Online Learning Vs. Traditional Learning

Education can be very important to a person’s life. It can show or teach them new things that they never knew and help guide them in life. Traditional learning or most people would say in person learning was in full effect until the Coronavirus came about, killing 2.57 million people worldwide. This virus halted everything and everyone in their tracts. It eventually caused schools to move fully online in hopes of slowing the spread and transmission of the virus. Some students were most likely relieved to be away from the school building and atmosphere, but others were scared, anxious, confused, and worried about how this online school system was going to work and how they were going to learn. This virus was something that the world had never faced before and it took all of us by surprise and turned our entire lives upside. Classes in the 21-22 school year must be held in person or face to face even if that means losing some online learning advantages.  

There are many ways classes can be taught in school nowadays with technology being so advanced. The thing most people get confused with is the actual difference between online and in-person classes. Most schools now offer three types of classes, which include, remote, online, hybrid. Remote classes are like the normal class at which the students and teacher meet a specific time and day but are over zoom. Online classes do not meet and have interactions with the teacher or students in the class. Hybrid classes are a mix of both remote and online classes. Students will have live instructions some days but also be expected to complete assignments on their own at home. Even though students are meeting with a teacher online doesn’t mean that the class is not face to face, which is the confusion most people have with zoom. When stating that we need to get rid of online classes I am harping on strictly online classes where teachers don’t meet their students face to face. 

Most of the students in the 21st century have been programmed to wake up at a certain time Monday-Friday and walk into a school building where they are taught for seven hours a day. The students  were accustomed to doing something so often it eventually became second nature to them and was a regular occurrence. Forcing students to stop doing what they have been so used to can throw off everything in a human. “Young children have difficulty with change, and transitions are changing.” Students kindergarten through college students have been used to a system “comfort comes in knowing what to expect.” Students expected what the next day would be like and the day after that. They didn’t know what to expect when online classes started to a new norm for them. We are putting our kids in a bad situation especially the younger ones who “lack brain capacity to regulate themselves or handle their emotions.” Moving kids from traditional learning to online school is hurting them and making them uncertain about the future for school. 

Online learning has a negative impact on children and adolescents due to Covid-19. Covid-19 is keeping kids awake at night longer than usual. The kids are being forced to be confined in the house due to strict rules mean less exercise which will ultimately mean kids putting more weight on which can interfere with their sleep school. Students deprived of sleep will result in longer naps during the day disrupting their sleep schedule at night. All that results in students being on their phones later in the night being exposed to “blue light,” which disrupts melatonin, the body’s cue to sleep. This is a problem with online school because more kids will have less energy during school times, resulting in them paying less attention during class hours. Lack of exercise will also affect the student making them depressed which will most likely lead them to not pay attention in class or even stop caring about school. Students who took online classes have also seen an increase in mental health such as depression, anxiety, and stress. An article ran a test on college students in New Jersey and it was shown that there was a high level of depression associated with the difficulties of being able to focus in school. Covid-19 has taken a toll mentally on college students who are trying to learn for their majors and get their life in order but they have to learn online which is an unfamiliar, unorthodox way of learning. Another study which was conducted at a large public university in the United states found that “out of 195 students, 138 (71%) indicated increased stress and anxiety due to the Covid-19 outbreak.” Students all around the country are being affected with the unknown of learning causing them to stress and panic.  

Students who take online classes do miss out on the “normal” learning experiences that prepare them for any of their careers. There are a lot of skills traditional classes teach individuals that online classes can not. Basic communication skills, even if that includes speaking with classmates and collaborating with them. Although the students can collaborate in online classes, it contrasts when the students are within the same vicinity as the people they are working with. They can develop chemistry that will help turn the work that much better, the teacher will be able to see that these students have worked together. The second learning experience an online student misses is presentation skills, online students are not under the pressure of having to face 30 or more faces and presenting a topic, “they can easily turn off their cameras and give a presentation depending on the class and the instructor.” For example, if a student were to enter the business world and have to give a presentation if they took online classes their whole college career, they would likely not feel as prepared as a traditional student who has given multiple face-to-face presentations. The traditional school helped students have a stable and consistent game plan from Monday to Friday.

We need to prohibit online classes to give students the full ability to learn and understand the material in front of them without resorting to the internet to cheat. It is very apparent that online classes offer class flexibility, students can work, do household necessities, babysit, while still attending  online classes. When placed in a traditional class setting, the students can not do much more than just pay attention to the class. It is very important that decision makers know this when trying to pick between the two courses. Self-discipline while taking college classes online is very important. There is no one there telling the students to take notes while still paying attention to classes and I believe it is all about independence and control over their education and future. 

Online school takes a toll on low-income families the hardest. Most low income families don’t have the adequate technology to learn properly. Whether it is not being able to connect to zoom’s because of an unstable connection to not having the proper learning devices to learn like some of their classmates. “It expects a greater learning loss for minority and low-income children who have less access to technology, and for families more affected by the economic downturn.” Teachers have also taken a toll with online school. Teachers can’t seem to properly take attendance in the Los Angeles School district. Parents have also found a hard time with their children being at home learning virtually. When students went to school the parents were allowed to go to work and do their everyday needs knowing that their children were at school being looked for. Now that they are home it’s the parents job to look after their children and still work and do their everyday needs. It causes a lot of stress on the parents and now they have to move around their schedule to look after their children during the hours of school. If school was in person they wouldn’t have to go through the troubles to do that. 

In an in person class teachers are able to connect with the students one on one when they are confused on a subject, Dallas middle-school teacher Delna Bryan, who teaches Spanish includes both fluent and nonfluent youngsters. “In the classroom, I can look around and see body language and know when some of my students not fluent in Spanish need me to switch to English. I can’t do that online. We need the interaction with the kids, face-to face.” In this case the students who don’t really know spanish aren’t learning because they’re unable to get the proper one on one time with the teacher that some students would get in a classroom. Students would be able to see how the teacher’s lips move to try and mimic it as best as possible to help become better in the subject. This causes more stress on students because now they aren’t fully learning which probably makes them feel like behind. 

Although some students might like online learning most students don’t like change. They have been going into school since they were young and it became a part of their daily routine and it’s hard to just break that cycle. In person school was more than just going to school and learning. It was a chance to conversate with people on a daily basis whether they were your friends or not. It helped people become more social and make connections with people that they could use in the future potentially, but online learning restricts that ability for students to talk to each other like how they used to. Some students only talked to other people outside of their family during school so by having everyone virtual the likeliness of the student to talk to other students has decreased significantly. Online learning will make students less social and we will see a higher rate of public speaking anxiety in the future as well. Traditional school gave us the ability to speak in front of people. Even if they were our classmates it was still a chance to talk in front of a group of people, online school still has presentations but there is a big difference from standing up in person and giving a presentation as compared to having your box light up when individuals speak.

Having an in person class will also allow the students to fully understand what the teacher wants and needs in an assignment, “also, course expectations are often not clear, and because of the physical separation between the instructor  and student, problems may  be difficult to resolve.” Students won’t always be able to ask the teacher what they really want due to the fact that they’re online. Teachers might not want to fully explain everything in text because it will be too long and they know that the students won’t fully read it as opposed to them being in person and the teacher would be able to just talk and let everyone know what they’re expecting. Students are more likely to “slack off” and cheat during online school. No one is there to keep them accountable and not cheat. If they don’t know a question on a test instead of just guessing they can google the entire test and pass without knowing one thing on that test. 

It’s true students can cheat anywhere online and in person but students are more likely to cheat online due to the fact that the teacher’s presence is non existent. Online learning does give the students the ability to learn in the comfort or their bed but they aren’t fully learning the material presented to them. Traditional learning encourages students to stay on task and to ask questions when they don’t understand a subject. It allows students to engage with themselves which will help them with everyday life things in the future as opposed to online learning. 

Most students’ grades drastically rose because of cheating and not having the teacher breathing down your neck on a test when students 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. Online school has 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 when the pandemic first started. 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. 

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 they’ll never know when they will be called and when they take the test the likelihood of teachers allowing students 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 percentage points.”  

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. 

Although that might be true to an extent the real world doesn’t move at your pace. When people get a job and your boss wants them to learn something in a day they can’t tell him that they need an extra week because they like to work slowly on things. In person classes allow each person to prepare for the real world. By allowing the students to go online it will help 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. 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 chosen will help determine that question. . 

Education pre-pandemic was good for what we had to do. The pandemic was beneficial and for students and teachers. Schools and college teachers were able to use zoom to interact with students across the world in the comfort of their living room. The pandemic allowed us to use our knowledge for technology in the best way possible. The year off of in person classes allowed everyone to slow down and realize what they took for granted in having in person classes everyday. Students should return to school next fall but schools should still keep the zoom option in place because it is useful in reaching students who are sick, or can’t make it to class on a particular day. 

References 

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