online learning flexibility essay

Flexibility in Online Learning: What It Means for Students

Flexibility allows students to get to know themselves better and schedule their learning schedule accordingly. This means that the time their focus is high and their capability of retaining information is significant is when they will start their learning. In time, it will lead to them having better results. 

This article is part of the Flexible Learning Guide . Learn all about Flexible Thinking Activities , Flexible Learning Environments , and Flexibility in the Classroom .

Nowadays, there is a necessity for online learning, and institutions are trying to answer this need by offering the chance to study online or hybrid. The flexibility of online studies helps students worldwide have access to education without worrying about location, time or quality.

Traditional student or not, the changing environment and the social and economic factors that evolve make life as a student more demanding. This, along with the classes, may prove too much. 

Flexible learning also comes as help to increase access to higher education, particularly as worldwide enrollments are expected to double by 2025 ( Maslen, 2012 ).

Having the flexibility of online education will give students peace of mind, will allow them to take things at their own pace and learn at their own will while also continuing to pursue their passions.  

The flexibility in online learning has a primary significance – it offers bigger freedom to students. This is the most appealing factor as far as the flexibility of online learning is concerned. 

The key elements of flexible online learning are – pace, place and mode. ( Gordon, 2014 )

The Importance of flexibility in online learning 

Mostly the reason people choose online learning is because of the flexibility it offers. 

As technology evolves, online learning can offer experiences equal to offline classes. It can do this through gamification, virtual and augmented reality. All of them will create a richer learning experience that will provide students with the same experience as the class learning.

While online learning is increasing, making it more flexible is a plus.

What does flexibility in online learning mean?

It mainly refers to the fact that you can study the course materials anytime your desire. 

However, it does not mean a lack of structure, guidance and support. Flexible online learning also offers flexible help from tutors and mentors that guide you through the course .

Effects of flexible online learning on students 

 – A more significant focus on the comfort and quiet environment of your study place. Flexible online learning means “how, what, when and where [individuals] learn: the pace, place and mode of delivery” ( Higher Education Academy [HEA], 2015, para 1 )

 – It allows them to take charge of their life.

 – It offers them greater satisfaction when they know they can study while also continuing with their passions.

The benefits of a flexible online learning program 

There are various benefits that a flexible online learning program offers. Due to technological advancement, you can follow an online education system and do not feel the lack of socialising and interaction with your colleagues.  

Some of the main benefits of a flexible learning program are:

 – Flexibility to speed up your degree at your own pace. While in conventional classes, teachers have their speed and usually have to tick a task on the learning board and rush students into understanding a subject, having the possibility to tackle the subject at your own pace is excellent. 

 – Comfort to study from anywhere. There is a  direct connection between feeling comfortable in your learning environment and the learning results. Thus, if you are in a familiar atmosphere, it may make you feel like you do not have to worry about anything else but focus on studying. 

 – No need for long commutes as you virtually enter to have any class. Sometimes getting to school may prove a challenge as you need to wake up an hour earlier to get ready and then commute to school. Losing at least two hours per day on commuting is sometimes frustrating when you have a lot of homework. 

 – You are in complete control of your studying program, just like you are in a workplace. This will get you readier to balance the work-life when needed.  

Advantages and disadvantages of online learning 

 – Students develop their responsibility.

 – Students become aware of the importance of organising.

 – Online learning helps students be more independent.

 – It increases the student’s confidence in making decisions for their future.

 – You can connect with people worldwide as it has no boundaries.

 – Easier to attend classes.

 – Access for a bigger number of students to education. 

Disadvantages 

A significant disadvantage of online learning is the separation it may cause between those with internet access, access to various and improved computer systems, those that have a computer and those in developing countries where technology and accessibility of it are two things they do not focus on nor have. 

If you have trouble committing to something if it is not mandatory, choosing online learning can be a trick. Not committing to a studying schedule will leave you behind in classes, and you will have trouble making up for so many courses. 

Some students may have an increased sense of isolation if they opt for online learning. The minimal physical interaction is necessary for some who feel this interaction gives them moral support. 

Related Terms 

Distance learning vs online learning .

The distance learning concept existed long before online learning. It is a kind of learning where students are given the learning materials and can go through them as they wish. In addition to the courses, students should attend some live sessions.

In comparison, online learning is where students have online access to the courses and can access them when they want. It also provides self-assessment materials for students. It can come with support from the tutor or mentor. 

flexible learning vs online learning 

Flexible learning allows students to choose when, how and where to learn. It does not necessarily have to be online. It addresses how to use the physical learning space, group students while learning, discuss topics, and learn pace. 

E-learning is a need because of its flexibility regarding the pace, place, and mode of learning. However, online learning can be flexible as well. These days this is what online learning is all about – flexibility. 

modular learning vs online learning 

Modular learning is a type of class where students receive teh course materials in handouts to study until a specific deadline. The handout type provides the same access to materials for everyone and an easier way to study – as the information is summarised. With the modular classes, students can show what they learned only at the deadline.

Online classes offer students the ability to communicate constantly online and give and receive feedback on their course understanding and tasks. Online learning, in comparison, is done online and has no deadline for the lessons. The course is not summarised, and each student can take their understanding of the course.

There certainly are two teams – those pros and those against online learning. However, it is essential to bear in mind that online learning came not as a replacement for the traditional learning system but as a help to those students that cannot follow a conventional learning system from various considerations. There is no need to judge any of the teams as each learning type has its advantages and disadvantages. 

When choosing what best suits you as a student, focus on the one solution with the most advantages. 

Flexible Online Learning FAQ 

How is online school more flexible  .

Just being online, having the chance to study the courses at your own will, having the opportunity to review them every time you want for a better understanding and having the chance to study anytime fits your schedule gives the online school the flexibility most students look for. Besides all this, it allows students to choose the courses they want to have. 

What are the advantages of flexible learning?

Flexible learning helps students 

 – Continue their extracurricular activities

 – Choose their courses

 – Make their schedule 

 – Learn at their own will

 – Become more responsible

 – Develop organising skills

What is a flexible online class? 

A flexible online class is a class that allows students to learn when they want, how they want and from where they want. 

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• Published: 25 January 2021

Online education in the post-COVID era

• Barbara B. Lockee 1  

Nature Electronics volume  4 ,  pages 5–6 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The coronavirus pandemic has forced students and educators across all levels of education to rapidly adapt to online learning. The impact of this — and the developments required to make it work — could permanently change how education is delivered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to engage in the ubiquitous use of virtual learning. And while online and distance learning has been used before to maintain continuity in education, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes 1 , the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented. Speculation has now also begun about what the lasting effects of this will be and what education may look like in the post-COVID era. For some, an immediate retreat to the traditions of the physical classroom is required. But for others, the forced shift to online education is a moment of change and a time to reimagine how education could be delivered 2 .

Looking back

Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3 .) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4 ). In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective.

The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. F. Skinner 5 , who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6 , in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. A personalized system of instruction was designed on the premise that initial engagement with content could be done independently, then discussed and applied in the social context of a classroom.

These predecessors to contemporary online education leveraged key principles of instructional design — the systematic process of applying psychological principles of human learning to the creation of effective instructional solutions — to consider which methods (and their corresponding learning environments) would effectively engage students to attain the targeted learning outcomes. In other words, they considered what choices about the planning and implementation of the learning experience can lead to student success. Such early educational innovations laid the groundwork for contemporary virtual learning, which itself incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and combinations of delivery modes.

Online learning and the pandemic

Fast forward to 2020, and various further educational innovations have occurred to make the universal adoption of remote learning a possibility. One key challenge is access. Here, extensive problems remain, including the lack of Internet connectivity in some locations, especially rural ones, and the competing needs among family members for the use of home technology. However, creative solutions have emerged to provide students and families with the facilities and resources needed to engage in and successfully complete coursework 7 . For example, school buses have been used to provide mobile hotspots, and class packets have been sent by mail and instructional presentations aired on local public broadcasting stations. The year 2020 has also seen increased availability and adoption of electronic resources and activities that can now be integrated into online learning experiences. Synchronous online conferencing systems, such as Zoom and Google Meet, have allowed experts from anywhere in the world to join online classrooms 8 and have allowed presentations to be recorded for individual learners to watch at a time most convenient for them. Furthermore, the importance of hands-on, experiential learning has led to innovations such as virtual field trips and virtual labs 9 . A capacity to serve learners of all ages has thus now been effectively established, and the next generation of online education can move from an enterprise that largely serves adult learners and higher education to one that increasingly serves younger learners, in primary and secondary education and from ages 5 to 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a lasting effect on lesson design. The constraints of the pandemic provided an opportunity for educators to consider new strategies to teach targeted concepts. Though rethinking of instructional approaches was forced and hurried, the experience has served as a rare chance to reconsider strategies that best facilitate learning within the affordances and constraints of the online context. In particular, greater variance in teaching and learning activities will continue to question the importance of ‘seat time’ as the standard on which educational credits are based 10 — lengthy Zoom sessions are seldom instructionally necessary and are not aligned with the psychological principles of how humans learn. Interaction is important for learning but forced interactions among students for the sake of interaction is neither motivating nor beneficial.

While the blurring of the lines between traditional and distance education has been noted for several decades 11 , the pandemic has quickly advanced the erasure of these boundaries. Less single mode, more multi-mode (and thus more educator choices) is becoming the norm due to enhanced infrastructure and developed skill sets that allow people to move across different delivery systems 12 . The well-established best practices of hybrid or blended teaching and learning 13 have served as a guide for new combinations of instructional delivery that have developed in response to the shift to virtual learning. The use of multiple delivery modes is likely to remain, and will be a feature employed with learners of all ages 14 , 15 . Future iterations of online education will no longer be bound to the traditions of single teaching modes, as educators can support pedagogical approaches from a menu of instructional delivery options, a mix that has been supported by previous generations of online educators 16 .

Also significant are the changes to how learning outcomes are determined in online settings. Many educators have altered the ways in which student achievement is measured, eliminating assignments and changing assessment strategies altogether 17 . Such alterations include determining learning through strategies that leverage the online delivery mode, such as interactive discussions, student-led teaching and the use of games to increase motivation and attention. Specific changes that are likely to continue include flexible or extended deadlines for assignment completion 18 , more student choice regarding measures of learning, and more authentic experiences that involve the meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge 19 , for example, team-based projects that involve multiple creative and social media tools in support of collaborative problem solving.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and administrative systems for implementing online learning, and the infrastructure that supports its access and delivery, had to adapt quickly. While access remains a significant issue for many, extensive resources have been allocated and processes developed to connect learners with course activities and materials, to facilitate communication between instructors and students, and to manage the administration of online learning. Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education.

Before the pandemic, the primary purpose of distance and online education was providing access to instruction for those otherwise unable to participate in a traditional, place-based academic programme. As its purpose has shifted to supporting continuity of instruction, its audience, as well as the wider learning ecosystem, has changed. It will be interesting to see which aspects of emergency remote teaching remain in the next generation of education, when the threat of COVID-19 is no longer a factor. But online education will undoubtedly find new audiences. And the flexibility and learning possibilities that have emerged from necessity are likely to shift the expectations of students and educators, diminishing further the line between classroom-based instruction and virtual learning.

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Flexibility is the biggest benefit of online learning, students say

With many students embarking on a new university semester, the student surveyed more than 2,000 of them for their views on the benefits of online learning versus classroom learning.

The ability to view lectures at any time of day has been the most advantageous part of online learning for students and should remain part of university education, according to the latest THE Student Panel survey.

Being an international student during the Covid-19 pandemic

Discover the University of Liverpools' online postgraduate courses

Asked to list the three greatest advantages of studying online, 45 per cent of respondents who have had some teaching delivered online in the past 12 months said it was viewing lectures at any time of day, followed closely by 44 per cent citing the ability to continue studying during the pandemic and 34 per cent naming the ability to study at their own pace.

The online survey of 2,217 current students and prospective students who are part of the THE Student Pulse panel conducted between 13 July and 5 August 2021 included individuals from more than 120 countries applying to institutions in 91 countries around the world.

Overall, 85 per cent of those surveyed agreed that access to recorded lectures should remain available whether teaching is conducted in-person or online.

Despite warm feelings towards the flexibility that recorded online lectures offered, students still generally prefer studying in person. Just over half (53 per cent) said they didn’t enjoy the online study experience as much as an in-person equivalent, and 41 per cent thought it was lower quality than if it had been delivered in-person.

Given the scenario of their institution announcing that all teaching would be delivered online (similar to what occurred on many campuses at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic), nearly three-fifths of surveyed students (58 per cent) said they would be disappointed.

Difficulty socialising and making friends, trouble accessing university facilities, including labs, and lack of field trips were also downsides of online learning, according to students. Half of students felt that their chance to build a professional network at university would suffer because of online learning.

However, when it came to equipping them with the skills necessary for their career, 46 per cent of students agreed that online learning provided that, a result that might suggest that they gained or sharpened the digital skills needed to excel in a modern workplace while learning online.

Benefits of online learning vs classroom learning, according to the THE Student Pulse panel

• Flexibility of the schedule
• Working at your own pace
• Watching lectures back on demand
• Career skills development

The most important factors of a university’s location, according to the THE Student Pulse panel respondents

• Access to educational facilities and institutions (libraries, laboratories, other universities and so on) (69 per cent)
• Safety of the location (55 per cent)
• Job opportunities in the local area (55 per cent)

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Online and face‐to‐face learning: Evidence from students’ performance during the Covid‐19 pandemic

Carolyn chisadza.

1 Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Hatfield South Africa

Matthew Clance

Thulani mthembu.

2 Department of Education Innovation, University of Pretoria, Hatfield South Africa

Nicky Nicholls

Eleni yitbarek.

This study investigates the factors that predict students' performance after transitioning from face‐to‐face to online learning as a result of the Covid‐19 pandemic. It uses students' responses from survey questions and the difference in the average assessment grades between pre‐lockdown and post‐lockdown at a South African university. We find that students' performance was positively associated with good wifi access, relative to using mobile internet data. We also observe lower academic performance for students who found transitioning to online difficult and who expressed a preference for self‐study (i.e. reading through class slides and notes) over assisted study (i.e. joining live lectures or watching recorded lectures). The findings suggest that improving digital infrastructure and reducing the cost of internet access may be necessary for mitigating the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on education outcomes.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Covid‐19 pandemic has been a wake‐up call to many countries regarding their capacity to cater for mass online education. This situation has been further complicated in developing countries, such as South Africa, who lack the digital infrastructure for the majority of the population. The extended lockdown in South Africa saw most of the universities with mainly in‐person teaching scrambling to source hardware (e.g. laptops, internet access), software (e.g. Microsoft packages, data analysis packages) and internet data for disadvantaged students in order for the semester to recommence. Not only has the pandemic revealed the already stark inequality within the tertiary student population, but it has also revealed that high internet data costs in South Africa may perpetuate this inequality, making online education relatively inaccessible for disadvantaged students. 1

The lockdown in South Africa made it possible to investigate the changes in second‐year students' performance in the Economics department at the University of Pretoria. In particular, we are interested in assessing what factors predict changes in students' performance after transitioning from face‐to‐face (F2F) to online learning. Our main objectives in answering this study question are to establish what study materials the students were able to access (i.e. slides, recordings, or live sessions) and how students got access to these materials (i.e. the infrastructure they used).

The benefits of education on economic development are well established in the literature (Gyimah‐Brempong,  2011 ), ranging from health awareness (Glick et al.,  2009 ), improved technological innovations, to increased capacity development and employment opportunities for the youth (Anyanwu,  2013 ; Emediegwu,  2021 ). One of the ways in which inequality is perpetuated in South Africa, and Africa as a whole, is through access to education (Anyanwu,  2016 ; Coetzee,  2014 ; Tchamyou et al.,  2019 ); therefore, understanding the obstacles that students face in transitioning to online learning can be helpful in ensuring more equal access to education.

Using students' responses from survey questions and the difference in the average grades between pre‐lockdown and post‐lockdown, our findings indicate that students' performance in the online setting was positively associated with better internet access. Accessing assisted study material, such as narrated slides or recordings of the online lectures, also helped students. We also find lower academic performance for students who reported finding transitioning to online difficult and for those who expressed a preference for self‐study (i.e. reading through class slides and notes) over assisted study (i.e. joining live lectures or watching recorded lectures). The average grades between pre‐lockdown and post‐lockdown were about two points and three points lower for those who reported transitioning to online teaching difficult and for those who indicated a preference for self‐study, respectively. The findings suggest that improving the quality of internet infrastructure and providing assisted learning can be beneficial in reducing the adverse effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic on learning outcomes.

Our study contributes to the literature by examining the changes in the online (post‐lockdown) performance of students and their F2F (pre‐lockdown) performance. This approach differs from previous studies that, in most cases, use between‐subject designs where one group of students following online learning is compared to a different group of students attending F2F lectures (Almatra et al.,  2015 ; Brown & Liedholm,  2002 ). This approach has a limitation in that that there may be unobserved characteristics unique to students choosing online learning that differ from those choosing F2F lectures. Our approach avoids this issue because we use a within‐subject design: we compare the performance of the same students who followed F2F learning Before lockdown and moved to online learning during lockdown due to the Covid‐19 pandemic. Moreover, the study contributes to the limited literature that compares F2F and online learning in developing countries.

Several studies that have also compared the effectiveness of online learning and F2F classes encounter methodological weaknesses, such as small samples, not controlling for demographic characteristics, and substantial differences in course materials and assessments between online and F2F contexts. To address these shortcomings, our study is based on a relatively large sample of students and includes demographic characteristics such as age, gender and perceived family income classification. The lecturer and course materials also remained similar in the online and F2F contexts. A significant proportion of our students indicated that they never had online learning experience before. Less than 20% of the students in the sample had previous experience with online learning. This highlights the fact that online education is still relatively new to most students in our sample.

Given the global experience of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), 2 with rapidly accelerating technological progress, South Africa needs to be prepared for the possibility of online learning becoming the new norm in the education system. To this end, policymakers may consider engaging with various organizations (schools, universities, colleges, private sector, and research facilities) To adopt interventions that may facilitate the transition to online learning, while at the same time ensuring fair access to education for all students across different income levels. 3

1.1. Related literature

Online learning is a form of distance education which mainly involves internet‐based education where courses are offered synchronously (i.e. live sessions online) and/or asynchronously (i.e. students access course materials online in their own time, which is associated with the more traditional distance education). On the other hand, traditional F2F learning is real time or synchronous learning. In a physical classroom, instructors engage with the students in real time, while in the online format instructors can offer real time lectures through learning management systems (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate), or record the lectures for the students to watch later. Purely online courses are offered entirely over the internet, while blended learning combines traditional F2F classes with learning over the internet, and learning supported by other technologies (Nguyen,  2015 ).

Moreover, designing online courses requires several considerations. For example, the quality of the learning environment, the ease of using the learning platform, the learning outcomes to be achieved, instructor support to assist and motivate students to engage with the course material, peer interaction, class participation, type of assessments (Paechter & Maier,  2010 ), not to mention training of the instructor in adopting and introducing new teaching methods online (Lundberg et al.,  2008 ). In online learning, instructors are more facilitators of learning. On the other hand, traditional F2F classes are structured in such a way that the instructor delivers knowledge, is better able to gauge understanding and interest of students, can engage in class activities, and can provide immediate feedback on clarifying questions during the class. Additionally, the designing of traditional F2F courses can be less time consuming for instructors compared to online courses (Navarro,  2000 ).

Online learning is also particularly suited for nontraditional students who require flexibility due to work or family commitments that are not usually associated with the undergraduate student population (Arias et al.,  2018 ). Initially the nontraditional student belonged to the older adult age group, but with blended learning becoming more commonplace in high schools, colleges and universities, online learning has begun to traverse a wider range of age groups. However, traditional F2F classes are still more beneficial for learners that are not so self‐sufficient and lack discipline in working through the class material in the required time frame (Arias et al.,  2018 ).

For the purpose of this literature review, both pure online and blended learning are considered to be online learning because much of the evidence in the literature compares these two types against the traditional F2F learning. The debate in the literature surrounding online learning versus F2F teaching continues to be a contentious one. A review of the literature reveals mixed findings when comparing the efficacy of online learning on student performance in relation to the traditional F2F medium of instruction (Lundberg et al.,  2008 ; Nguyen,  2015 ). A number of studies conducted Before the 2000s find what is known today in the empirical literature as the “No Significant Difference” phenomenon (Russell & International Distance Education Certificate Center (IDECC),  1999 ). The seminal work from Russell and IDECC ( 1999 ) involved over 350 comparative studies on online/distance learning versus F2F learning, dating back to 1928. The author finds no significant difference overall between online and traditional F2F classroom education outcomes. Subsequent studies that followed find similar “no significant difference” outcomes (Arbaugh,  2000 ; Fallah & Ubell,  2000 ; Freeman & Capper,  1999 ; Johnson et al.,  2000 ; Neuhauser,  2002 ). While Bernard et al. ( 2004 ) also find that overall there is no significant difference in achievement between online education and F2F education, the study does find significant heterogeneity in student performance for different activities. The findings show that students in F2F classes outperform the students participating in synchronous online classes (i.e. classes that require online students to participate in live sessions at specific times). However, asynchronous online classes (i.e. students access class materials at their own time online) outperform F2F classes.

More recent studies find significant results for online learning outcomes in relation to F2F outcomes. On the one hand, Shachar and Yoram ( 2003 ) and Shachar and Neumann ( 2010 ) conduct a meta‐analysis of studies from 1990 to 2009 and find that in 70% of the cases, students taking courses by online education outperformed students in traditionally instructed courses (i.e. F2F lectures). In addition, Navarro and Shoemaker ( 2000 ) observe that learning outcomes for online learners are as effective as or better than outcomes for F2F learners, regardless of background characteristics. In a study on computer science students, Dutton et al. ( 2002 ) find online students perform significantly better compared to the students who take the same course on campus. A meta‐analysis conducted by the US Department of Education finds that students who took all or part of their course online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional F2F instructions. The report also finds that the effect sizes are larger for studies in which the online learning was collaborative or instructor‐driven than in those studies where online learners worked independently (Means et al.,  2010 ).

On the other hand, evidence by Brown and Liedholm ( 2002 ) based on test scores from macroeconomics students in the United States suggest that F2F students tend to outperform online students. These findings are supported by Coates et al. ( 2004 ) who base their study on macroeconomics students in the United States, and Xu and Jaggars ( 2014 ) who find negative effects for online students using a data set of about 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 students in Washington. Furthermore, Almatra et al. ( 2015 ) compare overall course grades between online and F2F students for a Telecommunications course and find that F2F students significantly outperform online learning students. In an experimental study where students are randomly assigned to attend live lectures versus watching the same lectures online, Figlio et al. ( 2013 ) observe some evidence that the traditional format has a positive effect compared to online format. Interestingly, Callister and Love ( 2016 ) specifically compare the learning outcomes of online versus F2F skills‐based courses and find that F2F learners earned better outcomes than online learners even when using the same technology. This study highlights that some of the inconsistencies that we find in the results comparing online to F2F learning might be influenced by the nature of the course: theory‐based courses might be less impacted by in‐person interaction than skills‐based courses.

The fact that the reviewed studies on the effects of F2F versus online learning on student performance have been mainly focused in developed countries indicates the dearth of similar studies being conducted in developing countries. This gap in the literature may also highlight a salient point: online learning is still relatively underexplored in developing countries. The lockdown in South Africa therefore provides us with an opportunity to contribute to the existing literature from a developing country context.

2. CONTEXT OF STUDY

South Africa went into national lockdown in March 2020 due to the Covid‐19 pandemic. Like most universities in the country, the first semester for undergraduate courses at the University of Pretoria had already been running since the start of the academic year in February. Before the pandemic, a number of F2F lectures and assessments had already been conducted in most courses. The nationwide lockdown forced the university, which was mainly in‐person teaching, to move to full online learning for the remainder of the semester. This forced shift from F2F teaching to online learning allows us to investigate the changes in students' performance.

Before lockdown, classes were conducted on campus. During lockdown, these live classes were moved to an online platform, Blackboard Collaborate, which could be accessed by all registered students on the university intranet (“ClickUP”). However, these live online lectures involve substantial internet data costs for students. To ensure access to course content for those students who were unable to attend the live online lectures due to poor internet connections or internet data costs, several options for accessing course content were made available. These options included prerecorded narrated slides (which required less usage of internet data), recordings of the live online lectures, PowerPoint slides with explanatory notes and standard PDF lecture slides.

At the same time, the university managed to procure and loan out laptops to a number of disadvantaged students, and negotiated with major mobile internet data providers in the country for students to have free access to study material through the university's “connect” website (also referred to as the zero‐rated website). However, this free access excluded some video content and live online lectures (see Table  1 ). The university also provided between 10 and 20 gigabytes of mobile internet data per month, depending on the network provider, sent to students' mobile phones to assist with internet data costs.

Sites available on zero‐rated website

Note : The table summarizes the sites that were available on the zero‐rated website and those that incurred data costs.

High data costs continue to be a contentious issue in Africa where average incomes are low. Gilbert ( 2019 ) reports that South Africa ranked 16th of the 45 countries researched in terms of the most expensive internet data in Africa, at US$6.81 per gigabyte, in comparison to other Southern African countries such as Mozambique (US$1.97), Zambia (US$2.70), and Lesotho (US$4.09). Internet data prices have also been called into question in South Africa after the Competition Commission published a report from its Data Services Market Inquiry calling the country's internet data pricing “excessive” (Gilbert,  2019 ).

3. EMPIRICAL APPROACH

We use a sample of 395 s‐year students taking a macroeconomics module in the Economics department to compare the effects of F2F and online learning on students' performance using a range of assessments. The module was an introduction to the application of theoretical economic concepts. The content was both theory‐based (developing economic growth models using concepts and equations) and skill‐based (application involving the collection of data from online data sources and analyzing the data using statistical software). Both individual and group assignments formed part of the assessments. Before the end of the semester, during lockdown in June 2020, we asked the students to complete a survey with questions related to the transition from F2F to online learning and the difficulties that they may have faced. For example, we asked the students: (i) how easy or difficult they found the transition from F2F to online lectures; (ii) what internet options were available to them and which they used the most to access the online prescribed work; (iii) what format of content they accessed and which they preferred the most (i.e. self‐study material in the form of PDF and PowerPoint slides with notes vs. assisted study with narrated slides and lecture recordings); (iv) what difficulties they faced accessing the live online lectures, to name a few. Figure  1 summarizes the key survey questions that we asked the students regarding their transition from F2F to online learning.

Summary of survey data

Before the lockdown, the students had already attended several F2F classes and completed three assessments. We are therefore able to create a dependent variable that is comprised of the average grades of three assignments taken before lockdown and the average grades of three assignments taken after the start of the lockdown for each student. Specifically, we use the difference between the post‐ and pre‐lockdown average grades as the dependent variable. However, the number of student observations dropped to 275 due to some students missing one or more of the assessments. The lecturer, content and format of the assessments remain similar across the module. We estimate the following equation using ordinary least squares (OLS) with robust standard errors:

where Y i is the student's performance measured by the difference between the post and pre‐lockdown average grades. B represents the vector of determinants that measure the difficulty faced by students to transition from F2F to online learning. This vector includes access to the internet, study material preferred, quality of the online live lecture sessions and pre‐lockdown class attendance. X is the vector of student demographic controls such as race, gender and an indicator if the student's perceived family income is below average. The ε i is unobserved student characteristics.

4. ANALYSIS

4.1. descriptive statistics.

Table  2 gives an overview of the sample of students. We find that among the black students, a higher proportion of students reported finding the transition to online learning more difficult. On the other hand, more white students reported finding the transition moderately easy, as did the other races. According to Coetzee ( 2014 ), the quality of schools can vary significantly between higher income and lower‐income areas, with black South Africans far more likely to live in lower‐income areas with lower quality schools than white South Africans. As such, these differences in quality of education from secondary schooling can persist at tertiary level. Furthermore, persistent income inequality between races in South Africa likely means that many poorer black students might not be able to afford wifi connections or large internet data bundles which can make the transition difficult for black students compared to their white counterparts.

Descriptive statistics

Notes : The transition difficulty variable was ordered 1: Very Easy; 2: Moderately Easy; 3: Difficult; and 4: Impossible. Since we have few responses to the extremes, we combined Very Easy and Moderately as well as Difficult and Impossible to make the table easier to read. The table with a full breakdown is available upon request.

A higher proportion of students reported that wifi access made the transition to online learning moderately easy. However, relatively more students reported that mobile internet data and accessing the zero‐rated website made the transition difficult. Surprisingly, not many students made use of the zero‐rated website which was freely available. Figure  2 shows that students who reported difficulty transitioning to online learning did not perform as well in online learning versus F2F when compared to those that found it less difficult to transition.

Transition from F2F to online learning.

Notes : This graph shows the students' responses to the question “How easy did you find the transition from face‐to‐face lectures to online lectures?” in relation to the outcome variable for performance

In Figure  3 , the kernel density shows that students who had access to wifi performed better than those who used mobile internet data or the zero‐rated data.

Access to online learning.

Notes : This graph shows the students' responses to the question “What do you currently use the most to access most of your prescribed work?” in relation to the outcome variable for performance

The regression results are reported in Table  3 . We find that the change in students' performance from F2F to online is negatively associated with the difficulty they faced in transitioning from F2F to online learning. According to student survey responses, factors contributing to difficulty in transitioning included poor internet access, high internet data costs and lack of equipment such as laptops or tablets to access the study materials on the university website. Students who had access to wifi (i.e. fixed wireless broadband, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) or optic fiber) performed significantly better, with on average 4.5 points higher grade, in relation to students that had to use mobile internet data (i.e. personal mobile internet data, wifi at home using mobile internet data, or hotspot using mobile internet data) or the zero‐rated website to access the study materials. The insignificant results for the zero‐rated website are surprising given that the website was freely available and did not incur any internet data costs. However, most students in this sample complained that the internet connection on the zero‐rated website was slow, especially in uploading assignments. They also complained about being disconnected when they were in the middle of an assessment. This may have discouraged some students from making use of the zero‐rated website.

Results: Predictors for student performance using the difference on average assessment grades between pre‐ and post‐lockdown

Coefficients reported. Robust standard errors in parentheses.

∗∗∗ p  < .01.

Students who expressed a preference for self‐study approaches (i.e. reading PDF slides or PowerPoint slides with explanatory notes) did not perform as well, on average, as students who preferred assisted study (i.e. listening to recorded narrated slides or lecture recordings). This result is in line with Means et al. ( 2010 ), where student performance was better for online learning that was collaborative or instructor‐driven than in cases where online learners worked independently. Interestingly, we also observe that the performance of students who often attended in‐person classes before the lockdown decreased. Perhaps these students found the F2F lectures particularly helpful in mastering the course material. From the survey responses, we find that a significant proportion of the students (about 70%) preferred F2F to online lectures. This preference for F2F lectures may also be linked to the factors contributing to the difficulty some students faced in transitioning to online learning.

We find that the performance of low‐income students decreased post‐lockdown, which highlights another potential challenge to transitioning to online learning. The picture and sound quality of the live online lectures also contributed to lower performance. Although this result is not statistically significant, it is worth noting as the implications are linked to the quality of infrastructure currently available for students to access online learning. We find no significant effects of race on changes in students' performance, though males appeared to struggle more with the shift to online teaching than females.

For the robustness check in Table  4 , we consider the average grades of the three assignments taken after the start of the lockdown as a dependent variable (i.e. the post‐lockdown average grades for each student). We then include the pre‐lockdown average grades as an explanatory variable. The findings and overall conclusions in Table  4 are consistent with the previous results.

Robustness check: Predictors for student performance using the average assessment grades for post‐lockdown

As a further robustness check in Table  5 , we create a panel for each student across the six assignment grades so we can control for individual heterogeneity. We create a post‐lockdown binary variable that takes the value of 1 for the lockdown period and 0 otherwise. We interact the post‐lockdown dummy variable with a measure for transition difficulty and internet access. The internet access variable is an indicator variable for mobile internet data, wifi, or zero‐rated access to class materials. The variable wifi is a binary variable taking the value of 1 if the student has access to wifi and 0 otherwise. The zero‐rated variable is a binary variable taking the value of 1 if the student used the university's free portal access and 0 otherwise. We also include assignment and student fixed effects. The results in Table  5 remain consistent with our previous findings that students who had wifi access performed significantly better than their peers.

Interaction model

Notes : Coefficients reported. Robust standard errors in parentheses. The dependent variable is the assessment grades for each student on each assignment. The number of observations include the pre‐post number of assessments multiplied by the number of students.

6. CONCLUSION

The Covid‐19 pandemic left many education institutions with no option but to transition to online learning. The University of Pretoria was no exception. We examine the effect of transitioning to online learning on the academic performance of second‐year economic students. We use assessment results from F2F lectures before lockdown, and online lectures post lockdown for the same group of students, together with responses from survey questions. We find that the main contributor to lower academic performance in the online setting was poor internet access, which made transitioning to online learning more difficult. In addition, opting to self‐study (read notes instead of joining online classes and/or watching recordings) did not help the students in their performance.

The implications of the results highlight the need for improved quality of internet infrastructure with affordable internet data pricing. Despite the university's best efforts not to leave any student behind with the zero‐rated website and free monthly internet data, the inequality dynamics in the country are such that invariably some students were negatively affected by this transition, not because the student was struggling academically, but because of inaccessibility of internet (wifi). While the zero‐rated website is a good collaborative initiative between universities and network providers, the infrastructure is not sufficient to accommodate mass students accessing it simultaneously.

This study's findings may highlight some shortcomings in the academic sector that need to be addressed by both the public and private sectors. There is potential for an increase in the digital divide gap resulting from the inequitable distribution of digital infrastructure. This may lead to reinforcement of current inequalities in accessing higher education in the long term. To prepare the country for online learning, some considerations might need to be made to make internet data tariffs more affordable and internet accessible to all. We hope that this study's findings will provide a platform (or will at least start the conversation for taking remedial action) for policy engagements in this regard.

We are aware of some limitations presented by our study. The sample we have at hand makes it difficult to extrapolate our findings to either all students at the University of Pretoria or other higher education students in South Africa. Despite this limitation, our findings highlight the negative effect of the digital divide on students' educational outcomes in the country. The transition to online learning and the high internet data costs in South Africa can also have adverse learning outcomes for low‐income students. With higher education institutions, such as the University of Pretoria, integrating online teaching to overcome the effect of the Covid‐19 pandemic, access to stable internet is vital for students' academic success.

It is also important to note that the data we have at hand does not allow us to isolate wifi's causal effect on students' performance post‐lockdown due to two main reasons. First, wifi access is not randomly assigned; for instance, there is a high chance that students with better‐off family backgrounds might have better access to wifi and other supplementary infrastructure than their poor counterparts. Second, due to the university's data access policy and consent, we could not merge the data at hand with the student's previous year's performance. Therefore, future research might involve examining the importance of these elements to document the causal impact of access to wifi on students' educational outcomes in the country.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors acknowledge the helpful comments received from the editor, the anonymous reviewers, and Elizabeth Asiedu.

Chisadza, C. , Clance, M. , Mthembu, T. , Nicholls, N. , & Yitbarek, E. (2021). Online and face‐to‐face learning: Evidence from students’ performance during the Covid‐19 pandemic . Afr Dev Rev , 33 , S114–S125. 10.1111/afdr.12520 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

1 https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/309693-mobile-data-prices-south-africa-vs-the-world.html .

2 The 4IR is currently characterized by increased use of new technologies, such as advanced wireless technologies, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics, among others. This era has also facilitated the use of different online learning platforms ( https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-fourth-industrialrevolution-and-digitization-will-transform-africa-into-a-global-powerhouse/ ).

3 Note that we control for income, but it is plausible to assume other unobservable factors such as parental preference and parenting style might also affect access to the internet of students.

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Argumentative Essay: Online Learning and Educational Access

Conventional learning is evolving with the help of computers and online technology. New ways of learning are now available, and improved access is one of the most important benefits available. People all around the world are experiencing improved mobility as a result of the freedom and potential that online learning provides, and as academic institutions and learning organisations adopt online learning technologies and remote-access learning, formal academic education is becoming increasingly legitimate. This essay argues the contemporary benefits of online learning, and that these benefits significantly outweigh the issues, challenges and disadvantages of online learning.

Online learning is giving people new choices and newfound flexibility with their personal learning and development. Whereas before, formal academic qualifications could only be gained by participating in a full time course on site, the internet has allowed institutions to expand their reach and offer recognized courses on a contact-partial, or totally virtual, basis. Institutions can do so with relatively few extra resources, and for paid courses this constitutes excellent value, and the student benefits with greater educational access and greater flexibility to learn and get qualified even when there lots of other personal commitments to deal with.

Flexibility is certainly one of the most important benefits, but just as important is educational access. On top of the internet’s widespread presence in developed countries, the internet is becoming increasingly available in newly developed and developing countries. Even without considering the general informational exposure that the internet delivers, online academic courses and learning initiatives are becoming more aware of the needs of people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and this means that people from such backgrounds are in a much better position to learn and progress than they used to be.

The biggest argument that raises doubt over online learning is the quality of online courses in comparison to conventional courses. Are such online courses good enough for employers to take notice? The second biggest argument is the current reality that faces many people from disadvantaged backgrounds, despite the improvements made in this area in recent years – they do not have the level of basic access needed to benefit from online learning. In fact, there are numerous sources of evidence that claim disadvantaged students are not receiving anywhere near the sort of benefits that online learning institutions and promoters are trying to instigate. Currently there are many organisations, campaigns and initiatives that are working to expand access to higher education. With such high participation, it can be argued that it is only a matter of time before the benefits are truly realised, but what about the global online infrastructure?

There is another argument that is very difficult to dispel, and that is the response of different types of students to the online learning paradigm. Evidence shows that there are certain groups of students that benefit from college distance learning much more than other groups. In essence, students must be highly motivated and highly disciplined if they are to learn effectively in their own private environment.

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How Effective Is Online Learning? What the Research Does and Doesn’t Tell Us

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Editor’s Note: This is part of a series on the practical takeaways from research.

The times have dictated school closings and the rapid expansion of online education. Can online lessons replace in-school time?

Clearly online time cannot provide many of the informal social interactions students have at school, but how will online courses do in terms of moving student learning forward? Research to date gives us some clues and also points us to what we could be doing to support students who are most likely to struggle in the online setting.

The use of virtual courses among K-12 students has grown rapidly in recent years. Florida, for example, requires all high school students to take at least one online course. Online learning can take a number of different forms. Often people think of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, where thousands of students watch a video online and fill out questionnaires or take exams based on those lectures.

In the online setting, students may have more distractions and less oversight, which can reduce their motivation.

Most online courses, however, particularly those serving K-12 students, have a format much more similar to in-person courses. The teacher helps to run virtual discussion among the students, assigns homework, and follows up with individual students. Sometimes these courses are synchronous (teachers and students all meet at the same time) and sometimes they are asynchronous (non-concurrent). In both cases, the teacher is supposed to provide opportunities for students to engage thoughtfully with subject matter, and students, in most cases, are required to interact with each other virtually.

Coronavirus and Schools

Online courses provide opportunities for students. Students in a school that doesn’t offer statistics classes may be able to learn statistics with virtual lessons. If students fail algebra, they may be able to catch up during evenings or summer using online classes, and not disrupt their math trajectory at school. So, almost certainly, online classes sometimes benefit students.

In comparisons of online and in-person classes, however, online classes aren’t as effective as in-person classes for most students. Only a little research has assessed the effects of online lessons for elementary and high school students, and even less has used the “gold standard” method of comparing the results for students assigned randomly to online or in-person courses. Jessica Heppen and colleagues at the American Institutes for Research and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research randomly assigned students who had failed second semester Algebra I to either face-to-face or online credit recovery courses over the summer. Students’ credit-recovery success rates and algebra test scores were lower in the online setting. Students assigned to the online option also rated their class as more difficult than did their peers assigned to the face-to-face option.

Most of the research on online courses for K-12 students has used large-scale administrative data, looking at otherwise similar students in the two settings. One of these studies, by June Ahn of New York University and Andrew McEachin of the RAND Corp., examined Ohio charter schools; I did another with colleagues looking at Florida public school coursework. Both studies found evidence that online coursetaking was less effective.

About this series

This essay is the fifth in a series that aims to put the pieces of research together so that education decisionmakers can evaluate which policies and practices to implement.

The conveners of this project—Susanna Loeb, the director of Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and Harvard education professor Heather Hill—have received grant support from the Annenberg Institute for this series.

To suggest other topics for this series or join in the conversation, use #EdResearchtoPractice on Twitter.

Read the full series here .

It is not surprising that in-person courses are, on average, more effective. Being in person with teachers and other students creates social pressures and benefits that can help motivate students to engage. Some students do as well in online courses as in in-person courses, some may actually do better, but, on average, students do worse in the online setting, and this is particularly true for students with weaker academic backgrounds.

Students who struggle in in-person classes are likely to struggle even more online. While the research on virtual schools in K-12 education doesn’t address these differences directly, a study of college students that I worked on with Stanford colleagues found very little difference in learning for high-performing students in the online and in-person settings. On the other hand, lower performing students performed meaningfully worse in online courses than in in-person courses.

But just because students who struggle in in-person classes are even more likely to struggle online doesn’t mean that’s inevitable. Online teachers will need to consider the needs of less-engaged students and work to engage them. Online courses might be made to work for these students on average, even if they have not in the past.

Just like in brick-and-mortar classrooms, online courses need a strong curriculum and strong pedagogical practices. Teachers need to understand what students know and what they don’t know, as well as how to help them learn new material. What is different in the online setting is that students may have more distractions and less oversight, which can reduce their motivation. The teacher will need to set norms for engagement—such as requiring students to regularly ask questions and respond to their peers—that are different than the norms in the in-person setting.

Online courses are generally not as effective as in-person classes, but they are certainly better than no classes. A substantial research base developed by Karl Alexander at Johns Hopkins University and many others shows that students, especially students with fewer resources at home, learn less when they are not in school. Right now, virtual courses are allowing students to access lessons and exercises and interact with teachers in ways that would have been impossible if an epidemic had closed schools even a decade or two earlier. So we may be skeptical of online learning, but it is also time to embrace and improve it.

A version of this article appeared in the April 01, 2020 edition of Education Week as How Effective Is Online Learning?

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• Tools and Trends

Making Sense of Flexibility as A Defining Element of Online Learning

Sir John Daniel

Contact north | contact north research associate.

Contemporary developments in online learning have their origins in the technology of the industrial revolution, when new methods and machines were used to create better products inexpensively at scale. Now technology has also broken the hold of the 'iron triangle' that prevented earlier generations from enjoying wide access to education of quality at low cost. First correspondence education and then multi-media open and distance learning (ODL) brought flexible learning to millions. Today online technologies have brought further flexibility to post-secondary education on various dimensions. Institutions should exploit these new flexibilities purposefully, focusing on opportunities to engage students more deeply in learning leading to useful outcomes.   

Introduction

'When more than one-quarter of higher education students are taking a course online, distance education is clearly mainstream'. This is the conclusion of the 13th Babson Report on online learning in the US (Babson, 2016, p. 3).

From Inside Higher Ed - USA

We first recall the historical origins of open, distance and online learning (ODL), noting its origins in the industrial revolution and the emergence of flexibility as its most powerful feature. In section two, we summarize the current trends, attitudes and patterns in online learning described in the Babson report, which focuses on the USA but seems broadly applicable to Canada as well. The third section examines the additional flexibility online learning offers to students, teachers and institutions and the challenges it poses for choosing study options, assessing outcomes and revamping organizations.  

Flexibility has many dimensions. For students, it means easier access to learning, greater convenience in choosing where to study, a wider variety of credentials to aim for and more autonomy in scheduling their lives. For instructors, it expands the range of pedagogies available in program/course design, makes available new (often free) teaching resources, implies less 'stand-up teaching' and permits greater variety and creativity in assessing students' work. Evidence indicates that effective use of these options can improve learning outcomes by stimulating students to engage more fully with their courses (Daniel, 2016a). Institutions can use online learning to expand their geographic reach and, perhaps more importantly, to make their offerings more attractive to campus-based students by deepening their engagement with their courses.

Flexibility sounds like an entirely desirable attribute but it has limits. Buildings and earthquakes are a useful analogy. A building constructed too flexibly and one built too rigidly can both collapse in a major earthquake. Engineers aim for structures that have the toughness and resilience to cope with the range of stresses they are likely to encounter. This is expressed more abstractly in the cybernetic Principle of Requisite variety (Ashby, 1956): 'the larger the variety of actions available to a control system, the larger the variety of perturbations it is able to compensate'.

Some complain that current higher education systems are too rigid, but neither should they be too flexible. Traditional classroom teaching places constraints on students and is difficult to scale up, but it does have the inherent flexibility of any cottage industry. Individual instructors are responsible for most elements of the students' learning experience. With minor variations, each classroom instructor designs the course curriculum, prepares learning materials or assigns textbooks, teaches the course in the classroom, administers and corrects any formative assessments (e.g. quizzes) and often sets and marks the summative assessment (final exam or project). These individual teachers can, in principle, adapt readily to changing circumstances and student needs. To recall the language of cybernetics, they can compensate for perturbations in the system.

We shall return to the contemporary dynamics of flexibility after recalling their evolution as open, distance and online learning developed from the industrial revolution to the Internet revolution.

The Industrial Revolution: The Roots of Open and Distance Learning

Early attempts to scale up education at low cost with consistent quality were inspired by the industrial revolution. Adam Smith, who is famous for his analysis of the disruptive elements of the new production processes that created the industrial revolution, also believed strongly in extending public education. But he might have been surprised to see how the processes that drove the production of more, better and cheaper goods in the industrial revolution, which he captured so compellingly, would be used to expand education in the following century.

In his famous description of the pin factory, Smith identified the division of labour as the key to greater productivity: ‘This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first , to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly , to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly , to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many....’ (Smith, 1776).

Smith's statement also heralds the application of technology to the expansion of more flexible forms of education. The ‘dexterity of every particular workman’ translates to the creation of teaching-learning systems that bring together the contributions of a range of specialized functions and individuals. ‘The saving of time…lost in passing from one species of work to another’ implies that different specialists can make their inputs simultaneously, which both scales up and speeds up the overall impact. Today, rapid developments in information and communications technologies and other media provide us with a ‘great number of machines’ to facilitate the tasks of teaching and learning.

Correspondence education benefited millions of people worldwide over the next century. Its key features, which brought new flexibility to teaching and learning, were printed learning materials, mass produced as a standard product, and personal interaction with tutors, who corrected and commented on students' assignments using first the postal system and later the telephone. By the 1960s, correspondence education was attracting research. Holmberg (1983) described it as 'guided didactic conversation', while Peters called distance education 'the most industrialised form of education' (Peters & Keegan, 1994).

From Correspondence to Multi-Media

With the creation of the United Kingdom Open University (UKOU) in 1969, ODL made the jump from basic correspondence education to systems of multi-media learning materials backed by sophisticated arrangements for student support. Although the UKOU was lauded as great success and inspired the establishment of specialized distance-teaching universities in other countries, its example did little to encourage campus institutions to engage in ODL.

Two factors contributed to their reluctance to engage with ODL. First, the residual image of correspondence education as an industrialized commercial enterprise still gave distance learning a poor reputation. Second, the large scale operations - and in some cases the very high quality - that the open universities offered discouraged head-to-head competition. Moreover, the formats of ODL at that time (printed materials rich in graphics, broadcast-quality TV and radio programs, etc.) made for relatively high barriers to entry into the market. 

These barriers began to fall with the development of the Internet in the late 1990s. Suddenly it seemed possible for campus universities to offer distance learning without making the huge infrastructure investments required for multi-media production and logistics in the open-university model. Furthermore, it was already clear the Internet would provide the opportunity for a quantum leap in the flexibility of study options that post-secondary education institutions could offer. Research on ODL had consistently revealed the importance of rapid feedback in fostering student success. Instant communication through the Internet was a step change from exchanging assignments and comments through the postal system.

But, once again, two developments made institutions cautious. The hype of the dotcom frenzy of the late 1990s collapsed into economic turmoil for some players as the forecast that most human interactions would quickly move online proved exaggerated! A little later, in the mid-2000s, some Internet teaching ventures launched with fanfare by elite British and US universities were ignominiously shuttered after only a few years. Taylor Walsh (2010) described these initiatives with verve in Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses . An important feature of her book was a foreword by William Bowen, which addressed the cost of ODL, a key element in permitting its flexibility.

Bowen, an economist who later became president of Princeton University, had written a classic paper (Baumol & Bowen, 1965) on the 'cost disease'. It showed the prices of manufactures had gone down in real terms; those of many services, such as hairdressing, had stayed roughly constant; while the prices of personal services by highly trained professionals (e.g. academics, dentists, horn players and stockbrokers) had risen. This reasoning implied there was little possibility of reducing the costs of post-secondary education by using new approaches.

In the foreword to Walsh's book, Bowen reversed his scepticism about the potential of technology to improve productivity in higher education because the costs of the highly trained professionals he cited in the 1965 paper had evolved in different directions. The price of dentistry may rise faster than inflation because it is a personal service with limited scope for automation. The case of orchestral musicians, such as horn players, is different. They are rare professionals, but technology increased their productivity and reach dramatically. Today people can listen to them on smartphones, instead of in concert halls, at much lower cost. The most interesting comparison for post-secondary education is with stockbrokers. Their prices went up more rapidly than those of academics until the 1980s and then fell steadily to a relatively much lower level. This was when brokerage services went online, giving individual investors more control.

For an establishment figure like Bowen to conclude that technology could improve the productivity of higher education was a significant indicator of changing attitudes. Institutions without previous experience of ODL had already begun to offer courses online, though usually as initiatives of particular departments or individuals rather than as part of an institutional strategy. In North America, as a result, online enrolments grew slowly but steadily, and more rapidly than campus enrolments, as the 21st century advanced.

Online Learning: From Margin to Mainstream

Tony Bates tracked the growth of online learning through these years (Bates, 2011; 2012; 2013). In 2011, he noted that learning management systems (LMS) were being used by 95% of all post-secondary institutions in North America (Bates, 2011), suggesting wide experimentation. There was 'a great deal of innovative activity around the fringes of formal courses, and especially in informal learning' with 'the LMS and lecture capture remaining the bedrock of most online learning'. But he concluded his 2011 survey by writing: 'we continue to add bells and whistles to the horse and cart... When are we going to get a railway, never mind a high-speed train?'

Two years later, Bates' review for 2013 noted that 'partly as a result of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), but also because of moves towards integrating online learning with classroom teaching, a number of institutions... either developed or started to develop a more strategic approach to online learning'. He was personally involved in advising on these developments at numerous institutions.

Between 2011 and 2013, MOOCs had come to the United States (US). Although there had been a MOOC in Canada in 2008, Bates probably did not have the US MOOCs frenzy in mind when he continued: 'the outlook for e-Learning in 2012 is generally highly favourable... the trends towards more openness, more mobility, more innovation in teaching and learning, and more powerful tools for instructors and especially students, are clear and consistent with developments in previous years. Yes, history is on our side' (Bates, 2012).

The media coverage and controversies that MOOCs generated in 2012 did more to make the global higher education community take ODL seriously than any other factor (Daniel, 2012; 2016b). Enrolments in distance education courses began to accelerate everywhere. We shall comment on MOOCs later because they highlight the challenges of flexibility in online learning in an extraordinary manner.

The 2015 Babson report (Babson, 2016, p. 3) declared that 'distance education is clearly mainstream because over a quarter of US students are taking at least one course online'. This was the final review of a series that the Babson Survey Group had published annually since 2003. It noted that enrolment trends, attitudes to online learning and patterns of institutional provision were now fairly stable, rendering further yearly narrative reports unnecessary. Henceforward the National Centre for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) will track the growing numbers of online learners in the US.  

Fewer data are available for other jurisdictions and will likely remain scarce as distance education becomes mainstream in them as well. It was easy to count distance learners when most of them were in open universities teaching exclusively at a distance. In 1995, for example, I found that there were 2.8 million distance students in the world's eleven mega-universities (Daniel, 1996, p. 32). Today, however, campuses offer both distance and classroom courses and students often combine them in their timetables. It will become increasingly difficult to disentangle higher education delivery modes in gathering data. A comment from a 2010 study in the United Kingdom (UK) sums up the problem: 'much of this growth has taken place on an ad hoc basis, often at the departmental level, and this has led to a situation where it is difficult to assess the overall level of (open and distance learning) activity across the sector' (Oxford University, 2010).

In Canada, there have been no formal attempts to quantify the scale of online learning since 2010. In that year, an Ontario survey reported that 15% of post-secondary programs were online, accounting for 20,000 courses and 500,000 student registrations. These numbers have since grown significantly. Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario's distance education and training network, reported a 28% increase in enrolments in 2015 alone. Jean-Louis (Contact North, 2015) estimated there were some 1.3 million online course registrations every semester across Canada in that year. Calculated pro-rata to national populations, this figure suggests online learning is even more popular in Canada than in the US.

Reliable data on the spread of online learning will, however, become increasingly important for government policy makers, institutional planners, researchers and others. The time is ripe to agree internationally on definitions and to gather authoritative data on country-by-country patterns of adoption of online learning using similar survey instruments.

Online Learning: Advances and Attitudes

Although its particular mix of public, private non-profit and private for-profit higher education institutions makes the US unique, the findings of the 2015 Babson report are still a useful reference for other jurisdictions. We highlight the following.

Definitions

Babson has used consistent definitions of online, face-to-face and blended learning courses since the first report was published in 2003. These are (Babson, 2016, p. 7):

• Online: at least 80% of the course content is delivered online.
• Face-to-face: courses in which zero to 29% of the content is delivered online (this category includes both traditional and web-facilitated courses).
• Blended (or hybrid): between 30% and 80% of course content delivered online.

Babson uses the terms blended and hybrid as synonyms. Bates (2015, p. 311), however, made a useful proposal to use 'blended learning' for all combinations of online and face-to-face with between 30% to 80% delivered online, but to restrict the term 'hybrid learning' to blended courses where, instead of using online technology in opportunistic and serendipitous ways, the whole teaching-learning system is redesigned to create optimum synergy between the face-to-face sessions and learning online (Daniel, 2016a).

Patterns of online enrolments

The numbers of US students learning online rose by 3.9% in 2015, slightly up on the previous year's increase. Of the 5.8 million people studying online, nearly half were taking all their courses online. Public universities account for nearly three-quarters of student enrolments of all types and also for three-quarters of all undergraduates studying online. This growth in online study has been accompanied by a decline in campus-based enrolments.

The percentage of US higher education institutions (HEIs) offering MOOCs is now just over 11%. Some other HEIs are still considering whether to offer MOOCs but most have now decided against it.

Despite a widespread perception that the private for-profit sector dominates this delivery mode, the large majority of online students are in public institutions. Another myth is that institutions are recruiting students from the entire world through online learning. In practice, the majority of US students working exclusively online reside in the same state as the institution offering the course (84% for public institutions). Only 2% enrol from outside the country in any sector of US higher education. Online learning is not a Trojan horse for academic imperialism!

Although many institutions are dabbling in online learning - some 70% of the 4,806 US HEIs offer some distance education - almost half the students are concentrated in just 5% of these institutions: the 247 HEIs with over 5,000 ODL enrolments. 30% of all distance enrolments are in only 80 institutions (less than 2% of the national total) that each counts over 10,000 such students. How this set of institutions markets and develops its distance programs will determine the learning experiences of the large majority of distance students in the US.

Perceptions  

What do US academic leaders think about online learning? The Babson reviews show the attitudes of institutional leaders and chief academic officers to online learning are stabilizing and becoming more differentiated as individual HEIs firm up their policies.

After rising fairly steadily over 12 annual surveys, the proportion of institutions now reporting 'online education is critical to their long-term strategy' has decreased sharply, from 70.8% in 2014 to 63.3% in 2015. This suggests that after weighing up whether to commit to online learning, institutions have been making up their minds one way or the other. This is particularly true of the very smallest institutions. In 2014, 70.2% of small institutions reported online education was critical to their long-term strategy, but by 2015 this had dropped to only 46.0%. Conversely, institutions that made a commitment to online programs continue to see them as strategically important.

The overall expansion of online learning is linked, no doubt, to the steadily evolving perceptions of its quality and effectiveness among senior academic officers. Over 70% them consider that learning outcomes in online education are the same or superior to those in face-to-face instruction, while fewer than 30% see them as inferior. Unsurprisingly, respondents at institutions with large distance education enrolments are the most positive, with over 40% rating online as “superior” or “somewhat superior” to face-to-face instruction. We presume these views are based on evidence rather than wishful thinking!

A challenge for the future development of ODL, however, is these senior academic officers perceive their faculty members to be much less convinced of its merits. Overall, fewer than 30% of chief academic officers presently believe their faculty members accept the value and legitimacy of online education. Indeed, faculty members were more positive about ODL a decade ago than they are now. Here too, however, there is a sharp difference in perceptions between institutions. At institutions with over 10,000 ODL enrolments, 60% of leaders consider their faculty members are onside, a figure that drops to 10% for institutions with no ODL offerings.

The reluctance of many academics to engage with ODL may reflect their unfamiliarity with the digital world rather than any principled objections. A survey by Straumsheim (2016) found nearly 40% of US faculty members had never heard of OER (Open Educational Resources), while a further 36% knew a little about them but had never reviewed or used them. This may partly explain the slow take-up of ODL by many academics, since exploring and adopting OER is a very flexible approach to using digital content in course materials. Indeed, knowing something about OER could be taken as a surrogate for awareness of the world of digital learning generally. But change is coming. Straumsheim found half of the faculty members who were not using digital materials expected to be doing so within five years.

Notwithstanding the steady change occurring, there appears to be a disconnect between the conclusions about the speed of technology adoption of researchers like Straumsheim and the Babson team, who review the past and the present, and those who make future forecasts by peering through the lens of developments in technology.

Forecasting the Future

The 2016 Horizon Report (Johnson et al., 2016), which is largely based on anecdotal evidence from institutions, is a good example of the latter approach. It concludes, for example, that: 'the time to adoption for augmented and virtual reality, along with makerspaces, is estimated within two to three years, while affective computing and robotics are expected to be more prominent in colleges and universities within four to five years'.

In its two-part study A 2016 Look at the Future of Online Learning, Contact North | Contact Nord (2016a) takes a less anecdotal approach than the Horizon Report and organizes its forecasts into trends. In Part 1, Advancing Technology and Online Learning – an Ideal Match for the Future, it identifies seven key technology patterns and distils them down into five key features of online learning which technology will enable. These are that learning will be:

• Mobile: anywhere and anytime;
• Interactive and engaging;
• Personal (differentiated instruction);
• Intelligent (drawing on artificial intelligence); and

Part 2 of the Contact North | Contact Nord (2016a) study, Transformations in Learners, Programmes, Teaching and Learning, and Policy and Government, provides a good run-in to our next section. After looking at likely changes in student behaviour, programming, teaching/learning methods and the implications for policy and government, it asks what institutions should do to position themselves in this environment and avoid the potential disruption ahead.

Interpreting Flexibility: The Iron Triangle

Ministers of education seek to provide wide access to good quality post-secondary education at low cost (Daniel et al., 2009). Making a triangle with these three vectors of access, quality and cost is a simple way of representing different models of post-secondary education graphically and illustrates the ministers' dilemma (Daniel, 2010, p. 51). It shows that although classroom teaching may be flexible, it does not allow us to extend any one of these three vectors in the desired direction without compromising the other two.

This visual representation of the constraints of traditional classroom teaching methods has come to be known as the 'iron triangle'. Only through the use of technology, which has already increased the availability and cost-effectiveness of products and services in most other aspects of life, can quality education be expanded at low cost. Technology renders the iron triangle flexible so that it can be stretched to give greater access and better quality while simultaneously lowering costs. This is a starting point for assessing flexibility in online learning.

How far can we extend flexibility in post-secondary education and where are the limits? We attempt answers to these questions by mapping three challenges of online learning, options, outcomes and organization, onto the three vectors of access, quality and cost that define the Iron Triangle.

Access: New Options

The increasing number of options for learning and teaching is the clearest manifestation of the flexibility online technology has brought to higher education. We each feel the impact directly and personally. For example, my daughter is studying online with a foreign university for a Masters degree that is not offered in Canada and I have combined the study of 12 MOOCs with my work and travels.

The new options online learning offers boost the vector of access. On top of the usual ODL freedoms of where and when to study, contemporary online learning may also offer students open admission, a greater variety of qualifications and credentials, easier routes to the recognition of previous learning, and interactions with a large and diverse body of other learners. Teachers enjoy new options for designing and delivering their courses when they adopt online teaching and training.

Contact North | Contact Nord (2016b), in Five Ways that Online Learning is Enabling Change in Post-Secondary Education, makes the simple but important point that whether they are enrolled in an online course or not, 'all learners today are online learners to some degree'. Even those taking entirely face-to-face courses turn to search engines to chase down facts and knowledge, they use social media to stay in touch with fellow students and they exchange e-mails with their teachers. The 'real issue', the article continues, 'is how developments in technology are enabling changes in pedagogy, which in turn may affect the way in which colleges and universities operate'.

This 'real issue' resonates with students, who find that they often engage more fully with online studies than with other methods of teaching (Owston, York & Murtha, 2013; Daniel, 2016a). Online work gives them more opportunity to construct knowledge themselves, which leads to deeper learning and also motivates them to work harder.

But there is a caveat. Whilst there is often synergy between greater flexibility in course formats and greater convenience for students, this is not always true. The capacity of ODL to enable people to study anywhere does combine flexibility and convenience in a positive way. A large project on mobile learning in the UK improved retention and progression rates and was found to be particularly helpful to non-traditional students (Attewel et al., 2009).

But the power of ODL to bridge time needs more careful handling. If students' convenience were the main criterion, then allowing them to enrol in a course at any time and complete it at their own pace would be the answer. Flexibility in start dates is fine, although it does reduce the possibility of interaction between students who are at the same point in the course, as well as being more challenging for tutors and teachers. But there is abundant evidence that making courses entirely self-paced after enrolment leads to lower retention and completion rates.

This is not surprising. All learners, but particularly older students with jobs and families, have many calls on their time. They need a mechanism that motivates them to give some priority to their studies. This usually takes the form of assignment deadlines and a fixed date for the end of the course while giving them flexibility to schedule their work within this framework. Another approach is to break the course into several shorter courses so the student can complete each one more quickly and, if desired, take a break before tackling the next one.

Pacing study in this way is less important for informal online learning opportunities like MOOCs. As a MOOC learner myself, I sometimes like to get ahead of the course schedule, although I also find it helpful if the course remains accessible online well after its formal end date.

The key criterion for judging the value of flexibility in online learning is whether students become more engaged and perform better. Contact North | Contact Nord's (2016c) posting, Towards a New Pedagogy of Engaged Learning, provides much useful guidance to teachers, as does its companion document, Seven Habits of the Professor of the Future (Contact North | Contact Nord, 2016d). What do they say?

Having recalled the earlier point that all learners today use online tools, they explore the 'new pedagogy of engaged learning from the disruptive point of view that it is time to stop thinking of online learning, blended learning and classroom-based teaching as if these were competing pedagogies. They are not. They are all part of the approaches available to 21st century college or university instructors'.

Engaged learning is an amalgam of the time and effort students put into their studies and how effectively the institution organizes resources, curricula and other learning opportunities to encourage participation in activities that foster learning. The US National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) (2013) noted, inter alia, the following three points about student engagement.

Most students taking all of their courses online:

• Experienced high levels of challenge, spent slightly more time studying and reading, and were assigned more writing.
• Used learning strategies, such as identifying key information from reading assignments, more often, giving higher self-reported grades.
• Were significantly less engaged in collaborative learning and had fewer interactions with faculty but rated the quality of those interactions more highly than students with no online courses.

The Contact North | Contact Nord (2016c) posting stresses that establishing communities of practice for faculty members is also important: 'they need to be able to see what is possible and to connect to those who “go before them” so they find out what works, what didn’t work and what were the lessons learned'. The teachonline.ca portal for faculty and instructors is an attempt to do this ( http://teachonline.ca/home ).

Seven Habits of the Professor of the Future (Contact North | Contact Nord, 2016d) makes some similar points. Useful options for the faculty member are:

• Intelligent magazine-like search engines that collect new information in their current fields of interest (e.g. Flipboard).
• Continuous updating of course resources for students (e.g. through OER finders).
• Tools that facilitate large-scale global collaboration (e.g. on research, program development and accreditation standards).
• Assessment banks that facilitate competency testing.
• Tools for creating multi-media courses (e.g. iBook developer).
• Tools that make meetings more effective and efficient.
• Using face-to-face sessions for apprenticeship-style demonstrations of using skills and applying knowledge.

What these options have in common is they help teachers, who are being pulled in many different directions, to discharge their tasks more efficiently and provide their students with more engaging and meaningful learning opportunities.  

Quality: New Outcomes

The outcomes learners achieve through their studies align with the quality vector in the Iron Triangle. Quality assurance (QA) processes in post-secondary education once focused on the quality of the inputs (grades of incoming students, qualifications of the faculty, library holdings, etc.). In its next phase of development, QA paid greater attention to the processes of teaching, learning and assessment. Today, prodded by employers and governments, QA agencies are grappling with the challenge of judging students' learning outcomes.

Outcomes range from formal university degrees and college diplomas through the certification of new skills to informal methods of recognition or simply the basic satisfaction of having mastered new knowledge. Online learning has created much greater flexibility in the definition of learning outcomes, but where are the limits to that flexibility?

Students coming into higher education are seeking - and being offered - a wider range of learning outcomes than in the past. Traditional degrees and diplomas will not become obsolete any time soon, but shorter learning opportunities are blossoming under the stimulus of online learning. MOOCs, which use online technology to offer learning content to very large international audiences, are an extreme example. We use the term 'learning content' to make the point that most MOOCs do not usually offer the formal assessment and certification we normally associate with a 'course', although this is changing (Contact North | Contact Nord, 2016e). 

Lack of credible certification does not, however, make MOOCs less helpful to many of the thousands of learners who seek a particular content. The 12 MOOCs I have taken were all interesting and well designed. Using the content of these MOOCs to enrich my everyday life is a more significant benefit for me than any certificate of participation. My latest MOOC, Strategies for Successful Ageing (FutureLearn & Trinity College, Dublin) is a perfect example. The encouragement to keep fit, eat healthy food and sustain my social networks is a more useful outcome from my study than having a course participation certificate on the wall!

Starting from the example of MOOCs, where individual learners largely judge the value of the learning outcomes for themselves, there is now a range of approaches to certifying learning outcomes leading right up to the examinations and screening used by the most exacting professions. Online technologies have facilitated this diversification, open badges being a good example.

Open badges are based on software that allows any organization or individual to present a digital badge to a learner who has satisfied the criteria for earning it. Because they are in digital format, badges can include more information about what and how the learners studied, how they were assessed, the time involved, etc., than a normal paper record. However, value of the badge to the holder who presents it to a potential employer as proof of competence depends crucially on the credibility of the organization or individual that issued the badge.

While some established institutions issue badges, such as universities that use them to motivate students to master 'soft skills', their principal virtue is to foster greater variety in skills certification. Many organizations are taking advantage of this opportunity, following the example of companies (e.g. Cisco, Microsoft) that have a long tradition of certifying people they judge competent to service their products, certification that commands respect throughout those industries.

Organizations without such a track record have various opportunities to demonstrate their quality and credibility through external review. For example, the US Council for Higher Education Accreditation has an International Quality Group (CHEA/CIQG) that administers a quality assurance process (the Quality Platform) to such 'post-traditional' providers. The process focuses almost entirely on reviewing the articulation and attainment of student learning outcomes. Successful organizations gain recognition as CHEA/CIQG Quality Platform providers.

In a previous essay on Making Sense of Blended Learning (Daniel, 2016a), we explored the debates about the skills and knowledge graduates will require for life and work in the 21st century. Two of the main challenges are to give more attention to developing core skills whilst embedding them in the appropriate context and to ensure students grasp the academic knowledge that underpins their areas of study. In Beyond Course Content: Teaching Core Skills Online, Contact North | Contact Nord (2016f) illustrates how various institutions are using online methods to embed the teaching of these core skills within and alongside instruction in different disciplines.

One of these core skills is digital literacy. Reinforcing the findings of an earlier study (Jones & Husein, 2010), a recent US survey refutes the assumption that younger people are more at ease with digital technology, noting that 'millennials find the Internet more scary than older Americans' (Rasmussen College, 2015). MediaSmarts (2015), which defines digital literacy as the 'capacity to participate in a society that uses digital communications technology in workplaces, government, education, cultural domains, civic spaces, homes and leisure spheres', reports on digital literacy policy and practice in Canada.   

We conclude from this analysis of flexibility in learning outcomes that students should be aware that new forms of certification take time to establish their credibility, although in this fast-moving field that time need not be very long. Nevertheless, after learners find a course that matches their needs, they should check the credibility, within that particular field, of the body that will certify their achievement.

Cost: New Organization

In order to derive most benefit from online learning, organizations must adapt their structures and policies. We relate this requirement for new forms of organization to the cost vector in the Iron Triangle. Online learning presents both opportunities and challenges to the traditional economic models and cost structures of post-secondary education. MOOCs are a particular instance of the challenges that online learning poses. MOOCs are offered online at scale, yet are mostly offered free of charge. How do institutions integrate courses that do not generate direct revenue into their business model? 

As the options for students and teachers evolve and the outcomes of post-secondary education diversify, we should expect changes in the ways institutions organize themselves. There are two trends at work, pulling in opposite directions. We start with the less attractive.

Post-secondary education is being unbundled. This 'refers to the separation of the components of the learning and credentialing process, potentially separating course design, development, delivery, support, assessment, and credentialing. Learners will be able to select the providers of content, the mentoring and coaching for mastery and then undertake assessment in dedicated assessment centres so as to secure recognition by professional bodies, credit coordinating agencies, and/or universities and colleges. Given that quality no longer relates to residency at any one institution but to competencies and mastery, unbundling is the key to personalized learning routes and differentiation of providers' (Contact North | Contact Nord, 2016a).

Does this describe a happy world of extraordinary flexibility and rich choice for learners or something closer to anarchy? These elements of flexibility foreseen by the proponents of unbundling will doubtless become available. But there are several reasons for suspecting that few students will opt for the fully unbundled model.

First, most people do not want and cannot handle too much choice, quite apart from the transaction costs and complexities of dealing with different bodies for each step of the learning and certification process. Students like the security of dealing with an institution they know and trust. We saw earlier that notwithstanding the global reach of ODL programs, most ODL students enrol at institutions physically located in their own jurisdiction.

Second, faculty members like to have some consistency and continuity in their student body and will likely find the free-for-all of the unbundled post-secondary world demotivating.

Third, institutions also like the idea of being able to identify 'their' students. Their reluctance to reduce residency requirements is more than a ploy to protect a market. To proceed through a program with a cohort of fellow students can be just as meaningful for online learners as those taking classes on campus.   

On this reasoning, it seems likely HEIs will react to unbundling by organizing themselves to re-bundle the total learning experience for students - and students will accept this gratefully. This leads naturally to the more positive organizational trend.

The Irish scholar Desmond Keegan once pointed out that in classroom education, the teacher teaches, whereas in distance education the institution teaches (Keegan, 1990). This is because ODL courses exist somewhat independently of the particular academics that first prepared them, so the institution has to take some responsibility for ensuring continuity in offering and supporting these courses. As our ODL course offerings expanded at Laurentian University in the 1980s, for example, we found it necessary to strengthen the central administrative function so faculty members could take vacations or sabbaticals with the assurance the ODL office would organize support for the students in their courses in their absence.

Open universities, which function exclusively through ODL, build these central support systems before they start operations, whereas campus institutions that add ODL offerings must put them in place as the program expands. This is usually controversial because any involvement of the central administration in teaching functions tends to provoke resistance from the schools and faculties as well as from individual academics. The answer, at least in theory, is subsidiarity; an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. This could mean, for example, central services operate a common learning management system for the whole institution, whereas, say, the school of nursing organizes support and practicums for its own ODL students.

However, as technology evolves and ODL offerings expand, the optimal expression of subsidiarity will change too. Nearly everything in the preceding sections suggests, for instance, that institutions need to take responsibility for helping faculty members re-equip themselves, both materially and intellectually, to handle the options and outcomes we described. Human resources policies must also adapt to changing patterns of academic work. While the negotiations required may be painful, they are probably best conducted at the institutional level rather than unit-by-unit.

An effective approach to subsidiarity in organizing an institution for a more flexible future will also help it to cope with the challenge of unbundling. Some institutions, both out of self-interest but also with the encouragement of students, may set up brokerage-style services to help students re-bundle the elements they want. This will mean hiring increasing number of counsellors and specialists of various kinds to staff these functions.

As they go down this route, HEIs must avoid hollowing out their academic and teaching functions. US post-secondary tuition fees have increased much faster than inflation in recent years because institutions have added many new non-academic staff while reducing the number of appointments to full-time faculty posts. Some institutions may find this financially unsustainable, quite apart from the threat it poses to their intellectual vitality.

Flexibility is a defining element of online learning. We have explored the opportunities and challenges it presents by referring back to the Iron Triangle of access, quality and cost that helped us visualise how technology initiated a revolution in education through open and distance learning (ODL). Although online learning presents a richer and more complex range of possibilities than earlier forms of ODL, the Iron Triangle remains a useful point of reference.

Viewing the new options for learning and teaching online through the lens of accessibility helps us find a balance between flexibility and effectiveness. Similarly, using the yardstick of quality to guide us through the wider range of learning outcomes made possible by online learning permits enables us to advise students constructively. Finally, we related the new organizational approaches that online learning requires to the cost vector. The highly flexible study frameworks generated by online learning pose difficult challenges to institutions. Those offering MOOCs must develop a lucid business model that balances costs against reputational and other benefits. More crucially, institutions need to develop both strategies and tactics that will enable them to maintain their institutional integrity if the trend of unbundling post-secondary education gathers momentum.    

The many choices of study options and learning outcomes that are now available pose both opportunities and challenges to all post-secondary stakeholders as they organize themselves for a technology-rich future. Post-secondary education has been accused of being too rigid; does it now face the danger of becoming too flexible?

Both students and faculty members want useful outcomes for their work. Online technologies can help them achieve these because they favour deeper student engagement and commitment as well as bringing greater diversity and intellectual excitement into the teaching-learning process. Post-secondary institutions will have even greater responsibilities to their students in the coming era. They must strive to achieve an ethical balance between helping students sift through the wide array of external course choices and 'bundling' opportunities and proposing programs within the institution that will deliver the outcomes their learners want. Institutions will also have to provide fuller support to their faculty members and staff, notably in fostering opportunities for training and networking in communities of practice, as well as back-up for an increasing array of technologies.

Buildings collapse in earthquakes because they are either too flexible or too rigid. Institutions should foster the organizational resilience needed to ensure they can cope with the perturbations that a more flexible era of post-secondary education will bring.            

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Convenience and Flexibility of the Online Classes Essay (Article)

The decision to study online is significant, and an increasing number of people are choosing this route. Why should you consider this mode of education? The answers are different for every student, but convenience and flexibility are major reasons. Online classes could remove obstacles that have kept from achieving your ambitions.

For some folks, geography is a key factor. Is there a fine institution of higher education within reach of your home? If not, and especially if your other regional options are a bit lacking in reputation, you may be better off with a more prestigious online institution.

Is there a college nearby that offers the particular program that you seek? Specialized training is available online almost anywhere around the world, including for professional or continuing education coursework that is often required for ongoing licensure or certification in your field.

For many folks, physical access issues can pose a barrier to on-campus classes. If you have any sort of physical or mental disability, you know that classroom learning can be a tremendous challenge. Online classes eliminate most physical barriers, of course.

Additionally, many problems that people encounter in the classroom, such as distraction, can be eliminated. At home, you can create the learning environment that fits your learning style: whether this includes absolute silence, or a companionable hubbub.

If you have a diagnosed learning difference, it may be less onerous to accommodate your needs in a virtual classroom. Although many online classes include timed tests, it is worth it to find out whether extensions in time for assessments are negotiable.

Alternatively, you may be faced with invisible barriers to classroom learning. Some families may be reluctant to allow their youngster to attend a college, and mix with other students, for cultural or religious reasons. Online courses remove many of these objections.

If you are trying to hold down a job while pursuing a degree or certification, you are a prime candidate for online learning. Most programs will allow you to fit your studying in around your work schedule. Be careful not to overload yourself, however. Reputable virtual college coursework is going to be just as intellectually demanding as bricks and mortar classes.

The advantage of online courses for full or part-time employed individuals is that you can plan how you take your courses. If you need to take only one course at a time, you can find a program that will permit this.

Folks who have responsibility for child care or elder care can also benefit from web-based classes. You can be listening to a lecture while your charges are sleeping peacefully.

Students who are very shy or lack confidence in themselves can overcome this obstacle through online classes. The virtual classroom offers opportunities to shine without having to speak in front of a crowd full of curious pairs of eyes. Some currently very successful professionals once cringed and panicked at contributing to a classroom full of strangers. With the confidence gained in an online course, a shy individual might prepare themselves to eventually enter a bricks and mortar classroom without terror.

Online classes also introduce students to a variety of web-based tools and techniques that will be very valuable later on. Many classes use features such as GoogleDocs to share and collaborate on projects.

The experience of online learning is also almost purely educational. While many students would argue that the time spent hanging out with schoolmates in the dorm, library, cafeteria, or lounging on a lawn, is what makes college awesome, parents paying the tuition might beg to differ. All that down time, whether spent knocking back Jell-O shots or solving the world’s problems over a latte , may be delightful, but it does detract from the hours available for study. Online classes remove at least one temptation to neglect the books.

There are some other efficiencies offered by this method of getting an education. Consider transportation. Even living at home and commuting to a local college consumes relatively significant amounts of time. On some campuses, dorms are so far from the classrooms that the daily commute really adds up. For many students living on campus, there are several days each semester eaten up by travelling home during vacations. All this is an expense in time and sometimes money that is avoided by online learning.

Additionally, students living on campus must take care of all the details of laundry and, sometimes, food shopping and housekeeping. This is an immense distraction and often a major time-waster. Online courses mean you can stay at home where these chores are already being taken care of.

The quality of online courses available is increasing each year. Just recently, a number of top-flight universities have begun offering courses online, some for free. This allows students to pit their brains against some of the best professorial minds in academia. Although most such programs are non-credit, there are plans to eventually make it possible to convert a non-credit course to a full-credit one, perhaps with the payment of a fee.

All these advantages of online coursework warrant a careful consideration!

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Pros and Cons of Online Learning: A Comprehensive Approach

Table of contents, pros of online learning, cons of online learning.

• Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2017). Digital Learning Compass: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017. Babson Survey Group.
• Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2010). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. US Department of Education.
• Li, N., Marsh, G. E., & Peltier, J. W. (2020). Exploring students’ motivations and challenges in online courses: A self-determination theory perspective. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 18(1), 56-79.
• Murphy, E., & Rodriguez-Manzanares, M. A. (2017). Students’ experiences in online courses: A qualitative research synthesis. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(5).
• Simonson, M., Schlosser, C., & Orellana, A. (2011). Distance education research: A review of the literature. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 23(2-3), 124-142.

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Essay On Online Education: In 100 Words, 150 Words, and 200 Words

• Updated on  
• Apr 26, 2024

Online education has emerged as a significant transformation in the global education landscape, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic . This essay explores the various facets of online education, from its inception to its advantages and disadvantages and its impact on learners and educators alike. The evolution of online education presents a new horizon for accessible and flexible learning .

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Online Education in 100 words
• 2 Essay on Online Education in 150 words
• 3 Essay on Online Education in 200 words
• 4 Short Essay on Online Education

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Essay on Online Education in 100 words

Online education is a modern educational paradigm where students access instructional content through the internet. This innovative approach has gained immense popularity, especially after the pandemic, owing to its convenience and adaptability. It has enabled students of all ages to acquire knowledge from the comfort of their homes, transcending geographical barriers. Online education offers a diverse range of courses and resources, fostering continuous learning. However, it also presents challenges, such as dependency on technology and potential disengagement from the physical world.

Also Read: The Beginner’s Guide to Writing an Essay

Essay on Online Education in 150 words

Online education marks a revolutionary shift in how we acquire knowledge. It harnesses the power of the internet to deliver educational content to students, making learning more flexible and accessible. Technology advancements have accelerated the development of online education, enabling educational institutions to provide a wide range of courses and programmes through digital platforms.

One of the primary advantages of online education is its ability to cater to a diverse audience, regardless of geographical location or physical limitations. It eliminates the need for commuting and offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional classroom learning. However, online education also comes with its challenges. It requires self-discipline and motivation as students often learn independently. Additionally, prolonged screen time can have adverse effects on students’ physical and mental well-being, potentially leading to social disconnection.

Essay on Online Education in 200 words

Online education has witnessed remarkable growth in recent years, with the internet serving as the conduit for delivering educational content. This transformation has been accelerated, particularly in response to the global pandemic. Online education transcends the boundaries of traditional learning, offering students the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills from anywhere in the world.

One of the most compelling aspects of online education is its flexibility. Learners can access course materials and engage with instructors at their convenience, breaking free from rigid schedules. Moreover, this mode of education has expanded access to a vast array of courses, allowing individuals to pursue their interests and career goals without geographical constraints.

However, it’s important to acknowledge the challenges associated with online education. It demands a high degree of self-discipline, as students must navigate the coursework independently. Prolonged screen time can have adverse effects on health and may lead to a sense of disconnection from society.

In conclusion, online education represents a significant shift in how we approach learning. It offers unprecedented access and flexibility but also requires learners to adapt to a more self-directed approach to education. Striking a balance between the benefits and challenges of online education is key to harnessing its full potential.

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Short Essay on Online Education

Find a sample essay on online education below:

An organised argument backed up by proof and examples is the key to writing a convincing essay. Create a clear thesis statement at the outset, follow a logical progression of points, and then summarise your main points.

To improve readability, use clear and concise language, break your essay into paragraphs with clear topic sentences, and vary your sentence structure.

If you’re struggling to meet the word count, review your content to see if you can expand on your ideas, provide more examples, or include additional details to support your arguments. Additionally, check for any redundancies or irrelevant information that can be removed.

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Manasvi's flair in writing abilities is derived from her past experience of working with bootstrap start-ups, Advertisement and PR agencies as well as freelancing. She's currently working as a Content Marketing Associate at Leverage Edu to be a part of its thriving ecosystem.

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The pros and cons of online learning

What to look for in an online course.

By: MIT xPRO

If you’re at a point in your life where you’re considering continuing your education, you may wonder if online learning is the right path for you.

Taking an online course requires a notable investment of time, effort, and money, so it’s important to feel confident about your decision before moving forward. While online learning works incredibly well for some people, it’s not for everyone.

We recently sat down with MIT xPRO Senior Instructional Designer and Program Manager Luke Hobson to explore the pros and cons of online learning and what to look for in an online course. If you’re waiting for a sign about whether or not to enroll in that course you’ve been eying, you just might find it here.

Pros of Online Learning

First, let’s take a look at the true value of online learning by examining some of the benefits:

1. Flexibility

Online learning’s most significant advantage is its flexibility. It’s the reason millions of adults have chosen to continue their education and pursue certificates and degrees.

Asynchronous courses allow learners to complete work at their own pace, empowering them to find the optimal time to consume the content and submit assignments.

Some people are more attentive, focused, and creative in the mornings compared to the evenings and vice versa. Whatever works best for the learners should be the priority of the learning experience.

2. Community

When Luke asks people about their main reason for enrolling in a course, a common answer is networking and community.

Learners crave finding like-minded individuals who are going through the same experiences and have the same questions. They want to find a place where they belong. Being in the company of others who understand what they’re going through can help online learners who are looking for support and motivation during challenging times and times that are worth celebrating.

Some learners have created study groups and book clubs that have carried on far beyond the end of the course-it’s amazing what can grow from a single post on a discussion board!

3. Latest information

“Speed is a massive benefit of online learning,” and according to Luke, it often doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

“When we say speed, we don’t mean being quick with learning. We mean actual speed to market. There are so many new ideas evolving within technical spaces that it’s impossible to keep courses the way they were originally designed for a long period of time.”

Luke notes that a program on Additive Manufacturing , Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality , or Nanotechnology must be checked and updated frequently. More formal learning modalities have difficulty changing content at this rapid pace. But within the online space, it’s expected that the course content will change as quickly as the world itself does.

Cons of Online Learning

Now that we’ve looked at some of the biggest pros of online learning, let’s examine a few of the drawbacks:

1. Learning environment

While many learners thrive in an asynchronous learning environment, others struggle. Some learners prefer live lessons and an instructor they can connect with multiple times a week. They need these interactions to feel supported and to persist.

Most learners within the online space identify themselves as self-directed learners, meaning they can learn on their own with the right environment, guidance, materials, and assignments. Learners should know themselves first and understand their preferences when it comes to what kind of environment will help them thrive.

2. Repetition

One drawback of online courses is that the structure can be repetitive: do a reading, respond to two discussion posts, submit an essay, repeat. After a while, some learners may feel disengaged from the learning experience.

There are online courses that break the mold and offer multiple kinds of learning activities, assessments, and content to make the learning experience come alive, but it may take some research to find them-more on what to look for in an online course later in this article! Luke and his colleagues at MIT xPRO are mindful of designing courses that genuinely engage learners from beginning to end.

3. Underestimation

Luke has noticed that some learners underestimate how much work is required in an online course. They may mistakenly believe that online learning is somehow “easier” compared to in-person learning.

For those learners who miscalculate how long they will need to spend online or how challenging the assignments can be, changing that mindset is a difficult process. It’s essential to set aside the right amount of time per week to contribute to the content, activities, and assignments. Creating personal deadlines and building a study routine are two best practices that successful online learners follow to hold themselves accountable.

Experience the Value of Online Learning: What to Look For in an Online Course

You’ve probably gathered by now that not all online courses are created equal. On one end of the spectrum, there are methods of online learning that leave learners stunned by what a great experience they had. On the other end of the spectrum, some online learning courses are so disappointing that learners regret their decision to enroll.

If you want to experience the value of online learning, it’s essential to pick the right course. Here’s a quick list of what to look for:

• Feedback and connection to peers within the course platform. Interacting regularly with other learners makes a big difference. Luke and the MIT xPRO team use peer-reviewed feedback to give learners the opportunity to engage with each other’s work.
• Proof of hard work. In the online learning space, proof of hard work often comes in the form of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or specific certifications. MIT xPRO course participants who successfully complete one or more courses are eligible to receive CEUs , which many employers, licensing agencies, and professional associations accept as evidence of a participant’s serious commitment to their professional development.

Online learning isn’t for everyone, but with the right approach, it can be a valuable experience for many people. Now that you know what to look for in an online course, see what Luke and the MIT xPRO instructional design team have to offer by checking out the latest MIT xPRO courses and programs .

Originally published at http://curve.mit.edu on August 8th, 2022.

The pros and cons of online learning was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Flexibility of Online Education: How Flexible is it?

Online education has numerous benefits , for instance, most adults can’t make enough time for on-campus courses due to their full-time work schedules, family, and other personal responsibilities. However, online education makes learning convenient and flexible.

Additionally, online classrooms use alternative ways for learning course concepts, such as interactive videos, recorded lectures, and well-written materials. As online learning evolves, students will have more options – through gamification, virtual and augmented reality, which can help create a richer and more immersive learning experience.

Benefits of Online Education

Flexibility.

The main advantage of online education is flexibility. When you enroll for online classes, you will be able to study and review course materials during your own time . What’s more, you can continue caring for your loved ones and working full-time while earning an education. You won’t need to commute to campus, reducing the amount of money that you would have spent on gas.

Normally, students choose universities based on location. For instance, if you live in Virginia, you may be unable to attend an out of state program. However, with online education, location isn’t a limiting factor. You can even tour the country and simultaneously get your degree. All you need is a computer and a strong internet connection.

Meet people from different backgrounds

There are billions of people in the world. This makes it more difficult to meet people whom you have things in common. But, an online degree program will help you meet new friends regardless of the distance. Digital tools like forums and learning platforms make it possible to connect with other remote learners within your program!

Easier to attend classes

You know how hard it can be to get to class when there has been a storm. You have to wake up early and shovel your way to school while navigating icy roads to the freezing campus. If you don’t live in a cold area, there are other conditions that may make it difficult to attend your classes. With online classes, attending your class is as simple as opening your PC or tablet. You won’t have to endure rain-soaked walks to get to class. You can learn from the comfort of your favorite coffee shop or at home in your pajamas.

Tips on How to Succeed in Online Classes

Although online classes have numerous benefits, they require just as much, if not more energy and time as traditional classrooms. Therefore, if you are considering taking online classes, ensure that you’re ready to succeed. You'll have to set aside time to watch lectures, study textbooks, and complete assignments. Self-discipline is crucial for remote learning.

Determine whether you’re a morning or a night person

If you’re a morning person, begin your day by checking online class discussions and replying to your classmates. While you won’t have to do this every day, don’t wait for the last day to do all the work. Similarly, if you’re a night person, finish off your day by completing any assignments. Remember to check the due dates of your assignments in the syllabus, because online assignments will have a fixed date and time when you should submit them.

Be persistent

Most of those who succeed in online education are those who are ready to tolerate the technical problems they face and seek assistance when needed. Online learning requires internal motivation, independence, and a strong sense of responsibility.

Create a conducive study environment

If you have a busy personal life at home and cannot concentrate on your work, leave your house whenever you want to study or complete assignments and find a quiet place. This can be just outside your house on the porch, in the library, or in a coffee house. Setting aside time away from your busy life will be essential to your success in an online course.

Be a good time manager

The flexibility of online classes can be a big disadvantage to those who are fond of procrastinating. Such students are unable to commit to their study schedule and cannot complete their online assignments on time without a daily reminder from their instructors. To become a good time manager, follow these effective tips:

• Read the course calendar provided by your instructor in the syllabus
• Make your personal schedule on a weekly basis to track all assignments and exams
• Stay organized

Do you want to go back to school and do it entirely online? If you're interested in studying health science, nursing, criminal justice, or other fields, ECPI University Online offers 100% online degrees to suit your needs. For more information regarding this exciting opportunity, connect with a friendly admissions advisor today .

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Home / Essay Samples / Education / Online Courses / The Advantages of Online Learning: Comprehensive Review

The Advantages of Online Learning: Comprehensive Review

• Category: Education
• Topic: E-Learning , Online Courses , Online Vs. Traditional Classes

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