Who Should Be A Student Online?

Who Should Be A Student Online?

Way back, when online learning was just gaining in prominence, there was a very important conversation among educators about who should or should not be learning online and who could or could not learn online.  There was a lot put into articles that were published about the kinds of students that were suitable candidates - the dispositions to learning that they had, their ability to stay on task, to self-monitor their progress and so on.  At the time, a lot of the discussions were based upon experiences with undergraduates or high schoolers, who, it was assumed, did  not possess necessarily the right work ethic to stay on task. It was not wrong at the time to assume that some students just would not get things done on time and / or keep up with deadlines and / or stay in synch with the rest of the class.  I do not recall much being written about graduate students, but now that I am actually teaching graduate students, I think there ought to have been some work done on  the more mature student. I write this because my students online are not at all on the same wavelength about timelines and about the responsibility to keep up or communicate when they are falling behind.  I had a student post something to me the other day about her still having trouble with access to technology and doing FOUR courses and managing to keep up. She decided she would take an Incomplete in my course and finish up the others.  It bothers me that students who are busy constructing their careers, perhaps starting families, working full time and otherwise time challenged are signed up for online courses.  It puts the instructor in a terribly bad position because I am trying to help them and yet a part of me wants to suggest that they ought to have known about time commitments and that they couldn't possibly have completed so much in such a short time. Obviously, there needs to be some kind of filter, even at the graduate level, by which students are carefully screened for their access to the technology and their ability to cope properly with the time demands online learning creates.