This is a question that has been debated many times by all of us in higher education. At times it is easy to blame the K-12 system for not preparing the students properly. At other times the answer is to only accept the students that are "guaranteed" to be successsful.
I believe that every student has a right to learn, but when a college accepts a student that is under prepared, they also accept the responsiblity for trying to catch the student up to the level they need to be at to be successful. But the key is early identification and intervention along with a great deal of support and encouragement.
The responses so far are very interesting to me. I am a fairly new online instructor and was a bit surprised at the skill level of some of my students. Not only are they expected to learn course content, some are learning the technology for the first time as well. As an instructor, I try to help as I can, but in some cases it is clear other intervention, as described above, is necessary. I was happy to hear in a recent faculty meeting that my institution would begin to require courses in technology for those incoming student who are minimally skilled. I believe that if we want to capture this student population, we need to have processes in place to foster their success well beyond the initial student orientation. In the end, do we not fail a bit ourselves if they fail?
Granville,
Good questions. From the start, every school should assess the learner's technological competencies to ensure the apptitude is there to navigate through a courseroom. There are many levels of motivation a learner has to participate in online education and the learning team should target that motivation to direct the student in the right direction. Most schools have a first course that introduces the learner to the learning environment and school policies. This online course is the first step to measure and test the skills of the student to hopefully ensure their success in any degree program.
TD
Sure the tutoring centers, such as a Writing Center, are excellent resources for students to build valuable skills. However, some students are not going to achieve more than a basic level of competency or see much improvement using such methods via the online platform. I don't think some students can effectively ameliorate in a virtual environment of this kind. It's too disconnected from the physical world for some of them, who learn more with hands-on experiences than with visual or auditory methodology.
For these students, there needs to be some kind of tutoring in reality with a live human being physically present.
From my experience as an instructor at a physical college, students who struggle with basic skills such as grammar are referred to the tutoring center. These tutors are trained to work one on one with such students. It would be helpful to refer students in an online environment to such a center provided by the university. Despite their elementary level of preparedness, these students should still have the chance to succeed in college.
Steve Mardock
