The switch to online college was not beneficial to the average student

Crowdsourcing lab

Background

Over the last few years, a lot has changed in schools. Ever since COVID-19, schools have made just about everything accessible online.

For a while, school was strictly online. As time has gone on, things have now been able to be done in person again.

However, online school has really impacted the way students look at school. Ever since COVID, the same questions pop up for upcoming college students: is in person better? And, is college still beneficial?

My team and I asked ourselves those same questions. This made us begin researching what other people around us thought about this topic.

The process began with researching the topic in our county. Using the Census Bureau survey tool, it helped us gather some survey questions.

We concluded that it would be best to ask:

• What worked better for your schedule with school? (in person, hyprid, or online)

• Did you ever work in trades?

With those questions, we began our crowdsourcing journey.

Crowdsourcing is gathering infrormation from a large group of people to use as research results. One way to do this is with online surveys.

We took to social media to see their thoughts. I posted on my Instagram close friends story and talked with a couple people locally to see what they'd say.

Crowdsourcing results

With the results of the data, it is clear that the majority of students preferred learning in person. Not only that, but most people had a larger idea in mind than going the trade school route. 

After seeing the results, it is interesting to see that not a lot of people liked online school. Online school can be more difficult to obtain infrormation from.

Another factor to look into is that despite the rise of online school, it did not make most people decide to do trades instead.

Even when the option of hybrid school is offered, 67% of people still would rather go fully in person.

It is not only the idea that school is easier to learn in person, but the social aspect is really important to the majority of students.

Originally, our group thought that most people would prefer hybrid learning. Being able to have that bit of online and social aspect was what we thought people would prefer.

With the couple people I did talk to in person, they felt the reason for preferring in person was because it better qualified them for their jobs.

The rise of online school seemed to cause some people to not feel confident in their learning.