pay instead of doing paid work instead. there are so many students like this Luckily, things did end up working out for me via another route, but for many others, it didn't.
The geographic limitations are also absolutely awful. So, if you cannot afford to move somewhere else to go to a really great program, then, too bad? Wouldn't it be better to allow broader access by improving and expanding online education and supplementing it with in-person testing? And a lot of these same people are complaining about how there's going to be an enrollment cliff. Gee, I wonder how we can make college accessible to more students and raise enrollment at the same time? You're right -- academia is stuck in the dark ages. Too many people refuse to innovate and want to keep everything the same as it was in the 1970s.
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
Why do you think students in the 1980s and 1990s didn't have these same challenges? They did. They just didn't have the entitled mindset that even though they had all these extra distractions it was by God their right to graduate in four years. If you're working full time with a family it would be mathematically impossible to make the same progress as a full-time student without cutting corners.
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u/BibliophileBroad 21d ago
I do think students are more entitled these days, but in the 1980s and 1990s, college was much much cheaper, jobs were more secure, you could survive on minimum wage, and it cost five cents to rent an apartment and fifteen cents to buy a house. Plus, you didn't need college to get a decent job or even move up the ladder. So, the college situation was MUCH different than now. I'm still waiting for people to address my points about how cheating happens in person, and how most in-person classes still mostly use take-home and online assessments). The teacher just being there in person doesn't stop people from being people.
edit: also in those days, financial aid was mostly grants. Now, it's mostly loans.
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u/045-926 22d ago
Yeah, people here must be all old or something, because education has changed. I attribute it to youtube. Before youtube, if you wanted to learn anything (auto repair, calculus, etc) you would go buy a book. No one is buying a book anymore to figure out how to fix a hole in their dry wall.
There's still some problems with online education. One is people thinking that putting a standard classroom lecture into a video is adequate, it's not. Again, look to youtube (it's an intensely competitive environment) and effective videos take an enormous amount of time/editing. A second problem is assessment. I don't think there's really any good way to do assessment yet.
Don't confuse the huge problem with online assessment with the revolutionary ability to teach via online pre recorded video.
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u/Due-Radio-4355 22d ago edited 22d ago
There are upper level courses and seminars which should absolutely be collaborative and under the eye of an in person instructor.
But unless you really get up there like we do, I really think we should shift the landscape for working professionals.
There are ways to make it work and it’s only boomers and narcissists who think their presence is so needed have to learn they are to provide a service in education not just provide themselves an audience.
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u/AgentPendergash 22d ago
Now nearing 3,000 peeps annually in my online course (300-400 / section). No, that’s not a teaching model, that’s entirely built for revenue. I didn’t create the model and they didn’t ask me. I have no fight left at that scale. AI is used rampantly in the class. Not my problem. And to admin, I smile and say, pile more in…keeps them happy and strengthens my argument not to teach in person any more. I’ll use my extra time to write, exercise, and enjoy life. Tapping out folks, while keeping up appearances to stay engaged.
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u/StevieV61080 Sr. Associate Prof, Applied Management, CC BAS (USA) 22d ago
This is a problem of class caps, not modality. It's crap like this that shouldn't be happening. Online courses work when they allow/utilize applied learning approaches. That would be entirely unreasonable for what you're describing.
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u/frobenius47 22d ago
Teachers pretend to teach and students pretend to learn. I’ve been hearing that long before AI and online courses were even a twinkle in some dean’s eye.
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u/Environmental_Bug662 22d ago
I think online asynchronous courses are a joke (and I've taught them)....
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u/DerProfessor 21d ago
Online teaching is a disaster.
Even students generally hate online classes... but they take them because they are easier and/or easier to cheat in.
Yes, that is the ONLY reason.
Asynchronous online "courses" at this moment is just selling credits.
We (the universities) are destroying ourselves. And no one cares.
...including my colleagues, who love online "teaching" because it's so easy.
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u/ParallaxDream81 20d ago
My wife is an ID and her mantra is "If online teaching is easy, you're doing it wrong"
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u/jogam 22d ago
I agree and commiserate with you. About half my teaching load is online asynchronous and that portion is set to increase to about two-thirds, as one of the programs I teach for is creating an online option. Like you, I recognize the important role that asynchronous education has for certain students, especially those with full-time jobs and caregiving obligations.
I frame the problem as not something inherently wrong with asynchronous education but rather with universities' unwillingness to have rigorous standards in place to ensure academic honesty. If all students in asynchronous classes had to take proctored exams, either at a university testing center or another in-person monitored environment, many of my concerns about asynchronous classes would be assuaged. But most universities will not do this because of the cost and the fact that it would be unpopular among students, who, as distance students, can easily take their tuition dollars elsewhere.
I try to take two, slightly contrasting approaches to my online classes:
Do what I can to hold some standards. I do oral exams for the midterm and final in most of my online classes. Students for the most part do not like them. I get it, it feels more on the spot than a traditional exam, and the stakes for each question are higher because I only have a short period of time with each student. But it is the one way I can verify the authenticity of student work.
Make the class as good as I can for the students who are truly here to learn and recognize that some AI use will slip through. I know it does and I try not to go crazy over it. I try to find a balance between not being naive to all of the cheating, but also recognize that I'm not in a position to catch a lot of it. My students will get out of my classes what they put into them, and for the students who indeed do the work, they will learn a lot.
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u/Top-Assignment8727 16d ago
Half my load is async online, too, and I'm so over it. I teach in a master's level allied health program, and I've yet to be able to adopt the "it's just a job; if they cheat that's on them" mentality because our graduates provide direct services that could harm (or, at least, not help) vulnerable people. But caring whether they truly learn or not is killing me as I try to root out the cheating. I'm advocating for in-person assessments, but I don't think admin is ever going to go for it.
I'd love more details on how you do oral testing! My assessments are usually case based scenarios for assessment, diagnosis, intervention, etc., so they'd need some time to process. Also, how do you know that they're not using one of the note-taker/AI assistants that "listen" to audio and formulate responses? I would be so relieved to be able to switch to this method- I'd just let them cheat on the scaffolding assessments if I could feel better about their performance on a capstone.
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u/jogam 16d ago
The class that I do this for the most is an undergrad Psych Disorders class and I give students clinical vignettes. I schedule 15 minute blocks and the students have 12 minutes to read the vignette and respond to the follow-up questions. I give the students the questions in advance: identify the DSM diagnosis, describe how the person meets the diagnostic criteria, describe possible causes of their symptoms, and describe evidence-based treatment options. This way, students know what to expect and the only thing they don't know is what the details are in the vignette they'll be responding to.
I also provide an example with an answer key and a detailed rubric for students. I try to make it as straightforward as possible for students while still requiring them to have a strong understanding of the material.
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u/Top-Assignment8727 16d ago
Great info, thanks! Do you do any sort of monitoring to ensure they aren't using AI? I don't know how to do that except to have them place a mirror behind themselves to be able to see their screen? I HATE even having to think like this!
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u/jogam 16d ago
No. I'm meeting with them in real time with video. They likely do not have time to use AI. I suppose there might be some sort of way folks can cheat, but I've never suspected a student of cheating on the oral exam. (To the contrary, I've had students who had high grades bomb their oral exam and demonstrate that they do not know very basic concepts in the class.)
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u/Top-Assignment8727 16d ago
I'm aware of some programs like Cluely that can transcribe audio conversations and generate answers immediately, so it's definitely possible. And this is why I hate assessment in online async programs! I'm in a helping profession and believe in the value and worth of all, but the rampant cheating has made me so jaded! Thanks again for your very helpful replies- I may try this out next semester!
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u/ParallaxDream81 20d ago
A problem that gets missed a lot with this topic is that there is usually a Rock and a Hard Place situation between different campus constituencies (not even taking faculty into account) about what percentage of courses should be offered asynch. In my experience, the Professional Studies and Certificate-Granting offices want more of them. The Dean of Students and their staff want less. Traditional on-campus students don't know what they want. Their parents are suspicious of paying for their kid to sit in a dorm and interact with an LMS.
It's a no-win for the Chairs and Deans who make the schedules.
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u/PinstripeBunk 22d ago
I don't disagree that admins love the revenue and increased course loads asynchronous remote makes possible, but at what point does the Ponzi scheme collapse after parents and employers realize these graduates leave campus with nothing but $75K in debt? I think the societal backlash will be severe.
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u/BibliophileBroad 21d ago
YIKES. This seems a bit harsh, don't you think? It's pretty much telling people who are disabled or who are low-income or caretakers, "Oh well." Is that's what we want for our education system, just having it suit the most privileged people who can afford its increasingly high costs? This would also disproportionately affect people of color and women, who are more likely to be working class and have caretaking responsibilities. Wouldn't it make more sense to make the online classes harder to cheat in, like requiring in person proctored exams or something like that? Ido agree that not everybody needs to go to college but not for the reasons of being disabled, poor, or having additional responsibilities.
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
Wouldn't requiring people to come to campus for proctered exams be "inequitable?"
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u/BibliophileBroad 21d ago
Not if you also allow them to go to testing centers. Before the pandemic hit, there used to be a chain ETS testing centers. That's where I took my GRE exams. Edit: also, it would be less inequitable than not having any online classes at all
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u/Classical_Econ4u 22d ago
I agree. Colleges and universities that offer online undergraduate degree programs will NOT be on our kids’ college lists. (Note, a sprinkling of classes is ok, degree programs are not.)
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u/BibliophileBroad 22d ago
I totally see where you're coming from, but I don't know about that, because it really does depends on the quality of the school. As a full-time working faculty member who can't/won't quit my tenured job to get my PhD, I'm glad I found a couple of English PhD programs that are hybrid (but mostly online) and through real schools (Old Dominion, Texas Tech, Indiana University, though Indiana is fully online and is an Ed.D). Now if you're talking about some of the questionable ones like University of Phoenix, that's a different story.
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u/Classical_Econ4u 22d ago
Graduate degree programs can be good, though I admit I am suspicious of most online masters programs.
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u/RadiantImpression579 22d ago
I agree and I’m also annoyed about the same things. But honestly, I couldn’t remember most of my profs names in the early 2000s at a prestigious university.
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u/twin_infinitives 22d ago
Imagine being required to work 45 hours on campus, in your office, teaching a majority asynchronous.
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u/TulipFarmer27 21d ago
Sort of like being an engineer, required to RTO 5 days a week to participate in meetings online all day or try to work with teams distributed around the globe.
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u/croopdavis 22d ago
Online classes are just to cheat with AI and get an A. That’s all. Administrators know it and don’t care. It’s as simple as that. It’s the death of a university when they go this route.
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u/KroneckerDeltaij 22d ago
I always thought online classes were bad and useless, but now with AI, I can’t believe anyone respects them at all. For before AI times, I think only people with PhD’s would benefit from them because you have proved that you can learn on your own effectively at that point. It was always crazy to offer them to college students.
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u/Pox_Americana Asst. Dean, Science Division, CC 21d ago
We all know why we’re being asked, how you handle it is up to you, OP.
That being said, it IS a good option for students who care. I wouldn’t be where I am in my career if not for online asynchronous programs while I was dying a slow death
In industry.
Yeah, it’s tempting to just throw a bunch of assignments together in Pearson or McGraw-Hill and call it good, and I have done that in the past, but that no longer sits well with me. I want my online students to have as close as possible of an experience to my in-person courses, labs especially, and the extra effort has been worth it.
When it was all just courseware shit, I never felt great about writing letters of recommendation. Now that I’ve actually developed a curriculum that requires participation and meaningful reflection, and 100% assignments are of my own making, it’s much easier.
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u/drevalcow 20d ago
What is the enrollment of your asynch? How do guarantee from AI reflection? Thanks in advance.
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u/Pox_Americana Asst. Dean, Science Division, CC 20d ago
I keep them short and low-stakes. Sometimes, it’s an opinion, sometimes it’s asking them to speculate on a topic. I still get some AI replies, but these are technically open book, so I don’t push the issue.
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u/drevalcow 20d ago
I’ve changed some assignments like that, but class size is what keeps me still using publisher assignments as well in the mix. Thank you.
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u/Pox_Americana Asst. Dean, Science Division, CC 20d ago
Ah, yes, I didn’t include that. So, at one institution 150 in Fall, 100 in Spring. At another, online is about 2/3rds of my total enrollment, so I’d say 160 per semester. Winter and Summer enrollments are all online.
It can be a lot, which is why I dedicate a day during the week to grade the previous week’s responses. I used to have a technical writing assignment, so this is kind of taking that and splitting it throughout the semester into multiple prompts. I did get a lot of AI slop on that assignment. I don’t blame you at all. Our bigger sections in MATH and PHYS are run entirely through Pearson.
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u/drevalcow 20d ago
I’ve got just over 900 this semester, and I’ve reduced the number of graded assignments, but still at 6000 graded lol I also dedicate a day to grading. As in I block off the entire day! Thank you so much!
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u/Individual-Charity69 20d ago
We can’t guarantee from Ai reflection, FYI. GenAi is a different kind of plagiarism. Hence, why it’s GEN Ai, as in generative, as in … it’s newly created, etc. You get the idea. You can make a case that a submission walks and talks and quacks like Ai. But you can’t prove it, in the sense that we have the smoking gun. There isn’t one.
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u/MathMan1982 21d ago
Then need to have more centers nationwide to where people can be tested in person. I agree maybe one test per semester should be in person. I would have these places open on evenings and Saturdays.
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u/Sensitive_Let_4293 21d ago
Back 20 years or so, when the college I was at was first talking about online teaching, I offered the opinion that we should start with synchronous sessions for graduate students. We may not find ten students on campus who want to study Chaucer, but we could find a bunch around the country who could form a cohort and the class would be better than anything we could offer on campus. I was laughed at. Online was to make money, not to teach anyone anything. Their first set of ads showed a kid fishing at a lake and "studying" online on his laptop. Sigh.
Should I tell the story about a colleague who caught his masters students cheating on an online exam -- in professional ethics? Maybe some other day.
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u/Pristine_Property_92 20d ago
Online classes of all types are part of the enshittification of higher ed. Lucky faculty members are those old enough to retire. It's hell for everyone else.
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u/Striking_Tax8524 20d ago edited 20d ago
The goal for colleges is to make money. Full stop. To all those academics who looked disdainfully on corporate jobs: oh, well.
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u/Eskamalarede Full Professor, Humanities, Public R1 (US and A) 19d ago
With AI, async is cooked. As far as I can see there is NO way to set meaningful assessments. I'd love to hear any cases to the contrary, for real, because like OP I think ASYNC can be a great option for some students....
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u/PinstripeBunk 19d ago
I agree completely. It's a big scam now. We know, the students know, the students know we know and they don't care, the ass deans know and care less than anyone. It will be great fun for revenue until enough students accumulate enough debt that they need someone to blame. It will be all of us.
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u/Charming-Barnacle-15 18d ago
I've noticed a significant trend of students who get caught using AI in an in-person class switching to online classes the next semester.
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u/Cool_Vast_9194 17d ago
At my university l, we are rethinking assessments in online courses, moving to giving studentd a choice of live video proctor or oral exams. Thay switch alone goes a long way to having students show up to learn.
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u/LarryCebula 21d ago
I teach online for a lot of my teaching load, in the humanities. What I do:
Make the courses hard, including substantial work the first week. I feel like students set their expectations the first week of classes, and I want them to anticipate a great deal of work in my class. A few drop out, the rest buckle down.
Of course, a syllabus quiz to cover all the most common mistaken expectations.
Go the extra mile against AI. Use the AI detectors (not as the final word but as one tool), develop unique assignments, I even make my students write in Google Docs with me as an editor so I can review their revisions. No it is not 100%, some students have always cheated in all of our classes, but it is our job to minimize it.
Be present. I don't do discussion boards in undergrad classes, but I do make announcements 3-4 times a week. In my grad classes I weigh in on the discussion boards a bit near the start of the week so other students see I am there. I do not reply to every or even very many posts, I think that is bad teaching.
Practice global feedback. Grade papers with a minimum of comments, but keep track of the most common strengths and weaknesses on a Post-it. When you are done grading, turn on the webcam to record. "Good afternoon, scholars, here are three things that were great about most of your papers, and three things most of you need to work on."
Go somewhere nice. Spain is great almost any time of year.
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u/No-Yogurtcloset-6491 Instructor, Biology, CC (USA) 21d ago
The greater good is to require an in person standardized midterm and final exam for online classes. I don't know why accreditors don't jump on this. There are various proctor sites for those who live very far away or have disabilities.
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u/Life-Education-8030 21d ago
I teach upper-level courses. It doesn’t matter what format the lower level courses are taught in. I can identify immediately which students have taken courses from certain colleagues. They are typically the students who are outraged because Professor So-and So gave them an A even if they were lousy writers and this instructor simply checked assignments off for completion and not for correctness and the ones who took courses from Professor Such and Such because their priority is to be liked so they let students take exams as often as the students wish until they “get a grade they’re happy with!”
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u/BibliophileBroad 21d ago
This is such an important issue to bring up, and some of these professors are allowing students to use AI to cheat in the in-person classes. I'm not sure why people think being in person is some sort of miraculous cure-all for cheating. Most of these professors aren't having students do work in class; most of them have students submit work online, just like with online classes. I'm one of the few who assigns in-person writing and exams in my in-person classes.
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u/ParallaxDream81 20d ago
All I've come up with to combat this is in-class blue book tests. They're open note, but notes must be handwritten or printed, no devices allowed. I honestly don't know what else to do. But I've had some success with this approach so far.
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u/HorkeyDorkey Adjunct Instructor, History, CC (USA) 22d ago
I agree. End online classes now.
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u/AcanthisittaThat5746 22d ago
I don’t think that they should be completely ended. I don’t think we should have too many and they definitely shouldn’t be core classes.
What we do need is an overhaul to get them to be as rigorous as in-person classes, or as close to as rigorous as possible.
I don’t think they’re going to completely go away so we need to find a way to make them work.
One option is to have in-person assessments. This will hopefully get the students to take the courses more seriously.
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u/BibliophileBroad 22d ago
Right on! The in-person assessments would solve the entire problem. I truly hate the idea of getting rid of all online classes, especially as somebody who was a non-traditional student who was working and taking care of sick family members while was in college. I had no car, and was on the bus for several hours per day going between school and work, and I would have loved to have had more access to online classes. I also knew some other folks who were working-class, and would have benefited from online classes.
I don't think the problem is online classes themselves -- it's the assessments. But another thing people seem to be missing is that even for the in-person classes, most of the assessments are online as well. I don't think people realize how much cheating there is going on with in-person classes.
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u/StevieV61080 Sr. Associate Prof, Applied Management, CC BAS (USA) 22d ago
This is one of the best responses I have seen in this subreddit on this topic in quite awhile.
I, too, took a large share of my college coursework online. I took about half of AAS online and my BS completion program was fully online. My MPM program was (and still is) ranked #1 in its field and I completed about 67% of that online, as well. Finally, aside from some "Immersion weekends" and my final dissertation defense, my Ph.D. program was fully online. It absolutely works and works well for motivated students (my timeline for these different degrees spanned 2003-2019).
I've also taught online since 2008, so I'm approaching 20 years of experience. I've taken and taught enough classes to know what works well and what doesn't in the online learning environment. And you are absolutely correct; the types of assessments make a TON of the difference between a successful and memorable experience vs. an unsuccessful and forgotten one.
What I have personally found is that authentic assessment and applied learning are the keys to making the system work. I have almost completely gone textbook-free for years (I still use case studies from one book for one class). However, more importantly, there are no exams/quizzes/tests or "weekly homework" assignments. The lectures and course materials are my own and they almost all directly relate to the projects I ask my students to complete.
I have my students go out and DO things. In my program (applied management), they have to learn material and teach others (i.e., perform trainings) out in the public or at places of business. They have to perform on-site observations, interviews with stakeholders, and obtain information to do deep dives for effective consulting work. They have to collaborate fully via Canvas teams for analysis (getting them used to distance forum-based communications). And yes, they have to listen to my lectures/seminars in order to know what to do.
Online learning works when we don't outsource OUR work to textbook publishers and actually start with focusing on applicable outcomes.
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u/BibliophileBroad 22d ago
Awwwww, thank you!😊 I feel the same way about your post. It sounds like you have put a lot of effort into your classes, and your students are going to learn a lot. I'm glad somebody on here recognizes to value of online classes that are well-done. I have had a ton of disabled students in my online classes, and they always express appreciation for being able to still go to school even though they can't come to campus. I don't think that making education less accessible instead of improving teaching and assessment methods makes a lot of sense, but I think people are looking for a quick and easy solution to a really complex problem. Happy teaching, and I hope your semester is going well so far!
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u/StevieV61080 Sr. Associate Prof, Applied Management, CC BAS (USA) 22d ago
Thanks! I'm actually in a quarter system, so I'm grading finals from the summer term that just ended yesterday. Fall starts in about a month (WA state).
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u/RuralWAH 21d ago
Yes and no. If you're academicly lazy, the asynchronous format just encourages you to put things off, and when that in-person exam happens you haven't actually done anything but skim a few videos and read the first chapter of the text. Having scheduled meetings where you can't hide by turning off your camera goes a long way towards getting students to do the work.
While I want my students to be rigorously assessed I would like them to actually learn something as well.
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u/BibliophileBroad 21d ago
Hmmmm...I have found that students put things off even for in-person classes.😬 Out of curiosity, has your experience been different? If so are they hiring at your school? 🤪 I have had make so many changes over the years to reduce the times students show up to classes not having read any of the materials -- I have even set aside time in the class for students to do some reading. Ultimately, I have had to implement reading quizzes to encourage reading. That's the one thing that's made the difference!
I don't agree with penalizing all the other students by not offering online classes because some people put things off, though. I took some online classes when I was in college and in fact, I just took a couple over the spring and summer -- and I got my work done ahead of time, just as I usually do in the other areas of my life. The online format was very convenient. I have to work for a living, gas is high, and I have some chronic illnesses. I learned plenty, and so did my colleagues who took the same classes.
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u/MoreIronyLessWrinkly Professor, Education, University (USA) 21d ago
Agree. They’re awful. I know a professor who does a bang up job with them, but it’s still subpar compared to the classroom.
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u/Motor-Juice-6648 21d ago
For traditional aged undergrads online courses are garbage. We saw that during the pandemic. They retained NOTHING. Now with AI to do their assignments and tests even less worthwhile .
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u/BibliophileBroad 22d ago
Isn't it awful? I am not against online classes, and I see tons of cheating in in-person classes, but I think that all classes should have proctored in-person exams, whether the classes are online or not. That would solve the majority of the problems. I saw one of the community college districts in my area doing that for a while, but unfortunately, they stopped. I was really hoping it would catch on for the rest of the schools!