[M_Six]

My primary job duty is helping professors with online courses. I've seen awesome work and I've seen crap. There are several factors involved.

1. First and foremost is the platform. Zoom was never meant to be an online learning system. There are dedicated platforms for that, like Canvas, Moodle, D2L, etc. Even Teams is better for learning than Zoom, but Teams requires a pricey Microsoft agreement. I think if this remote learning goes on for much longer, you'll start seeing some decent integration between live sessions (Teams, Zoom, etc) and asynchronous platforms like Canvas, Moodle, and D2L. It's already starting.

2. Separate from but closely related to #1 is money, on both ends of the experience. School systems with money can afford high end Learning Management Systems (LMS). Likewise, households with decent incomes can afford nice machines for their kids and high speed internet. Having a good machine and fast internet is a game changer.

3. Instructors. I've seen many that adapted very quickly to moving online. Some did quite well and have set up superb courses that barely missed a beat over face-to-face (F2F). Others are slowly learning the ropes and getting better at it. And then there are some who simple cannot or will not pick up the knowledge needed to go from chalkboard-and-homework style lectures to online instruction. In a school system with decent resources, the difference between quality courses and junk correspondence-style courses usually comes down to the instructor.

4. The students themselves. Some students do much better in a F2F environment than online. Some of that is the difference between a classroom atmosphere and home life. In a household with numerous kids where maybe each kid does not have his/her own machine, online learning can be a nightmare. This past spring I had to work nights with a student who had no choice but to take all his classes and exams at night because he was home with his younger siblings who needed the one PC they had for classes all day. This goes back to #2 where household income can play a big part. And to some kids a computer screen is just another TV, and anything on it can get to be old and boring in short time. This is especially true the younger the student is.

5. Probably the least important but still significant factor is the course itself. Let's face it, chemistry experiments just aren't the same when you're not doing them yourself. Same thing goes for a lot of things like music, art, theater, natural sciences, etc. Hands-on work is crucial to many fields.

TLDR: There are a lot of factors when it comes to quality online courses vs junk. But don't paint all online learning with the same brush. There are some really good online programs out there.