Are you seeing college students opting more for online or in-person classes this fall semester?
I’m asking this question today because I’m hearing contradictory things from various reports and individual academics as they observe students choosing in real time. On the one hand, polls have held that students prefer in-person education. On the other, online sections might be more popular, especially if students don’t enjoy face-to-face classrooms mediated through masks, shields, and social distancing.
I put this question to Twitter and people have offered a range of stories about a shift towards online learning.
For example, Dr. Tracy Stuntz:
https://twitter.com/traftycracy/status/1430175199421423622
Dr. Christopher Conzen concurs:
We also plateaued with the interest in in-person. Now that we’re shifting under-enrolled sections to remote, those sections are picking up students.
— Chris Conzen (@chrisconzen) August 24, 2021
Stephanie Kim describes a situation with two different online options, and both are growing:
Yes. Actually, we are offering three modalities: in person, online synchronous (Zoom), and online asynchronous. In person classes are unusually under-enrolled. Online synchronous is somewhat more popular than online asynchronous, on a case by case basis.
— Stephanie K. Kim (@stephaniekkim) August 24, 2021
Things might be more complicated than a simply online/offline class choice. Karen Kosta distinguishes between face-to-face in 2019 versus in-person in 2021:
https://twitter.com/karenraycosta/status/1430178157513084934
Joann Martyn offers an interesting argument about residential campuses, I think:
https://twitter.com/joannmartyn/status/1430177432431218696
Maybe students are wanting the in-person social aspect of education without actually having to be in class. They want to be on-campus (in-person) but not in-class (in-person).
— Dannon Loveland (@DannonL) August 24, 2021
Matt “Dean Dad” Reed (and great Forum guest) sees the online rise as part of a year-long pandemic driven oscillation:
It has been a moving target. When we started fall registration in late spring, online/remote was popular. In June/July, in-person was popular. Now we're seeing a shift back to online/remote.
— Matt Reed (@deandad) August 24, 2021
I posed this question on Facebook, both on my own wall as well as in a few groups, and received a wide range of responses. Some saw rising preference for in-person, while others wanted more online. Some opined that it was too early to tell.
What are you seeing in your academic world? If you’re a student, which would you prefer?
We were shooting for largely face to face (80%) when we set up the semester. As of 3 weeks ago, we are -5.5% enrollment. Over the last 3 weeks, we allowed faculty to switch some or all of their classes to remote and are currently around 55-60% face to face with the remainder online. As of monday we are at -3.5% enrollment. Does that mean students prefer online for this fall? Perhaps. We have analysis to do still. But we suspect the move of classes online has had an impact.
I’m not a young student but a retired person returned to volunteer teaching. But my case resembles that of these students. I do prefer in person and yet I have chosen online for all my courses, both teaching and attending classes. I don’t want the traffic, the parking, and in one cases going in interferes with teaching: I worry I won’t get back to my house in time from a class at OLLI at AU to teach at OLLI at Mason. I can’t drive at night so that must be online.
Since US higher education is far from democratic, the larger questions are what does management want and can management convince students and staff to cooperate? Also, can higher ed management get students and their families to pay full price for education that resembles a roboschool–in order to a maximize profits? #collegemania #robocollege #collegemeltdown
https://higheredinquirer.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-growth-of-robot-colleges.html