Is Online School Better?
Online school isn’t a new tool that was spontaneously created. “Many universities encourage faculty to develop online courses in order to address issues ranging from limited classroom and dormitory space to limited funds.” It’s been around for a while but the pandemic putting the world on hold, all of the school districts had no other choice but to go fully online. During that time teachers saw students grades improve drastically from being in person to them working from their home. Students were able to work from the comfort of their home and move at their own pace on assignments. Teachers in some classes saw grades rise for students that were uncommon. Most students’ grades drastically rose because of cheating and not having the teacher breathing down your neck on a test when you start to look around the classroom. “Before Covid-19 ProctorU, caught people cheating on fewer than 1 percent of the 340,000 exams it administered from January through March. During the height of remote testing, the company says, the number of exams it supervised jumped to 1.3 million from April through June, and the cheating rate rose above 8 percent.” Ninety-three percent of instructors think that students are more likely to cheat online than in person, hinting at why grades might increase significantly.
Some colleges give tests to their students and don’t have a proctor to watch over them. Most kids would take that as a treat and use their notes, and the internet. In person school is a better option than online classes for this reason. Students in online classes tend to be more lazier on assignments which is why they resort to cheating. If students didn’t have the option to go online they would have to be prepared everyday for school on the topic the class is discussing. If a students doesn’t get something now and they are online they will most likely forget it and not even try and learn it, but if the student is in class they will have no other choice but to learn it because you never know when you will be called and when you take the test the likelihood of you being able to use your notes or the internet is slim. Some students might say that online school helps them in school and allows them to move at their own pace but studies show that, “for a typical student, taking a course online rather than in person would decrease his or her likelihood of course persistence by 7% point.”
When a teacher asked in one class the number of students who used Chegg which is a cheating site 60 out of 250 students have done it, and 100 students in other classes were identified as having used Chegg in a similar way. There is no coincidence that cheating sites have increased when online classes have also increased. Even if students don’t need to cheat it is at their disposal any time of the day for almost every topic. “Online school helps me pace myself and allows me to go at my tempo” some students say. Although that might be true to an extent the real world doesn’t move at your pace. When you get a job and your boss wants you to learn something in a day you can’t tell him that you need an extra week because you like to work slowly on things. In person classes allow you to be self paced but to an extent which is preparing us for the real world. It also allows the students to build connections and relationships with people. That is very important in the real world because how some people obtain jobs is based on who they know. Having in person classes allows students to talk to each other and really see others rather than looking at a person’s name and sometimes never seeing their face. Online classes are more convenient because who wouldn’t want to wake up five minutes before class and then log into class and go about their day. Research shows that actually 70% of students prefer mostly or completely face-to face learning environments.
People will say that “online school is cheaper than traditional learning.” Studies show that if colleges and universities deliver online courses correctly it could be more expensive than if they just gave out traditional classes. Most colleges and universities charge the same tuition for online and on campus classes, and some even charge more. About 5% of schools charge online students a lower cost according to a CHLOE report. Some online classes might also be more expensive due to the fact that students have to buy a suitable laptop for class and pay for technology fees that some students on campus wouldn’t have to pay. Online classes aren’t necessarily cheaper depending on the university you chose will help you determine that question.
Allowing students to go back into the classrooms instead of staying online will help the students out. They will be forced to actually learn the assignment instead of googling the question. In person class gives students a stable schedule that they are held accountable to, they can’t just skip class and everything will be okay. If they skip class then they will most likely get detention unlike online school if you skip a class the teachers can’t really do anything to you. Returning back to classrooms will also allow students to interact with each other again and allow them to actually prepare for the real world and it’s challenges that it will hit you with daily.
References
Koenig, R. (2019, December 11). Most Students and Faculty Prefer Face-To-Face Instruction, EDUCAUSE Surveys Find – EdSurge News. EdSurge. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-12-11-most-students-and-faculty-prefer-face-to-face-instruction-educause-surveys-find.
Krakoff, S. (n.d.). The cost of online education vs. traditional education. https://online.champlain.edu/blog/cost-of-online-education-vs-traditional-education.
Newton, D. (2021, April 8). Another problem with shifting education online: cheating. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/another-problem-with-shifting-education-online-cheating/.
Pitt, D. (2020, April 8). Face-to-face learning is better than online. The Crimson White. https://cw.ua.edu/64870/opinion/face-to-face-learning-is-better-than-online/.
Students Get Lower Grades in Online Courses. Harvard Business Review. (2015, March 30). https://hbr.org/2013/12/students-get-lower-grades-in-online-courses.
Terry, C. (2020, August 7). Noodle. https://www.noodle.com/articles/are-online-classes-cheaper.
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Counterintuitivity 
Good to see your Rebuttal Argument here, JustHere. Let’s get started.
Title: Don’t Use a Question if you have an answer. And don’t write a persuasive argument unless you have an answer. Especially for a Rebuttal Argument, where you’re going to present SOMEONE ELSE’S incorrect opinion and CORRECT IT with your own Rebuttal, you want readers to be ABSOLUTELY SURE what your point of view is. Bold claims, not questions.
P1. You don’t provide a citation for your first quotation, which creates two problems.
1. Readers don’t know where it came from.
2. You fail to provide a date for the quote to demonstrate your point, that ONLINE CLASSES AREN’T NEW.
—Not all schools went fully online (ours, for example).
—Your claim that grades improved during the pandemic conflicts with my own experience and the experience of every college I’m familiar with. You’ll need evidence to convince me and other professors.
—Your next section, from “Students were” to “the classroom” is very peculiar. It starts out fine with a claim that students were comfortable working at home, then repeats for the third time the false claim that grades improved, but then complicates that claim RADICALLY with the explanation that the grade increases were caused by cheating. And if that weren’t odd enough, the additional and much more benign claim that the improvement came from less instructor intrusion. This is all very confusing. Was your first claim of improved grades ALSO about cheating? At first we thought you were CHAMPIONING remote learning as MORE EFFECTIVE. Now it seems you’re CRITICIZING it as an ILLICIT grade inflation. As I said before, in a Rebuttal Argument, where you’ll be communicating BOTH someone else’s opinion AND your own, you can’t afford to be confusing us about WHAT IS YOUR POSITION.
—THEN, in the final section, from “Before Covid-19″ to “grades might increase significantly,” you resolve the confusion.
—SO. THIS IS CRUCIAL. This section is upside down:
If your point is that the proliferation of remote teaching has created an orgy of cheating, you need to say so EARLY and CLEARLY. After you clearly establish the PROBLEM, you can explain that it’s not new, if you still think it’s important.
P2. This 200-word paragraph is worth about 50 words. And you don’t provide a citation for your quote, which makes it impossible for your beloved professor to check its accuracy. I don’t know what “7% point” could possibly mean, and I doubt the original quote says so. Maybe it said “7 percentage points.” If I need to convince you the paragraph is wordy, I will be happy to demonstrate.
—This is a rebuttal argument, so if you find the current situation inefficient, or the position taken by experts to be unsatisfactory, you should make better use of your 200 words by recommending an alternative. Tests that require a proctor are obviously stupid for an online course. Instead, tests that measure a student’s ability to USE notes and available information to MAKE GOOD JUDGMENTS should be used. (Just an example.)
P3. THIS IS A MAIN IDEA THAT NEEDS ITS OWN PARAGRAPH:
THIS IS A MAIN IDEA THAT NEEDS ITS OWN PARAGRAPH:
—Actually, that second big section drops so many conflicting ideas I’m not sure what its MAIN IDEA actually is:
1. I can work at my own pace.
2. But that isn’t realistic
3. In person makes me adopt the class’s pace, sort of
4. In person helps me meet people
5. I might get a job by knowing how to meet people
6. In person helps me meet people
7. Online helps me sleep later
8. Most students like in person
—Again, you’re missing at least 3 citations for material you use but don’t credit.
P4. I believe the MAIN IDEA of P4 is that ONLINE ISN’T NECESSARILY CHEAPER than in person learning. I would acknowledge that most schools haven’t discounted online classes much, but that’s surely a temporary situation. If the move toward remote learning continues, and colleges stop building campuses, they won’t have to charge for facilities and everybody will save on room and board.
P5. A good conclusion does much more than simply restate earlier claims, JustHere. You’ve already repeated in this essay much of what you’ve said in your other short arguments.
—What has the pandemic taught us about how to make education BETTER THAN IT WAS PRE-PANDEMIC? If all you have to recommend is a return to the way things were, you’re missing an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the conversation.
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