"When I worked as a curriculum designer at Horizons, the owner decided that we should offer students the option to join live classes online. The idea was to put a computer with a microphone and camera in a location so that the online attendees would be able to see and hear the teacher and some of the other students. I immediately expressed my objection to this idea. I thought it would be a horrible experience for the online attendees unless we poured a lot of money into good equipment. Further, it would have been challenging to facilitate participation from the online students. We would have so many limitations on the type of activities we could run in class. For example, if we were to assign class presentations, it would be a totally different learning experience online versus in person. Despite my opposition, the owner insisted we run a test on an upcoming class. To mitigate negative feedback, we offered online students a 50% discount. As I had predicted, the experience was not at all ideal for online attendance. They could barely hear the lectures, and it was challenging for them to participate in the discussions because the teacher's attention was divided between the in-person students and one monitor with three students. After that run, we paused all our plans for online classes."
