yahoo education homework help

yahoo education homework help

The Impact of Online Education Platforms on Academic Performance

1. Introduction

The use of available online platforms has the potential to contribute to educational success and is thus an interesting empirical question. The growing interest in online education, and in the provision of material that complements the in-person didactical approach, has led to the emergence of a variety of educational platforms that can help teachers produce and deliver resources to enrich educational practice and offer learning possibilities to the learners. These online education platforms provide substantial opportunities which can be harnessed, for example, in creating “blended learning” environments – mixing the in-person component with that delivered online – and in increasing educational possibilities. However, thus far, very little is known of the concrete impact of the adoption of these tools and of the patterns by which they are used, from an economic perspective. For these reasons, identifying the way that the online education platforms are used and when individuals choose to adopt them can serve as a seminal step here. In particular, the main question I will focus on is whether choosing to adopt an available platform to support studies impacts the final exam result.

With the introduction of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and EdTech start-ups, the internet has become a major player in the world of education. Current research is still investigating the impact of online learning tools on academic performance. In this paper, mainly high-school and university students are addressed, assuming a teaching-focused use of online resources. The purpose is to provide evidence on the impact of adopting an online education platform for performance at the final exam. Therefore, the score obtained by adopting the platform is compared to all other test results. One of the main hypotheses I test is that individual effort is at the heart of the learning framework when the platform and the final exams are close. Therefore, individuals who choose to adopt the platform are in a low-effort equilibrium because they think that they can always “buy points” by purchasing a platform on the day of the exam. Similarly, I also test whether there are individuals who believe that adopting the available resources will be detrimental to their final performance and these are, in particular, those who are not confident about having previously studied enough.

2. The Rise of Online Education Platforms

The reasons behind this steep rise in popularity of these platforms and services are varied. The combination of internet-based platforms as well as development in video recording technology, which can pick up narrated lectures as spoken by teachers alongside slide shows at very low costs, were the main factors responsible for the surge. But the primary advantage of these platforms is their elasticity in academic settings where the access to some of the teachers is very marginalized. Additionally, advances in low-latency video communication technology have enabled online synchronous ‘virtual classrooms’ with somewhat mitigated issues surrounding video-chat based conversations, breaking down some of the remaining barriers preventing the adoption of MOOCs and online courses.

Online education platforms have been gaining in popularity and importance over the past two decades. In 2011, ‘massive open online courses’ (MOOCs) were first developed, opening up access to thousands of lectures and materials across a variety of subjects from dozens of institutions all over the world. New companies like Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy, and many others emerged to offer targeted video lectures and self-assessments, while many institutions of higher learning run their own independent platforms with big names like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard all providing course materials and lecture videos to the general public. In developing countries, platforms like InABLE help provide access to courses more easily to thousands of residents.

3. Benefits and Challenges of Online Education

Despite the various basic and intrinsic benefits that come with learning on these platforms, and with the growing significance, very limited study has been conducted on the impact of online learning on academic performance. Scholars are unanimous in attributing the relative growth and promise of online education platforms to a number of factors. Much of the attraction is predicated on the learning resources available from these platforms. For example, MOOCs platforms have thus been described as “freemium” services which offer free learning materials on their platforms. The flexibilities of accessing different learning resources have been widely discussed. Other recent studies have shown how video lectures have gained high popularity as an effective learning tool among learners.

The upsurge in the number of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) platforms in the last two decades speaks to the increasing importance of online education in higher learning. Individuals with varying internet penetration levels find learning on these platforms beneficial. Unlike traditional classroom-based education, online education platforms are said to offer learners flexibility in their pursuit of knowledge or certificate programs. Distance is rarely a concern since everyone with internet connectivity is free to tap into the resource made available by these platforms. Moreover, the variety of learning materials and resources in different formats (texts, video lectures, quizzes, graded exams, etc.) seem to offer learners the opportunity to learn in ways that work best for them. These might be some of the important aspects that make online education platforms popular among students and working professionals, especially in developing countries.

4. Research on Academic Performance and Online Education

Differential effects of ownership and content are not particularly apparent. In general, these studies posit that performance in the online platforms does not differ from students that chose to enroll in a classroom-based course. Most studies exploit longitudinal datasets collected from a university’s administrative databases and utilize academic achievement measures such as final, cumulative, and average exam scores; final and cumulative grade point averages; and course withdrawal rates. Data analysis techniques typically include ordinary least-squares regression analysis and propensity score matching. Most studies find that student performance in online courses does not differ from their equivalent classroom-based units. Furthermore, the finding that evidence of differences is absent in all but two of these studies suggests that neither online unit content (which is generally transformed from traditional units) nor ownership (which may be public or private) has a large effect on test score outcomes already.

The expansion of online education has provided researchers the opportunity to assess the relationship between online education and performance. Studies have mainly focused on observing residential student success after enrolling in an online course or the differences between students who have taken their core classes online versus traditional. Although some studies find that students perform worse in online than traditional courses and other research does not indicate any statistically significant difference, some studies have found that the online option can have negative impacts on other outcomes. However, there is a significant amount of empirical evidence that online education positively affects academic results. Studies do not only focus on assessing differences in the performance of mixed versus online students but also in students for whom the format of the class was the same. Although we could not highlight the existence of any such evidence, is there any relationship between the fact that an online course is mandatory for a given degree and the academic results of students following that degree.

5. Recommendations for Effective Use of Online Education Platforms

Our results accompany those in literature that advance criteria for successful continuing digital education and clarify that it relies on the maximum use of available digital resources and on high-level educational strategies for encouraging students to engage with virtual training. This can be achieved, for instance, by effectively incentivizing the completion of assessment modules and quizzes. Students, however, prefer the resolution of practical exercises but complete them in lesser proportions usually on their own. The interaction opportunity between online instructors and students is seen by as a highly effective engagement strategy, since it enables the promotion of interactive activities. A blend between multimedia and informative teaching content, such as files available on the LMS, complemented by profile-oriented communication through message boxes, emails, and chat rooms, seems to be one of the best approaches. Additional requirements consist of facilitator guidelines and clear rules, but some caution should be taken in choosing the time to provide information about accessibility and evaluations in online training. The authors also recommend coaching and mentorship and holistic learning, such as that which involves long-term changes of perspective. Also, personal feedback has strong positive effects, especially in the case of task feedback, with direct comments or notes from tutors.

In conclusion, online education platforms are generally seen to have a positive impact on academic performance. This is found for both adequately and less-adequately controlled models and despite the differences in strategies that are being adopted. However, for some students—possibly those who are not as disciplined in self-education or who have disadvantaged socio-economic characteristics—participation in online education platforms has been found to be less effective. This might be related to people’s personal productivity cost and hence self-control ability that limits their motivation to fully engage with the online educational resources. It may also be related to the education opportunity cost and personal interest that determine if the learning objective is internalized or merely undertaken as a formal approach to achieving better academic performance.