“Online Learning” by Heidi Grant using DALLE-3 is licensed under CC BY 4.0

I was reading over my classmate’s Markus’s reflection (read it here) and I agree with many of his thoughts. First of all, online learning has advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages include:

  • No commute
  • accessible from anywhere with an internet connection
  • accessible (close captioning)

Disadvantages include:

  • less social
  • more distractions
  • easier to “check out”
  • less engaging
  • no opportunities for hands on learning

Given all these advantages and disadvantages, I feel that online learning should not be the default for children and teens. Children and teens need hands on opportunities and real life socialization and community building experiences. These are most easily and authentically achieved in-person. I do think that if in person learning is not available (due to health, distance, or other factors), online learning can be a good alternative, as long as participants have the ability to interact meaningfully and create community.

In class, we learner about the different modalities that online learning can take. These include:

  • hybrid- some parts of face to face replaced with online
  • multi access- online and in person both available for the lesson
  • blended- some parts online and some in person
  • face to face- everything in person

All are useful for different scenarios and situations. What modality do you prefer?