Is online college easier now?

[TopHatWombat]

I don't have much breadth for comparison, but I definitely feel like the TESU courses I'm taking recently are significantly easier than the TESC courses I took 20+ years ago the first time I attended the school.

[EE-AE-Engineer]

These are two subjects that I can talk about. I earned a Bachelors of Music in the early 00s and I wished online education was as popular back then as it is today. The university where I earned my BM, as it was learned latter, we had several misandrist professors who radically changed students grades based on their sex. I recall the one student who sat next to me, we were perplexed as to why she would get more exam questions incorrect than I, but still managed to "earn" a higher grade than I. At that time, I never knew I would encounter professors who were bigots.

I'm currently pursuing two online graduate degrees at the moment - one in aeronautical and the other in electrical engineering. I found that grade inflation is far more rampant with on campus schooling simply because not everything is monitored unlike online education. Even in public school grade manipulation is rampant. A friend teaches in a NJ school district and she showed me the grade schedule they are to use. The schedule is based on the pupil's race and sex. For instance in her school district white male grades need to be multiplied by 0.8 while black females grades are multiplied by 1.65.

In regards to difficulty, that comes down to the subject and the student. For instance, I'm doing really well in school. But that's because I spent 7 years of my life studying the aforementioned subjects on my own time. There is one exception to this, my one professor just can't communicate rendering many of his recorded lectures pointless. He's a brilliant man, but the two skills one needs to teach include 1) knowing the subject and 2) being able to communicate. This particular course I speak of, because of his inability to communicate it has many of us students to seek out other knowledgeable people who can communicate on this one particular subject.

[NotJoeBiden]

These are two subjects that I can talk about. I earned a Bachelors of Music in the early 00s and I wished online education was as popular back then as it is today. The university where I earned my BM, as it was learned latter, we had several misandrist professors who radically changed students grades based on their sex. I recall the one student who sat next to me, we were perplexed as to why she would get more exam questions incorrect than I, but still managed to "earn" a higher grade than I. At that time, I never knew I would encounter professors who were bigots.

I'm currently pursuing two online graduate degrees at the moment - one in aeronautical and the other in electrical engineering. I found that grade inflation is far more rampant with on campus schooling simply because not everything is monitored unlike online education. Even in public school grade manipulation is rampant. A friend teaches in a NJ school district and she showed me the grade schedule they are to use. The schedule is based on the pupil's race and sex. For instance in her school district white male grades need to be multiplied by 0.8 while black females grades are multiplied by 1.65.

In regards to difficulty, that comes down to the subject and the student. For instance, I'm doing really well in school. But that's because I spent 7 years of my life studying the aforementioned subjects on my own time. There is one exception to this, my one professor just can't communicate rendering many of his recorded lectures pointless. He's a brilliant man, but the two skills one needs to teach include 1) knowing the subject and 2) being able to communicate. This particular course I speak of, because of his inability to communicate it has many of us students to seek out other knowledgeable people who can communicate on this one particular subject.

Hahahaha this is fake af. Nobody does grade multipliers to reduce white peoples grades and increase black peoples grades. This isn’t real.


-
Joe

[Vle045]

It really depends on the student and on the class. My ex's in-person college work in the 90s from what I remember seemed much more rigorous than anything I've experienced in the modern erea.

My high school teachers always gaslit us with horror stories about how hard college supposedly was and how we were not nearly prepared for the amount of work it would take to even pass English Lit 101. "You'll have to read Chaucer for 6 hours every day just to make a B! You have NO IDEA what you're in store for!"

I've taken probably 15 credit hours worth of lit. I hold an English degree. Never had to reach Chaucer once. To this day I don't know if they were just gassing us up or if the rigor of my HS teachers really was significantly harder back in their day. The truth may be somewhere in the middle.

But I remember high school being more actual writing/homework/labor than any college class I've taken. My significant other did undergrad before there was such a thing as Google Docs and was FURIOUS that I could just write into an APA or MLA template and not have to manually set the margins, fiddle with other formatting at all, and can just use bibliography citation generator plugins. All of which they had to do manually in Microsoft Word at the time they were in community college.

I suspect think in the really broad, high-level view, college education has probably gotten significantly less rigorous over the last several decades.

Thank you for sharing.  This is kind of where my head was at. My son’s high school is insane with some of their policies.  They get zero credit for late work.  My son has ADHD. They will not provide any grace.  They say they are preparing kids for college. So multiple due dates for multiple classes is hard for him. You’d think planners would help, but for him that’s like another assignment.  (Drives me nuts).  His grades are all over the place and don’t reflect his ability. That HS English class you describe would be like torture for him. But I feel like he still has options.

---

These are two subjects that I can talk about. I earned a Bachelors of Music in the early 00s and I wished online education was as popular back then as it is today. The university where I earned my BM, as it was learned latter, we had several misandrist professors who radically changed students grades based on their sex. I recall the one student who sat next to me, we were perplexed as to why she would get more exam questions incorrect than I, but still managed to "earn" a higher grade than I. At that time, I never knew I would encounter professors who were bigots.

I'm currently pursuing two online graduate degrees at the moment - one in aeronautical and the other in electrical engineering. I found that grade inflation is far more rampant with on campus schooling simply because not everything is monitored unlike online education. Even in public school grade manipulation is rampant. A friend teaches in a NJ school district and she showed me the grade schedule they are to use. The schedule is based on the pupil's race and sex. For instance in her school district white male grades need to be multiplied by 0.8 while black females grades are multiplied by 1.65.

In regards to difficulty, that comes down to the subject and the student. For instance, I'm doing really well in school. But that's because I spent 7 years of my life studying the aforementioned subjects on my own time. There is one exception to this, my one professor just can't communicate rendering many of his recorded lectures pointless. He's a brilliant man, but the two skills one needs to teach include 1) knowing the subject and 2) being able to communicate. This particular course I speak of, because of his inability to communicate it has many of us students to seek out other knowledgeable people who can communicate on this one particular subject.

Hahahaha this is fake af. Nobody does grade multipliers to reduce white peoples grades and increase black peoples grades. This isn’t real.


-
Joe

I agree. There’s no way.  Teachers don’t even grade fully by hand anymore.  It’s all put into a program like GradeBook (part of a suite by ProgressBook).  Assignments have a rubric and point value.  The points translate to grades based on the percentage.  An administrator sets up the grading scale for what constitutes an A, A-,B+, etc.  It’s  applied to the entire school.  I can say this with confidence because I have had access to this area of the program and verified that it was correct each school year.  I also ran our honor roll and merit roll lists and had to set up the algorithms for those. (For instance Merit roll was a certain GPA plus no more than one C and the C couldn’t be in Math or English)  

If that story were real, someone would be in serious trouble.

[Duneranger]

These are two subjects that I can talk about. I earned a Bachelors of Music in the early 00s and I wished online education was as popular back then as it is today. The university where I earned my BM, as it was learned latter, we had several misandrist professors who radically changed students grades based on their sex. I recall the one student who sat next to me, we were perplexed as to why she would get more exam questions incorrect than I, but still managed to "earn" a higher grade than I. At that time, I never knew I would encounter professors who were bigots.

I'm currently pursuing two online graduate degrees at the moment - one in aeronautical and the other in electrical engineering. I found that grade inflation is far more rampant with on campus schooling simply because not everything is monitored unlike online education. Even in public school grade manipulation is rampant. A friend teaches in a NJ school district and she showed me the grade schedule they are to use. The schedule is based on the pupil's race and sex. For instance in her school district white male grades need to be multiplied by 0.8 while black females grades are multiplied by 1.65.

In regards to difficulty, that comes down to the subject and the student. For instance, I'm doing really well in school. But that's because I spent 7 years of my life studying the aforementioned subjects on my own time. There is one exception to this, my one professor just can't communicate rendering many of his recorded lectures pointless. He's a brilliant man, but the two skills one needs to teach include 1) knowing the subject and 2) being able to communicate. This particular course I speak of, because of his inability to communicate it has many of us students to seek out other knowledgeable people who can communicate on this one particular subject.

Lol, this is not true at all. Online school is waaaaay easier to cheat in even with proctoring. Grade inflation is more of a thing online. UMPI is a prime example; if you don't graduate with Summa or Magna, at the least, you didn't even try. At my BM school 1% of grads got Summa in any degree field...

[NotJoeBiden]

To be fair, open book style tests are fairly common in high level technical disciplines like graduate engineering. It makes them much more suitable for online, given the questions tend to be unique word problems that really cant be solved-lived using any sort of computer.

[Jonathan Whatley]

<tapping the sign>

Major Study: Unproctored Online Exams Provide Meaningful Assessment

[ss20ts]

It really depends on the student and on the class. My ex's in-person college work in the 90s from what I remember seemed much more rigorous than anything I've experienced in the modern erea.

My high school teachers always gaslit us with horror stories about how hard college supposedly was and how we were not nearly prepared for the amount of work it would take to even pass English Lit 101. "You'll have to read Chaucer for 6 hours every day just to make a B! You have NO IDEA what you're in store for!"

I've taken probably 15 credit hours worth of lit. I hold an English degree. Never had to reach Chaucer once. To this day I don't know if they were just gassing us up or if the rigor of my HS teachers really was significantly harder back in their day. The truth may be somewhere in the middle.

But I remember high school being more actual writing/homework/labor than any college class I've taken. My significant other did undergrad before there was such a thing as Google Docs and was FURIOUS that I could just write into an APA or MLA template and not have to manually set the margins, fiddle with other formatting at all, and can just use bibliography citation generator plugins. All of which they had to do manually in Microsoft Word at the time they were in community college.

I suspect think in the really broad, high-level view, college education has probably gotten significantly less rigorous over the last several decades.

Never read Chaucer because I didn't major in literature, but yeah I definitely had on campus classes where I needed to read like 6 hours a day just to keep up. Western Civ was like this. Total nightmare of a class. The book was over 3 inches thick and we had to read more than half of it for Western Civ 1. We read the second half in Western Civ 2. 

I took Honors English and I had to read at least 1 book a week in addition to our textbook. I had to write about each book as well. The entire class had to give oral presentations in front of the class and invited guests. That was uber fun. We had to write a 10 page paper to go along with it. Mine was on The Color Purple. We had to research in the library with a card catalog and use books and microfiche. Yeah online scholarly journal databases are a million times easier and faster.

---

It really depends on the student and on the class. My ex's in-person college work in the 90s from what I remember seemed much more rigorous than anything I've experienced in the modern erea.

My high school teachers always gaslit us with horror stories about how hard college supposedly was and how we were not nearly prepared for the amount of work it would take to even pass English Lit 101. "You'll have to read Chaucer for 6 hours every day just to make a B! You have NO IDEA what you're in store for!"

I've taken probably 15 credit hours worth of lit. I hold an English degree. Never had to reach Chaucer once. To this day I don't know if they were just gassing us up or if the rigor of my HS teachers really was significantly harder back in their day. The truth may be somewhere in the middle.

But I remember high school being more actual writing/homework/labor than any college class I've taken. My significant other did undergrad before there was such a thing as Google Docs and was FURIOUS that I could just write into an APA or MLA template and not have to manually set the margins, fiddle with other formatting at all, and can just use bibliography citation generator plugins. All of which they had to do manually in Microsoft Word at the time they were in community college.

I suspect think in the really broad, high-level view, college education has probably gotten significantly less rigorous over the last several decades.

Thank you for sharing.  This is kind of where my head was at. My son’s high school is insane with some of their policies.  They get zero credit for late work.  My son has ADHD. They will not provide any grace.  They say they are preparing kids for college. So multiple due dates for multiple classes is hard for him. You’d think planners would help, but for him that’s like another assignment.  (Drives me nuts).  His grades are all over the place and don’t reflect his ability. That HS English class you describe would be like torture for him. But I feel like he still has options.

---

In college, on campus and online, I've had MANY professors not accept late work so the grade earned is a 0. Deadlines exist. They're part of life and he will have to learn to deal with deadlines or he won't be employable for long. I had ADHD and brain damage, yet I still understand how deadlines work and have to deal with them because the world doesn't revolve around my goofy brain. I'm starting courses again next month and in the syllabus for all of my courses it states that late work is either not accepted or there's a major point reduction - like 15 or more points for 1 day late.

[mancheseter24]

By the way, at my SEC school, every professor I had made special plans for students with ADHD. Some took their exams by themselves, or on another time, or with small groups, etc. Same with their homework.
Also, the proportion of students with ADHD today is massive, so I think that an in person school may be better for him. You get the real experience, and from my own perspective, people without ADHD like myself get to learn from students with ADHD, and plus in all the other non academic activities I could never tell which ones had it or not.

[Vle045]

By the way, at my SEC school, every professor I had made special plans for students with ADHD. Some took their exams by themselves, or on another time, or with small groups, etc. Same with their homework.
Also, the proportion of students with ADHD today is massive, so I think that an in person school may be better for him. You get the real experience, and from my own perspective, people without ADHD like myself get to learn from students with ADHD, and plus in all the other non academic activities I could never tell which ones had it or not.

I’ve asked at our local community college if they offer accommodations for students like my son and they said that they do.  Of course, those accommodations will be decided between the school and the student (since he will be over 18 by then).  

I know that there are things that have deadlines in life, but there’s also some flexibility depending on the specifics.  For example, I create my own deadlines.  It’s all flexible as long as it’s all done by July 15th for the school year.  I am sure he will get there at some point, but students with disabilities with executive functioning are usually provided some accommodations through a 504 plan or IEP depending on the student’s needs.  Unfortunately, he chose the one school in the area that won’t.  

We had a good chat today and I think he’s starting to get some ideas of what he might want to do.  It’s possible a smaller classload and clear deadlines will be helpful for him.