Is Online Teacher Training Good for Public Education?

For four weeks last fall, Sarah Butrymowicz and 19 other teacher-hopefuls enrolled in a virtual course at National University to explore how well the rapidly growing field is preparing individuals for the classroom. Upon completing the course, one of the concerns was whether the basic lack of human interaction during an online class, regardless of the subject matter, can lead to problems down the road.

According to Professor Lorraine Leavitt, who has taught online courses at San Diego-based National for seven years, when teachers trained online enter the classroom for student teaching, sometimes “we see problems we maybe could have helped earlier,” such as the way a teacher answers student questions. “What it says to me is we really have to start earlier in designing our online classes to be much more interactive.”

Online courses are exploding across the country at every level of education, and teacher training is no exception, fueled by teachers seeking master’s degrees as well as career switchers looking for a convenient way into a new field.

The top six degree-granting institutions for bachelor’s and master’s in education in 2010 were entirely or partly online private programs, according to the U.S. Department of Education, with for-profits University of Phoenix and Walden University leading the list. Combined, the two awarded more than 14,600 education degrees. Nationally, 309,685 education degrees were given out in 2010.

While online instruction offers inherent strengths—it’s impossible, for instance, to evade class discussions, meaning professors can more closely monitor written participation—it has at least one glaring weakness: There are limited opportunities for in-person interactions.

No one has studied how effective online programs are at producing high-quality teachers compared to the traditional colleges. In hiring, school districts tend not to differentiate between online and in-person training programs.

This may be why in terms of quality, online programs are “all over the place, just like they are with college campus-based programs,” C. Emily Feistritzer, president of the National Center for Education Information, a D.C.-based research organization, said. “I don’t think online teacher programs have yet capitalized on the possibilities for providing a superior pathway to teaching.”