Contributor Charles Choi

One weakness of Monica Mogilewsky’s online science education was a lack of hands-on experience. “A class that didn’t work well was on environmental impact assessment, which was about how to monitor the industrial and agricultural human impact on different ecosystems,” Mogilewsky says. “Learning from home, I didn’t have access to a lab, so how things worked all became very abstract. So those kind of classes fell flat, and I don’t feel I got as much as I would in a traditional classroom setting.”

Online programmes are increasingly trying to compensate for this weakness with hands-on experience. “In one of our courses, we ship the materials to students for them to build circuit boards, and they upload video of them building them,” Chip Paucek, CEO of educational technology company 2U in New York says. “In another example, students who want a masters of science in midwifery from Georgetown University don’t deliver virtual babies – we arrange placements in their local areas.”

Lori Grant is currently at Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies studying to be a midwife via their online course. She has been able to work with under-served populations across Arizona. “This is not uncommon for clinical rotations in health fields, but what is uncommon is to reunite weekly with my cohort of students and to learn from them at their clinical sites that vary from birth centers in California and Washington to labor wards in Pennsylvania and Florida,” says Grant. “I am able to hear how the Midwest manages a certain condition and compare that to my current practice.  What better way to share knowledge.” Continue reading →