Inside Higher Ed: Limits of Online Education

Our lives have been changed by COVID-19, for college students this has meant going from the classroom to online learning. An article on the blog of the website, Inside Higher Ed points out the limits of online education. Below, WNCTIMES shares the article, in part and provides a link to read the full article.

The Limits of Online Education

From a fan.
By
John Kroger
May 6, 2020

The massive expansion of on-line education across the United States in response to COVID-19 is teaching us many lessons about the value of distributed learning, but equally important, it is reminding us of its limits. In the Naval University System (which consists of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, and Marine Corps University at Quantico, Virginia, which I oversee as the Navy's Chief Learning Officer) we have moved to 100% online learning during the crisis. In the process, we have gained a much clearer understanding of what on-line education cannot do or, in other words, the ways in which traditional in-person cannot be replaced. The most obvious area in which online delivery simply cannot replicate the value of in-person learning is in science and technology education. In many of the degree programs offered by the Naval University System, STEM is a major priority, with students working long hours with their teams in our labs, conducting experiments. As COVID-19 has forced us to adopt online education, our faculty has responded magnificently. At Annapolis, for example, which offers one of the best undergraduate science and technology educations in the world, faculty members have been performing labs on Zoom and then providing data sets to students to analyze.