Online college classes can be impersonal, isolating and disengaging. But with high demand among their students for online learning, California’s community colleges and universities are trying to find better online teaching practices.
As CalMatters’ Adam Echelman explains, about 40% of all community college classes are online. Online courses enable students, especially those who are part- or full-time workers, to complete their degree while juggling jobs, caretaking responsibilities or other obligations.
But taking these courses also requires “self-directed learning skills,” including a “very high level of self-time management,” said Di Xu, a professor at UC Irvine’s School of Education.
- Xu: “In an in-person environment interaction happens naturally. But in an online environment, especially asynchronous, that opportunity needs to be embedded. Otherwise, the student will feel very lonely.”
Students prefer online courses, and they’re less costly for colleges to offer than in-person ones.
Rebecca Ruan-O’Shaughnessy, the director of program and strategy at College Futures Foundation and a former executive at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, said schools need to adapt. Some new approaches she cited as promising include shortening the length of classes or trying to integrate adults’ work experience since so many online students have jobs.
To address some of the shortcomings of online foreign language courses, Julia Simon, a professor of French at UC Davis and the chairperson of a task force on languages for the university, is considering creating a set of conversation classes.
Simon said students who take online courses miss out on opportunities to practice speaking. Once students enter UC Davis, they’re unprepared, she said. But since “we can’t make them repeat courses they’ve already had,” Simon said, a conversation class could be offered as remedial education to help students catch up.
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