Why is Online Education a Big No-No?
As a consequence of the pandemic, each one of us would have surely come across the term “new normal.” As far as education is concerned, the new normal is the increased use of online learning tools. The pandemic has given rise to new ways of literally everything, including education. Across the entire globe, educational academies are searching for the best online learning sites to continue with the process of teaching and learning. As a result, in recent months, the necessity for online learning has risen remarkably and is sure to continue shortly.
Understanding the pros and cons of online learning is sure to help schools and colleges in creating strategies for more efficiently delivering the lessons, ensuring an uninterrupted learning journey for both educators and learners. Though there are numerous advantages of online learning, it is time to overlay the other side of the coin. Below mentioned are some major disadvantages of online learning.
In offline classrooms, teachers can give students quick and face-to-face feedback. Students who are facing difficulties in the subject can solve their queries quickly and directly either during the lecture or during the extra classes offered for weak students. Individualised feedback has a positive impact on students, as it makes the learning experience easier, richer, and more worthy of attention, all the while raising the inspiration levels of the students.
For a lot of students, one of the major challenges of online learning is the conflict with concentrating on the screen for a prolonged period. Moreover, with online learning, there are significant chances for students to be undoubtedly distracted by social media platforms or other websites. Therefore, the teachers need to make their way of teaching crisp, reciprocal, and engaging to help students stay concentrated on what is being taught.
Another crucial challenge of online classes is connectivity. While network penetration has grown in giant strides over the past decade, in insignificant cities and towns, a compatible connection with decent speed is an issue. Without a regular network connection for educators and learners, there can be an absence of continuity in a child’s education. This is ruinous for educational operations.
The online methods that are presently practised in education tend to make participating students undergo brown study, withdrawnness and a lack of communication. As a consequence, many of the students and teachers who unavoidably spend much of their time online can start experiencing signs of social isolation, due to the lack of human interaction in their lives. Social isolation bonded with a lack of interaction often leads to various mental health issues such as anxiety, stress, and negative thoughts.
Online learning requires teachers to have a fundamental comprehension of using digitised learning. However, this is not always the case. Generally, teachers have a very rudimentary understanding of technology. In some cases, teachers don’t even have the requisite resources and gadgets to conduct classes. To resolve this, institutions must invest in training teachers with the latest technology updates so that they can carry out their teaching tasks seamlessly.
Many parents are worried about the health threats of having their child spend too many hours staring at the screen continuously. This prolonged screen time is one of the major concerns and demerits of online learning. Many times students also develop the wrong posture and other physical problems are likely to arise due to staying arched in front of the screen.
The absence of self-motivation among students persists to be one of the major reasons why students fail to focus. In offline classrooms, numerous factors constantly push students towards their learning goals. Face-to-face communication with professors, peer-to-peer activities, and precise schedules all work simultaneously to keep the students from falling off track during their studies.
Online methods are proven to be highly effective at enhancing the academic knowledge of students. However, the verbal skills of the students is an area that is often neglected during online teaching. Because of the absence of face-to-face connections between peers, educators and learners in an online setting, the learners might find that they are unable to work effectively in a team setting. Neglecting the verbal skills of the learners will certainly lead to many graduates who are outstanding in theoretical knowledge, but who fail in passing their knowledge to others.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest disadvantages of online education continues to be cheating through various modes. When compared to on-campus examinations, through online mode students, can cheat easily as they give exams in their surroundings and while using their own devices. Without a video connection, pupils cannot be directly seen during exams, making cheat detection during online exams more complex as compared to earlier testing procedures. Furthermore, without a robust identity verification system in place, students taking online exams could allow a third person to take the test instead of them, resulting in a completely bogus test result.
As it’s obvious that, all educational areas are not devised identically and in the same way, online learning can’t be successfully implemented in all fields of education. For instance, online education tends to be more suitable for students coming from humanities backgrounds, rather than scientific fields such as doctoral and engineering courses which require an unquestionable degree of hands-on practical experience. No amount of online lectures can replace an autopsy for biology students or real-life industrial training for a naive engineer. While this might change in the upcoming years, we are presently not yet at a point where we can fully teach all professional courses merely through online mode.
