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AlterNet reports
Online instruction at community colleges isn't working--yet policymakers are continuing to fund programs to expand online courses at these schools, which primarily serve low-income minority students, and community college administrators are planning to offer more and more of them.
The latest salvo comes from researchers at the University of California-Davis, who found that community college students throughout California were 11 percent less likely to finish and pass a course if they opted to take the online version instead of the traditional face-to-face version of the same class. The still-unpublished paper, entitled Online Course-taking and Student Outcomes in California Community Colleges, was presented on April 18, 2015, at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in Chicago.
[...]Community colleges [educate 45 percent of the nation's undergraduates] and [that sector] is under fire for low graduation rates.
[...]Despite the flexibility, it appears that many students find it hard to manage their time to complete the lectures and coursework throughout an entire semester.
[...]These are very different results from what researchers are finding for students at four-year colleges.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday May 06 2015, @07:58PM
There are various learning styles, from the common readers, writers, lecture fans, to hands-on learners. I imagine these online courses are similarly only for certain learning styles that may not match up with the classic matrix.
My own experience was that the classes are as unforgiving as in-person classes when it comes to due dates, which defeated the flexibility of taking it for the same price.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:32PM
One of my complaints about them is the opposite of yours - Plenty of situations where I finished that week's material early, but they refuse to release the next week's material until the beginning of that week. So I spend all that free time scratching my ass waiting for something to do, and then something happens in real-life (such as a big crunch at work necessitating lots of overtime) and I'm cursing not only next week's assignment load but the fact that instructors denied me the opportunity to get an early start.
I do believe in weekly deadlines, but I also believe that all the course material should be released at once for those who want to knock it out early rather than wait until the last minute to cram it all.