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Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

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Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#281

Post by noetic_techy »

hysan wrote: post #198

Not too surprising that the experience wasn’t good. Having taught in-person and online before, I can guarantee that these students ended up with a sub-optimal experience at best. Teaching online is drastically different than in-person and is not something you can easily pick-up in short notice. Made worse is that they were in the middle of a syllabus designed for in-person instruction. How material is delivered, what…

Do you think this could be alleviated with something like VR? Even cheap VR with just your phone in a VR headset holder.

To me, it feels like a technical problem. Staring at a small screen in a browser window vs being immersed. Even being able to "see" your classmates or an avatar for them might help.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#282

Post by swiley »

grumple wrote: post #169
swiley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was this downvoted? I failed a class and took the online version once so I got to see both sides. The online version had: 1) lots of busywork for the sake of busywork (to make up for attendance?) 2) much poorer instruction. Like everything felt like it was written by someone (really a group of people) who didn’t understand the subject very well, which was strange because the in person class was taught by a DR. wi…

Online courses I've taken have been much better than in-person courses. Online courses have several advantages: 1) The lecturer can prepare a video, refine it, and have others review it before it makes it to the students. Errors can be corrected and annotations can be added. 2) Quizzes, tests, and projects can be effectively randomized to dissuade cheating (see coursera courses). 3) Other resources can be linked dire…

That doesn’t sound like an undergrad online course. Universities could make courses with all of those features but IME and looking at what my friends have seen in theirs they don’t. I’m not sure if it’s an institutional requirement or if it’s because they know they can get away without it and don’t bother.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#283

Post by evgen »

madsbuch wrote: post #140
evgen wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK you have almost as many complaints regarding the second-half of the school year evaporating with additional news about the universities themselves starting to panic because international students were their primary source of funding and that looks to be drying up.

You got me on an imprecision. UK is definitely also an Anglo cultural country in this regard. I reckon they also pay most of their own tuition?

Citizens pay a lot less than international students, and universities have come to rely upon the money from those international students. The threat of not having international students for a year or two is causing some panic and it is expected that some of the more marginal universities will close.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#284

Post by gregnbanks »

0d9eooo wrote: post #201
hysan wrote: post #198

Not too surprising that the experience wasn’t good. Having taught in-person and online before, I can guarantee that these students ended up with a sub-optimal experience at best. Teaching online is drastically different than in-person and is not something you can easily pick-up in short notice. Made worse is that they were in the middle of a syllabus designed for in-person instruction. How material is delivered, what…

I've not taught online, but I have a close colleague who was doing it for years pre-pandemic, and another colleague who did a bit of it and my impressions are the same. My sense is that major universities doing online stuff have video production crews (from Communications etc) and everything is heavily edited and redone. It's more like a television show than anything else. Much more preplanning, and interactions with…

Hey 0d9eooo, with respect you have no idea what's actually happening. My wife attends one of the colleges mentioned in TFA, and at that college everything that you imagine cannot be the case, is actually the case.

> major universities doing online stuff have video production crews

Yes, but those crews don't have the bandwidth to suddenly help every professor transition to online teaching in the space of two weeks.

Also, the online versions of courses which those professionally produced videos are part of, are priced lower than the in-person courses which are currently being taught on Zoom. However at my wife’s college the price has not come down, no partial refunds are being given, no deferments are being allowed, and no transitions to part-time are being allowed.

In other words, students get to choose between leaving the course or paying the same vast amount of money for a reduced level of service.

> It's not like some zoom meeting off-the-cuff with your professor who had to switch gears on the spot along with you

No, that's precisely what it is. One week all classes were in person, then the college cancelled all classes for two weeks to transition, then all classes resumed on Zoom. Neither the professors nor the students had any more warning than that. The college did pay for a Zoom Enterprise subscription so that classes aren’t time-limited by Zoom’s free tier, but that was the extent of the help given to professors. Many professors have never used video conferencing before, or have poor WiFi. Many students have no private quiet spaces to join chats because they’re sharing accommodation in a very expensive city. There was inadequate time and no training or help for professors to adjust lesson plans or teaching resources, and library and printing facilities were closed to students.

The college’s entire response was very ad-hoc. This is perfectly understandable in the circumstances, all of us are making it up as we go along. The problem is that this institution is still charging the same sky-high tuition (six figures for a course) to students who are pouring into it their life savings, or going into lifelong debt. Meanwhile the college is delivering less value and sitting on an enormous multi-billion dollar endowment.

We’re not involved in the lawsuit, but we certainly understand where it’s coming from.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#285

Post by 0d9eooo »

gregnbanks wrote: post #284
0d9eooo wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not taught online, but I have a close colleague who was doing it for years pre-pandemic, and another colleague who did a bit of it and my impressions are the same. My sense is that major universities doing online stuff have video production crews (from Communications etc) and everything is heavily edited and redone. It's more like a television show than anything else. Much more preplanning, and interactions with…

Hey 0d9eooo, with respect you have no idea what's actually happening. My wife attends one of the colleges mentioned in TFA, and at that college everything that you imagine cannot be the case, is actually the case. > major universities doing online stuff have video production crews Yes, but those crews don't have the bandwidth to suddenly help every professor transition to online teaching in the space of two weeks. Al…

I think maybe you misunderstood what I was saying / I wasn't being clear.

I agree with you actually... what I'm suggesting is that the current situation with online teaching isn't really generalizable to long-term experiences of it, or the situation where something is planned with online teaching in mind.

I know things will vary by institution for sure, but for a lot of schools going forward they're going to try to avoid the problems you're mentioning.

My guess is even when students return, there will be things like substituting large lectures with online material, etc. Colleagues of mine at other institutions are being told that going forward training and skills in online instruction is being expected of everyone. This sounds obvious but what it means in practice is that the university probably won't find what happened this past semester acceptable.

There's a lot of issues for sure, but I don't think that the long-term experiences of online instructions can be generalized from this past semester.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#286

Post by user5994461 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #276
user5994461 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently schools can let children move on no matter what. When unable to hold end of year exams (end of middle school and high school), they will use the current grades so far and do away without any exam. For universities, it's gonna be a lot more tricky. They shouldn't get away with charging up to 50k a year for nothing. They can't deliver labs and practical trainings. There is no continuity between an undergradu…

> Apparently schools can let children move on no matter what. Colleges could also snap their fingers and mail everyone diplomas in exchange for nothing, if they felt so inclined. Personally, I'm of the opinion that schools aren't just meaningless certificate factories and that the students who attend them actually learn stuff. Just because the students are being moved up doesn't mean they're adequately prepared for n…

I agree, there is training that can't be skipped. I think it's mostly a problem for higher education, not for schools.

If a child didn't fully learn to write, or a high schooler didn't complete calculus, they can catch up the next year. (schools will probably have to adjust their curriculum slightly to catch up). Schools don't teach anything major that can't be redone or skipped.

Universities don't have this luxury. If a future dentist didn't train on a procedure this year, too bad because that was the only time it's covered. Gonna have to discover it in the field if it comes up?

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#287

Post by blaser-waffle »

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #244
kyuudou wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, chemistry/biochemistry. How would the labs work? I mean, get real. For anything software, sure, that can be taught almost totally remotely. But most actual engineering disciplines just aren't going to have effective remote coursework with hands-on labs any time soon.

There is almost no demand for 'actual' engineering a ton of this is completely offshored into oblivion, my girlfriend has a degree in chemistry and now works in a bank. There is extremely little demand for everything outside of software.

I don't buy that in the slightest. IT is, hands-down, the most commonly outsourced. The building engineers who inspected my foundation made me wait for 3 months because of demand.

Are the civil engineers running the local water treatment plant -- which can't seem to get enough qualified people -- going to hire people who don't meet the requirements to be called an "engineer" (unlike the US, these reqs are like doctors and lawyers).

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#288

Post by hollandheese »

swiley wrote: post #282
grumple wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online courses I've taken have been much better than in-person courses. Online courses have several advantages: 1) The lecturer can prepare a video, refine it, and have others review it before it makes it to the students. Errors can be corrected and annotations can be added. 2) Quizzes, tests, and projects can be effectively randomized to dissuade cheating (see coursera courses). 3) Other resources can be linked dire…

That doesn’t sound like an undergrad online course. Universities could make courses with all of those features but IME and looking at what my friends have seen in theirs they don’t. I’m not sure if it’s an institutional requirement or if it’s because they know they can get away without it and don’t bother.

Most of that is because those are hard requirements to fulfill for most professors. Video production is pretty difficult to do well. The university I teach for basically offered no help in that realm in our transition. They basically just told us we had to transition to online in two days, gave us some bullcrap professional development on how to use Canvas, and then fed us to the wolves.

Make sure to blame the university, not the professors. We're trying our best with almost no help.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#289

Post by panzagl »

mhb wrote: post #258
panzagl wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tuition is already deductible, if you don't take it as a direct tax credit.

I don't think so. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-loans/educatio...

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#290

Post by rgblambda »

intended wrote: post #131
rgblambda wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The MOOC rush is over. We know the organic retention rates are abysmal. I don't think I've ever completed a MOOC. When I get what I want out of it I drop it. Now if I was paying for it or if completion was a requirement for a job or promotion I think I'd be more invested in completing the course.

True, and this one reason among many why MOOC Retention rates are at 3%. This is one of the reasons that online education will fall behind real world college classes. Another is whether people learn the same amount.

Honestly I'd rather have the MOOCs there so I can access them as though they were a library. You get more context than on Stackoverflow but you don't have to commit to several classes or find out early on that you picked the wrong course.
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