Posted by Robyn Gee for Youth Radio
March 1, 2013 at 03:48pm

A recent study out of Columbia University shows that certain groups of students, specifically African Americans, males, and those who have low grade point averages, do poorly in online courses compared to other students. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education warns that online learning could widen the existing achievement gap between white and African American students.

Associate Professor Sean Laraway at San Jose State University in California is concerned about this trend, especially because the primary goal of the online elementary statistics course he teaches is to increase accessibility to the material. He teaches this course in partnership with Udacity, a provider of free online college courses. Laraway currently teaches approximately 4,000 students, which is actually small for an online course.

Ideally, this course serves students who would be otherwise waitlisted for the in-person course. It’s called a “bottleneck course” because it satisfies general education requirement. In addition, the course is open to community college students and high school students for credit, as well as to the public.

Laraway says that instead of talking about a black and white achievement gap, the focus should be on a student’s previous preparation for the course. “Studies show that students who aren’t prepared for in-class courses, are doubly unprepared for an online course,” he said. And most likely, students who are unprepared for online courses, have been failed by in-class education their whole life, he added.

Laraway said that there are certain traits that contribute to a student’s success in an online course. First, a student has to be able to follow written directions, often in English. Secondly, a student must have time management skills. “Because you’re not physically scheduled to show up somewhere, it’s easy to say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll get to it.’ Also when you’re taking a class at home, there are all kinds of distractions going on, sometimes family responsibilities… You have to be in an environment that supports sitting down at a computer and working really hard on some challenging concepts,” said Laraway.

While the content of Laraway’s online statistics course is exactly the same as it would be in the classroom, the experience is intentionally different. In a traditional classroom, a student will often listen to a lecture twice a week, and then complete homework. “You’re not forced to engage in the material, except in a passive way,” said Laraway. “What we hope to do with our course is present bite-size pieces of information and then immediately have some activity where they can assess their knowledge, or provoke their thought. It requires a lot of interaction,” he said.

Ultimately, Laraway says that online education is not going away — and his course is an experiment that should be evaluated. “All we can do is make sure [online courses are] evidence-based, have empirical data to support what we’re doing, that we continue to try to make it better, and keep getting student feedback on how to make it better,” he said.