by Ella Casey ‘21

 While there is an obvious adjustment period coupled with lots of concern about the effectiveness of the sudden shift to online education, an additional question arises: could this quick-fix online system actually be a glimpse into the near future of education, too? 

As technology has advanced over the past decade, more and more people have been taking online courses for their education. In this next decade or two it is possible that most education in the U.S. could shift online. Not only do these unfortunate circumstances give us examples of how an education over the internet could work, they also may serve as a test run which, if successful, could push this shift to come sooner. Though there are still several kinks to work out, thus far widespread online education seems to be much closer to a reality than it may have appeared.

The main problems with online education on such a large scale are communication and technical problems. As diligent as teachers try to be, trying to effectively communicate every detail about assignments to everyone in each of their classes is likely near impossible, and requires the active participation of all the students. Additionally, technical difficulties are bound to show up in numbers. For example, many schools worldwide have been using the program Zoom to provide instruction to whole classes at once. Because of the surge in activity on the app, the online traffic has increased heavily and caused the frequency of malfunctions to spike dramatically.

Every year, more technology is integrated to more schools across the country. From a young age, students learn to become tech-savvy and use that to their advantage in education. The flexibility and diverse possibilities provided by online education, as well as the lower price tag, are enticing, which is why the percentage of those enrolled in online courses has continued to increase over the past several years. As we look towards the future, it is possible that education could change dramatically within the next couple decades as society becomes quickly more centered around technology.