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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 The still-unpublished paper, entitled Online Course-taking and Student Outcomes in California Community Colleges, was presented on April 18, 2015, at the American Educational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 bradley13 on Thursday May 07 2015, @11:01AM
"Community Colleges ... [are] under fire for low graduation rates"
Great, so we want them to drop their standards and pass people who don't learn the material? Because that's what you'll get, if you pressure them to raise their graduation rates. Scratch the surface here, and you find that the community colleges are being pressured to educate increasing numbers of people who lack basic foundational knowledge, and in many cases never learned how to learn, because they are "graduates" of a failed educational system. How about we applaud the low graduation rates as a sign that they haven't compromised on quality?
Anyhow, online courses are a fad that keeps coming back and just won't die. I had the, um, privilege of taking an "online course" back in the late 1970s (via video conferencing): very modern, and absolutely useless. The technology has changed, the problems haven. The thing is: people who are able to learn on their own can do so from a book, from a website, or from an online course - where the information flow is all one-way, and the student brings their own motivation.
Most people, however, need interaction. They need to be able to ask questions (or the teacher needs to recognize that befuddled look) and get individual help with the concepts.. It's also a lot more motivating to sit in a classroom with other students and a (good) instructor. Sitting in front of your computer, it's all too easy to switch over to Facebook, or Twitter, or SoylentNews...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2015, @04:50PM
Relax. The point is that many students of community colleges don't want nor need to get a degree from them. Most go for transfer credits. Some simply to learn. Others for enrichment. None of those groups, even with 4.0 in every class will be considered 'graduated' if they never bother to get a degree.