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I’ve had the pleasure of discussing online learning with lots of different people – most of whom have had little to no actual experience as either an online teacher or an online student.  During these conversations, the same misconceptions and myths arise.  Here they are - followed by real examples that prove them untrue.

• Students can not form real meaningful relationships with classmates
  • K-12 virtual schools have regional in-person events where students meet others face-to-face, such as trips museums, concerts, sporting events, and picnics.
  • Students are already making friends online – even when they aren’t enrolled in online courses – through the use of “social networking” sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Freindster.
  • Most learning management systems employ the use of threaded discussions which permit students to respond to questions and to each other’s responses.
• It puts teachers’ jobs at risk, since online courses do not require teaching
  • It’s certainly possible to learn a subject or skill from an online resource without the intervention or guidance of a teacher.  But by that same logic, books, TV, radio, and websites at large would be considered “threats” to teacher employment.
  • The reality is that any school or educational group that chooses to run ‘courses’ without teachers is taking a huge instructional risk – the level of interest and learning for students in those courses will be significantly low.
  • Every successful online learning provider to date has used – and continue to use – highly qualified teachers.
• Students can not possibly learn as well online as they do in a classroom
  • The asynchronous nature of threaded-discussions in online courses actually fosters learning at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, and permits students to fully participate who otherwise may not have engaged in physical classroom discussions.
  • Studies consistently demonstrate that students in online courses acheive the same or better learning gains on assessments.
• Teaching and learning online takes less time than “brick and mortar” classrooms
  • Not true.  Because every student in an online course has full opportunity to participate, online asynchronous discussions tend to be longer than those held in physical classrooms.  This requires more time from both teachers and students.
• The anonymous nature of online learning permits rampant cheating
  • The amount of cheating is no different than in a traditional Language Arts class where the teacher assess student learning through essay and research paper writing.  Just as a writing teacher gets to know their student’s writing styles through the use of low-point, low stress assignments, online instructors get to know their students’ online “voice” through emails, threaded discussions, etc.  Besides, it’s really up to the teacher to make assignments that are just plain ‘uncheatable’ (see my previous post on iPods and cheating).
• The robust reporting capabilities are designed to micro-manage teachers in a ”big brother” manner
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    • Robust learning management systems can track information such as “turn around” time – how long it takes for a teacher to grade and return an assignment to a student.  Administrators of an LMS can also often examine student performance on the same quiz across multiple sections and instructors.  Can this data be used in perverse manners to nitpick and micro-manage teachers?  Perhaps.  But this type of visibility allows administrators to ensure the instructional quality of both the curriculum and the teaching staff in a way that has never before existed.  It’s this data that can permit for the improvement of instruction – not necessarily the decimation of a teaching force.  It’s my hope that this type of visibility will open up a new type of dialogue between teachers and administrators – and among teachers themselves – where we change American education into a continually improving area of study.

A recent CNN report chronicles the “widespread” use of iPods by students to cheat on tests.  The report indicates that students use the voice recording function of the audio devices to record notes and test answers.  It also indicates that students enter “crib notes” in the Lyrics files of the saved songs.

Personally?  I think the real problem is that we are still assessing student learning in a manner that permits cheaters to pass.  Reporting that students are hiding definitions in their MP3 players is not the issue – the issue is that we are still assessing such low-level thinking skills as straight definitions.  If assessments purely focuesd on the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy – analysis, synthesis, evaluation – the point would be moot.  Sure the students could still have easy access to rote memorization-types of information on a test.  But do we really want to test student’s memorization skills?  Or is it more important to teach them – and test them – on their ability to apply what they have learned as a true measure of their comprehension and growth?

By the way – I had to Google the names of the top three Bloom’s Taxonomy levels, and consult an online dictionary for the spelling of the word “chronicles”.  Better take my iPod away.