When I started college at the wee age of 18 years old at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), I was met with a class workload of 18 units and a part-time job.
I remember sitting in the analytics office of Caesar Uyesaka Stadium, stressing about how I was going to study for two midterms and a lab exam in a week. One of the players came up to me and just said to take online classes for my general education (GE) requirements.
Genius! I could focus on my chemistry classes for my major and fulfill my other requirements by doing online instruction. That way, I could devote the most amount of time to the classes that matter, while still taking a full semester of 18 units.
Now, at 22 years old, I can say that these classes have not furthered my education in any way. I wasn’t learning anything in my online classes, and I was burning myself out in my major in the process.
With registration for the spring semester upon us at Fresno State, you might be tempted to take an online asynchronous class. Do not fall for the trap.
The main pro of these classes is that we get to work at our own pace. I will admit, sometimes it is hard to sit through a GE class.
However, when I take an asynchronous class, what’s stopping me from completing all my coursework in the first week of a class? I know that some classes pace the material by locking modules, but that just means I set aside 30 minutes a week to breeze through the class work.
Either way, I’m still not learning anything.
We’re taking them for the convenience of not having to go to class. We pay the same for the class whether it’s online or in-person instruction — why go with the former?
According to Alam Hasson, vice provost of academic affairs, the university is looking to increase the number of online classes so that students can graduate within four years.
Hasson also said at the Nov. 12 Associated Students Inc. meeting that the university is looking to create online degrees.
I could not think of anything lazier. An online degree would effectively kill the already dying “college experience.”
We lose out on human interaction. So many experiences and memories are formed from being around people.
I’m not one to be conversational in a GE class, but I would rather be in a class than do work by myself in front of a computer screen.
Going to class is hard, I get that, but whether you realize it or not, seeing other faces is refreshing for the soul.
These online classes are worse than the virtual schooling that we had to do during COVID-19. Everyone who had to endure that remembers how awful it was; it puzzles me that people choose that for convenience now.
You pay the same for the class, whether you attend it or not.
Attendance also creates accountability.
You have to look your instructor in the face during class. Asynchronous classes let you get away with a lot more than an in-person class. One of the big players is artificial intelligence (AI).
I can guarantee that at one point, we have all used AI on an assignment. If you say no, you’re lying. Google AI comes up on every search.
The most popular AI tool is ChatGPT, and its use is certainly not limited to asynchronous classes. Plenty of in-person classes suggest using ChatGPT and other AI software to assist in learning.
It’s also not a knock on the future of AI. I fully understand that it is, and forever will be, an integral tool. 
How ChatGPT is used in asynchronous classes, however, is very different.
At UCSB, I used ChatGPT to help me with my assignments. It was a lifesaver. I could get reading quizzes done in five minutes and exams done in 20. I did not have to stress about the work piling up, and I felt like I was being so productive, learning everything at a lightning-fast pace.
As ChatGPT and AI in general have evolved during my four-year college experience, I’ve seen the problems only get worse.
Are we truly reading the course material, or are we just copying and pasting quiz answers into ChatGPT so we can get it over with? Are we writing these discussion posts, or are we plugging in the prompt with “minimum 200 words,” “conversational language” and “able to pass AI checker?”
The whole point of GE requirements is to give us a well-rounded education. It may seem silly that we are required to take science classes as a humanities major or history classes as a physics major, but they’re there for a reason.
Asynchronous classes undermine the whole purpose of higher education. I do not think we ethically can call this “higher education” if there aren’t any higher education elements to the classes.
So go to class, have some human interaction and actually learn the material in 16 weeks. You never know what you could learn.
