Overcoming Five Pitfalls of Online Learning  

Why the right learning platform is a crucial piece to delivering successful online learning

Pitfall #1 – No measurement against external standards

Measurement must take place to demonstrate student performance. Many virtual schools are under scrutiny because of the sudden growth in the popularity of online learning and a perceived lack of accountability. How to improve the accountability of online programs is a recurring theme in many state legislatures. Many are wondering how students in these schools perform compared to their peers in traditional classrooms.

A good online learning platform provides instructors, administrators, and students with immediate access to performance data that identify where help is needed. A good online learning platform demonstrates how each student is performing against internal and external standards.

The winning solution allows all course activities and assessment questions to be tied to specific learning objectives. The system then reports on individual student performance against these learning objectives. The learning platform supports the development of standardized tests to determine which students, instructors, courses, and schools require additional attention.

All performance reports “roll up” to compare students taking the same course on the school, district, or even state level. Effective reporting identifies which teachers and courses are most effective in helping students meet learning objectives and reach external standards.

Pitfall #2 – Implementation of a “virtual classroom” instead of a “personalized learning environment”

While we can learn much from the classroom-based paradigm, the classroom is extremely limited in its ability to create real learning. Why contain learning activities to a specific time of day or day of the week? Why require enrollment in a course to take place at the start of a new semester? Why rely on outdated textbooks when new information on any subject is only a click away? Why deliver course content through links and file downloads when this same material can be presented in a rich, engaging environment?

Replicating the offline classroom experience online is not the right objective when implementing online learning. The right solution for online learning delivers personalized learning in an engaging and immersive environment. The environment effectively delivers activities, assessments, multimedia presentations, and other content in a manner that captures the imagination of students. The learning environment supports and delivers all media types, including video, audio, presentations, images, and textual elements.

Pitfall #3 – Making life more difficult for dedicated instructors

Instructors do more than disseminate knowledge to students. They monitor student progress, remediate poor performance, and often participate in the creation of course activities and materials. Don’t select a learning platform that is time consuming and difficult for instructors to use. Technology should save time and effort to improve the lives of instructors. Many solutions—especially those that are Web-based—require seemingly countless clicks within clunky interfaces to accomplish any task.

A winning online learning platform saves instructors time by allowing them to efficiently modify courses and grade assignments through a combination of streamlined processes and simple interfaces. The right solution gives instructors and administrators actionable reports that show the progress and performance of each student. This advanced reporting facilitates intervention and personalized instruction. Finally, a good solution for online learning will help automate many administrative tasks on behalf of instructors, such as handling enrollment and sending alerts to keep students moving through the course successfully.

Pitfall #4 – Limiting online learning to those with constant high-speed Internet access

Extending learning experiences to as many students as possible is often a stated objective of online learning initiatives. This goal is too often at odds with systems that only work for students with persistent high-speed access to the Internet.

The right solution improves accessibility to online courses for all students, even those without persistent or reliable Internet access. Look for a solution that combines the convenience of online updates with the flexibility of offline access. Offline access gives students and instructors constant access to course materials. Not only does offline access reduce dependency on Internet availability, offline access through a rich application can also improve the efficiency of students when performing many tasks.

Pitfall #5 – Selecting a system that doesn’t develop new competencies

Sure, you want your students to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic through your online learning platform, but shouldn’t they also learn social networking, online collaboration, and digital note taking? Does your learning platform allow students to learn how to apply new Web 2.0 technologies to the learning process? Does the platform leverage technology to facilitate independent discoveries? Does the platform allow course participants to pool knowledge and create new artifacts through collaborative efforts?
Students today can engage in a virtual, world-wide learning community that was only dreamed of a generation ago. A learning platform that doesn’t consider today’s online environment and the skills that will be required of today’s students falls short in meeting this important requirement.

Learning systems should help develop technical skills and foster the social competencies that are emerging as essential tools for those living in our new “flattened” world and economy