Many students enrolled in Oregon colleges and universities still choosing online classes

During the pandemic, schools from elementary to college took classes online by necessity. But 5 years later, a number of college students are still taking at least some of their classes remotely, even when they have an in-person choice.

Online learning can take many forms and include both synchronous and asynchronous formats. Some Oregon universities offer some degrees entirely online. At community colleges around the country, more than 40% of classes are offered online.

We talk with students and professors at two different Oregon universities about why online classes are still popular and the role they play in the overall educational system.

Audrey Carlson attends Portland State University, and Kayla Ramirez is student body president at Oregon State University. Sebastian Heiduschke is a professor of German at OSU, and Bill Knight represents the faculty union at PSU, where he is a professor of English.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. During the pandemic, schools moved their classes online by necessity. Five years later, that necessity is over. In-person life has really resumed, but higher education has fundamentally changed. Many students have decided to stick with online classes. Last year, more students at Oregon’s public universities and community colleges took classes remotely than they did before the pandemic – about three times more.

We’re gonna get a number of perspectives on this right now. Audrey Carlson is a junior at Portland State University. Bill Knight is an English professor and the president of the AAUP there – that stands for the American Association of University Professors. Kayla Ramirez is a senior at Oregon State University and the student body president there. Sebastian Heiduschke is a professor of German at Oregon State University. It’s great to have all four of you on the show.

Bill Knight: Good to be here. Thank you.

Miller: Audrey, first – what has your mix of online and in-person classes looked like?

Audrey Carlson: I took my first two years of college at PCC and a lot of that was online. And when I transferred to PSU, I was able to get more of a balance of maybe three in-person classes to one online class for my ratio. I’ve had quite some experience with it, and I’ve also had quite a lot of experiences told to me, as I’m a senator for ASPSU. So I have had a lot of friends and students come to me with their experiences about online classes at PSU.

Miller: When you switched from PCC to PSU after, as you said, having a lot of your classes at PCC being remote or online, what was that like? I mean, did you like having a lot of those classes online?

Carlson: It was lonely, to be honest. It was my first year. This was 2022, so just coming out of the pandemic of college. I would go in person on the Sylvania campus, and no one was really there, because everybody and all of the classes were online. And even though it was a Zoom call, you couldn’t have those side conversations and get to know people. So I didn’t make friends until like a year into my schooling at PCC.

Miller: And this was after your high school was fundamentally transformed by the pandemic. So, was part of your thinking that college would be different?

Carlson: Yeah, I initially was planning to go to OSU, but after the pandemic, I decided that I wanted to stay in Portland and do PCC. And I just wasn’t expecting so much of it to be online. I was expecting to be able to go to a campus that wasn’t half dead, essentially.

Miller: Kayla, what about you? What has your mix of online vs in-person classes at Oregon State University been like?

Kayla Ramirez: My first online course was actually this most recent term, so summer term, and quite notably throughout my academic experience here at Oregon State, most of my classes have been in person. This was the first online course that I took. I’m moving forward, registering for fall. And now, about half of my classes, I signed up to be online.

Just the flexibility of having an online course, especially serving as the president of ASOSU … There’s a lot that comes with the position and being able to be flexible and dedicate my time to my academics, but then also be fully present within my role was really important to me and one of the reasons why I chose to have an online course over the summer.

Miller: What are the ways that an online course can give you more flexibility?

Ramirez: It depends on the course, for sure. But I feel like with my course, it was very self-paced, so there were times where I could contribute more on one week and a little less on the other weeks. Of course there were recurring assignments, discussion board posts and things like that, but it’s not the same as an in-person course where you also have to dedicate time to go to the class. And if you are working with team partners, maybe you’re gonna have a study group right after.

I will say the course was a lot different, especially with my experience in in-person courses. I think I resonate a lot with what Audrey was saying, it can be very isolating and feel very alone, especially with my online course, there wasn’t a Zoom option. So it was very much like you get the assignments, you’re reading through it and you’re talking primarily with the course instructor if you have any questions or concerns.

Miller: Let’s bring in some of our faculty members here. Bill Knight, what is your mix of online and in-person classes like right now at PSU?

Knight: My personal mix?

Miller: Yeah.

Knight: Well, I teach in person as much as I can. I think the kind of exchanges, the pleasures of the in-person environment, and the overall qualitative impact of a course seems greater in person. So to me, the opportunities to teach in person are ones I don’t want to pass up, but it’s necessary to teach online sometimes in the summer.

Miller: Why? I mean, who says it’s necessary? How does that work?

Knight: The challenge for humanities courses, I think, is that in the summer, because you have a compressed term, if you tried to teach in person, you have so many hours in the classroom that you would switch the focus of the course away from reading outside of class, for instance, and then coming in to discuss, and focus really on in-person, in-classroom time. And I think that imbalance is a bit odd for classes like English classes. So the compressed summer terms kind of lend themselves to a remote environment in some ways, because of the number of classroom hours.

Miller: Now, it’s worth putting out there that there are different versions of online classes. Some of them are live, right? Like we are live right now, two of the OSU folks on Zoom, the two of you from PSU with me, so I guess you’d call that synchronous, or live. There’s also asynchronous. How does an asynchronous class work?

Knight: Well, I think, as our interviewees have suggested, the key is that students get to go at their own pace to some extent. There’s no strict requirement about presence in the moment in a strict schedule. So you get to respond, relatively freely, at your own pace. You are detached from the strict scheduling requirements and it’s very independent. It can create the kind of loneliness we’ve been talking about, the feeling of isolation or that you don’t belong to a group or a mutual project.

Miller: Sebastian Heiduschke, I mentioned you are a professor of German at Oregon State University. And OSU has really been ahead of the curve nationally, in its e-campus and pushing for online learning for a while now. When did OSU begin offering German classes or even whole degrees online?

Sebastian Heiduschke: We started with our degree program in 2010, way before the pandemic. That was when Oregon State started to build out its e-campus program. We are the land grant university. We need to serve all of the counties, the entire population by default. So as part of that e-campus initiative, we decided we would try to see if we could actually teach a language online, something that had not been tried to that extent before in this setting. So over 15 years now, since 2010.

Miller: Right. Language, it does seem like it would present more obvious challenges, say, than Organic Chemistry, where there, I imagine, a bunch of slides of the little molecules and how they connect to each other, or don’t, and interact with each other. With a language, I imagine more human interaction is a part of the course. What went into making something like language teaching, or language learning, a possibility online?

Heiduschke: It was a matter of rethinking how we speak and how we communicate with each other. And because of the asynchronous nature of that course, some of these conversations now take place at different points in time, but I can still communicate with my students. We do that through video messages, through our Canvas Platform. And we actually have deeper conversations, because I can engage with the individual student one-on-one, something that I’m unable to do in a big classroom of let’s say, 30, 35 students.

Miller: So you have dozens of your students who were then sending you video messages that you then reply to in your own individual video message?

Heiduschke: Yeah, so when they turn in their assignments, I can look at these assignments, and I can tailor my feedback to that individual student. And if you think about a class with like 28 students or 30 students, I have 50 minutes in the classroom. How much time can I actually interact with each student? How much can I pick up on the problems of each student? It’s really hard for me to do that in a synchronous setting.

In an asynchronous setting, because I have stronger students, they might just need a little bit of help with certain aspects of the language. Others might need a little bit more help, and I can engage with them a little bit more by posting a video and saying, “Look at this, look at this, look at this.”

Miller: Does that mean that you’re actually spending more total time teaching that particular class than you would if it were a regular old synchronous live class, the way people have had classes for millennia?

Heiduschke: That is difficult to gauge. I think I spend about the same amount of time, if I look at it in total. But I can pick and choose the students because I have time to really look at the individual over the entire class.

Miller: Does it take different skills to be an effective teacher of an online class? Sebastian?

This seems like a great example of the perils of online radio. But Bill, as we work on seeing what’s happening with our remote connection, I saw you nodding a little bit. Maybe I misread your face, although this is such an example of what you can do when you’re in person. You have sort of a micro nod. Do you think it does take different skills to be effective online?

Knight: I think so. I think, in a sense, they’re very different things. There are different kinds of courses. You can try to make the online course simulate the in-person course and do the same thing, but it does take a great amount of work to do that. And you really have to accept the technological limitations, but then try to ignore them and transcend them. That’s a lot of effort, a lot of planning, a lot of significant time. It can be done, though, it can be done really well.

Miller: Do educators right now actually get training, or is it up to you to just figure it out?

Knight: We do have support, but we don’t have training, per se. We can choose to ask for help from our academic support staff and there are, on campus, sources of information, strategy and pedagogy.

Miller: Audrey, you said that it’s not just your own experience, but you’ve talked to a number of your classmates as a student leader to hear about their experiences. What are some of the themes that have come to you, that you’ve heard?

Carlson: Often, I will see patterns of miscommunication or confusion about assignments. So if you were, for example, in person and the teacher is giving you the instructions, or even just on a synchronous Zoom class, you can ask clarifying questions. But when you’re on a fully asynchronous class and they’re just giving you a document of what to do for your assignment, and you have questions, you have to email them, and they have to get back to you in a good amount of time. It just kind of stops the flow of things.

And another thing that I have noticed is that it can be done well, but that’s not really the norm. I have had a teacher who had a class – it was a psychology class – that instead of, “You have to do all of these assignments, these are the assignments you need to do,” it was, “Here are different articles that you can choose from to read and there’s a point system.” So finishing assignments, this assignment is 10 points and whatnot. And by the end of the term, if you have enough points, this is how many points is an “A,” this is how many points is a “B,” and it’s very much a “choose your own adventure.” And that was a very enriching class for me, but I have only experienced that once or twice.

Miller: Kayla, we heard from Audrey earlier, just the sense, especially when she was starting out her higher education career at PCC, that she was talking about being in a ghost town in a sense. Do you know people who live on campus in Corvallis, but are taking a significant number or even a majority of their classes online, basically just doing it from their dorm room?

Ramirez: Oh yeah, absolutely, especially with the flexibility of courses. And I think something within that is that it’s very hard to find housing within Corvallis, so a lot of students live in nearby towns, like in Albany or Philomath. So having those online courses takes away the stress of having to figure out how to commute to campus as well. I will say that is one of the big reasons that I hear from students as to why they’re taking primarily online courses.

Miller: When you think about that, is that then a choice or is that a financial decision at base, which is leading to a particular version of a higher education life? I mean, when you’re describing that, does that feel like a real choice on the part of those students?

Ramirez: That’s a really good question. In all honesty, I would say it isn’t a choice. Sometimes that’s what students have to do in order to be able to access higher education.

Miller: Sebastian Heiduschke, how do you think about this question of the various factors that are driving online education?

OK, we’re still struggling to get Sebastian online. I swear we are not doing this to prove a point. Normally, our connections are better than this. Bill Knight, what about you?

Knight: What our context is, is quite interesting, because we’re in a situation where our president announced significant budget cuts coming – $35 million in the next two years for Portland State. And so the economics of education, online education, in-person education, are incredibly significant in our time. And I think in the case of students too, these questions, these decisions, these needs for flexibility, they really often are really economic, whether it’s a matter of resources and time …

Miller: Right. I actually don’t have a clear sense if there is a major cost difference for universities, in terms of having an online course versus an in-person course. Can a university save money by going online? Does it actually cost more because you’re paying some company to manage the back end for you? I mean, you still have to pay professors. Is that meaningful?

Knight: Theoretically, you could get rid of all your real estate and then save money in that regard. But I think generally speaking, because that’s not likely to happen at a place like PSU, you’re not necessarily saving money. And I think the context really is the question of enrollment. How can PSU, for instance, maximize enrollment? How can it grow? And it’s experienced enrollment loss in the last decade, so that we have about 20,000 students now. And I think that the question of cost has to do with ultimately what it costs the university in terms of enrollment.

Miller: Sebastian Heiduschke, can you hear me, and can we hear you?

Heiduschke: I hope so.

Miller: Yes! OK, fantastic. I’m curious, because it seems like in some ways, you’re the most bullish about the possibilities of online learning. Do you see drawbacks?

Oh no. OK, we can make pleasantries, but then it cut out for the question. We’re gonna work on a telephone because sometimes telephones work when other things don’t.

Audrey, what do you think it takes to make an online class work? It seems like you’ve had some experiences of that, but as you were saying, a lot of this has been sort of thrust upon you. You didn’t want this, and you weren’t hoping for too many online classes when you switched from PCC to PSU. What do you think it takes to make them work?

Carlson: Well, first of all, I wanted to, if that’s all right, to touch a little bit on what everyone else was just saying – that sometimes there’s people who have to work full time in order to even get the higher education. And then there are some situations like myself. I have Tourette’s Syndrome, so in-person classes can be more stressful and trigger my Tourette’s a little bit more. So having a balance of not as many in-person classes can be so helpful and just a stress reliever, and sometimes I am able to focus better on the class, especially if it’s done well.

So to answer your question about how to do an online class successfully – like that psychology class I was mentioning, a point system, very much a “choose your own adventure,” it kind of excites me to learn more. Instead of, “You have to learn this” and you’re not going to be able to talk with your peers. You’re just gonna turn this assignment in and it’s gonna be done with, and then you’ll probably hear feedback from the teacher but not in person. You’re just gonna get, like, a “good job” or whatever.

So I think it requires the teacher to be fully involved and go beyond what they would in using Canvas when we were in person. Like in high school, we would use Canvas to help us learn. If we’re fully online, you need to be fully engaged and figuring out ways to get students to engage and connect more, like that psychology class.

Miller: Sebastian, my understanding is we have you now on the phone. Can you hear me now?

Heiduschke: Yes, I can.

Miller: OK. What do you see as the potential drawbacks to our increasingly online academic lives?

Heiduschke: We already heard about the isolation of students. I think one of the things that may not have come up yet is training for faculty members. And because these classes – online versus in-person classes – are so different in the delivery, I think faculty members need to be trained well. They need to have the support system from the university to deliver an outstanding online experience like I think Audrey mentioned, this psychology class.

Miller: Do you feel like you get that at OSU?

Heiduschke: With e-campus, we have an entire entity on campus. And when we develop classes, we have to do that almost a year before we deliver it for the first time. As faculty members, I’m not an expert in technology – case in point here with my computer apparently – but I am paired up with an instructional designer who is. When I say, “I want to teach X,” that instructional designer will say, “OK, here are three different ideas. What do you like best?” So they build the course for me, and I get to provide input if this is exactly the experience that I want the students to have.

Miller: Bill Knight, do you feel like online classes … It’s about a third now, as I mentioned, of Oregon students at Oregon’s public universities taking at least one of their classes online. I think some of them are taking more than one. Do you think this is fundamentally changing the college experience or is that too strong a way to put it?

Knight: I think it has to be. I think, generally the push for that kind of flexibility changes the kinds of experience of campus life, it changes the experience of the college town, for instance, in Corvallis or Eugene. I think the way people connect with each other begins to change and shift and is much more mediated by technology. There’s various kinds of pushback that we’ve seen happening, universities demanding a return to campus policy for a lot of remote workers. And we’ve seen a campus initiative, called The Vibrant Campus, put forward by Ann Cudd, our president.

Miller: But is that about having people like you and other people who work at the university being on campus, as opposed to saying we’re gonna … I haven’t read that as her saying, or university leaders saying, “We’re not going to cancel online classes. It’s just that we want people like you to be on campus,” which is a subtle distinction and a little bit confusing. But am I wrong about that distinction?

Knight: You’re not wrong, although Portland State doesn’t have as robust a developed online program as Oregon State does. So I think there is a shift back toward on-campus offerings, course offerings and in-person presence. So I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the implicit initiatives here is also to have more on campus courses, bring students into the classroom, have people on campus. I think it’s an economic concern, in part, for the campus economy – and possibly, for Portland itself.

Miller: Am I right that you’re here sort of with two hats? Mainly we’ve been talking to you as a professor, as an academic, but you’re also a labor leader and a representative of people who work there in academic ways. Do you have different takes on this with those different hats on? Because clearly, you’ve been standing up for a vibrant, in-person educational experience. If the question is forcing the faculty to come into the campus more often, do you think differently?

Knight: As a professor, I am both somewhat skeptical of online learning in that I think there are things that are irreplaceable in the in-person experience, but I think it can be done really well. I think the shift towards the demand for a return to campus ignores some of the flexibilities that can be really useful in academic labor and all of what we do. I’m not really thinking of faculty, but advising and other kinds of staff work, and even work that is directed toward online programs that may not need strict campus presence. There may be lots of ways to work with employees and generate flexible plans that seem reasonable and that work best for everybody.

Miller: Audrey, when I asked Bill if he thought it was too strong to say that online classes are fundamentally changing higher education, you nodded … the sense I got is you do think that is happening. In what ways?

Carlson: I would say, at least for myself, and a lot of my friends and students that I’ve talked to, that you’re probably not going to meet anyone who’s never taken an online class, let alone someone who hasn’t taken an online class in the past six months or a year. And some people, it’s all the way. Some people try to be in person as much as possible, like myself, but some classes are so highly specialized or whatnot, that you need to take an online class. So you get less of that interaction and social connection.

And sometimes if it’s done well, in the right circumstances and environment, it can be very helpful. Especially if there’s a good balance of online and in-person. But I think that there’s a possibility that if it goes too far onto the online, it could be not great for learning or socializing, and just a higher education experience.

Miller: Kayla, do you agree?

Ramirez: Yeah, I would say, especially with the shift that I’m seeing, where folks are choosing online courses for a plethora of reasons, including accessibility through financial means or just convenience … I will say there isn’t the same amount of support that exists for in-person learning. Like, with in-person learning, there is a sense of community, greater structure and also just accountability. You have your peers right next to you, making sure you’re on top of assignments and also engaging in the coursework.

So I think my hesitation about shifting towards online courses or seeing a lot of students go towards online courses, is a worry that the support systems that are in place for in-person courses don’t carry over there.

Miller: Kayla Ramirez, Audrey Carlson, Sebastian Heiduschke and Bill Knight, thanks very much.

All: Thank you.

Miller: Kayla Ramirez is a senior at Oregon State University and the president of the student government there. Audrey Carlson is a junior at Portland State University, where Bill Knight is a professor of English and the president of the PSU faculty union. Sebastian Heiduschke is a professor of German at Oregon State University.

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