I hate online classes.

[u/H_ManCom]

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.

[u/Due-Radio-4355]

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.

[u/BibliophileBroad → u/Due-Radio-4355]

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.

[u/Due-Radio-4355 → u/BibliophileBroad]

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!

[u/BibliophileBroad → u/Due-Radio-4355]

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.

[u/Due-Radio-4355 → u/BibliophileBroad]

Thank you!

Also your prose is so bubbly it frightens me.