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The Daily Utah Chronicle

The University of Utah's Independent Student Voice

The Daily Utah Chronicle

The University of Utah's Independent Student Voice

The Daily Utah Chronicle

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Want your voice to be heard? Submit a letter to the editor, send us an op-ed pitch or check out our open positions for the chance to be published by the Daily Utah Chronicle.
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The Pros and Cons of Online Classes

The main problem with online classes is student participation. Even in classes where your presence is recorded, whether mandated through required commentary or simply marking that your uID has logged in, students still struggle to “attend” these classes. Even diligent students who show up to their regular classes on time can struggle to check in regularly to their online classes.

Digital classes are useful for students who are working part-time or need to stay at home. They can help reduce a professor’s workload by relying on pre-made models and examples without requiring hours of lecturing. Convenience is not the only thing we want, however. We want online classes to mirror the experience we get in face-to-face classes. The class needs to be more than simply engaging the subject alone, making our self study worth credit. This is the logic behind Canvas and CIS as a whole.

In recent years technology has had a greater presence in classrooms across all disciplines, but the transition to online classes has been slow, the reason being that it’s still difficult to get high completion rates for online classes compared to traditional classes. The problem is not that the material taught in a classroom is different from what’s taught online; rather, it’s a problem of student motivation.

The motivation to complete a class can be complex. If we were all going to class purely just to learn, then there’d be no problem, whether it was traditional or digital. That’s rarely the case, however. The major differences between the motivation to complete traditional and digital classes can be broken down into three components: Obligation, place and communication.

Obligation, or discipline, is how necessary work appears to you. You have a responsibility to be in class because you (or your parents) paid for it, and you want to get reimbursed through learning. You also have professors and T.A.s to help assist you in planning and pacing. The desire to complete the class is, in part, inspired or motivated by the professor. Online classes require a greater amount of self-motivation because you are in control of when you start and finish. The sense of obligation is then affected by how much you care about the class. Students who struggle with self-discipline struggle to meet deadlines and stay on top of the coursework.

In class we typically operate on a mindset that says, “I’m here to learn.” Whether or not we actually follow through with that, we still recognize that a classroom is a learning center. Most online classes are engaged via one’s personal computer. This means they are usually accessed at home. At home, where classwork might be seen as secondary, the online class can easily be forgotten or overlooked. In fact, its location on the internet already means there are a variety of distractions present upon accessing the class.

Finally, communication. This is one factor the U fulfills fairly well. Professors encourage students to work together, study together and help each other in general. Many professors at the U are very open, even to their general ed classes. This student interaction is one of the reasons we want to be in the classroom: to talk to other people, to get answers to our questions and to learn through discussion. Even though online classes can provide tons of extra material, give better and more in-depth explanations and link students to external websites that can assist them further, we still prefer the use of a standard classroom and to use this resource as an assistant. Canvas, however, works very well for this. Canvas is designed to look like a social media platform. You have a message inbox, a discussion section, a collaboration section, a list of people in the class with profiles, and there’s even a chat room. Its user interface and entire design are oriented around facilitating communication.

Committing to an online class requires a certain degree of willpower and self-discipline. I’ve noticed that students who aren’t particularly interested in the class have a much harder time. They forget to check in or only check in when it’s entirely necessary. They don’t communicate with other students. They turn in their work either right before the deadline or past it. So long as the class is something you’re interested in, you’ll probably do just fine.

Online classes have a lot of potential. They have the capacity to create greater and more informed engagement with the subject, more-so than you can even get in the classroom, so long as you are proactive. It really gives you the chance to help create and be a part of a unique, online community.

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