Weaknesses of Online Education,

Although online education has offered significant benefits for Sri Lankan Education during the Covid-19 period, several numbers of weaknesses can be identified.

Lack of internet accessibility (it can occur due to economic or logistic reasons) is a significant issue in rural and lower socioeconomic environments. In online education, students should be able to access the online learning environment to succeed in the online learning program. In real-world, students, lecturers or whoever participating in online education have a minimum knowledge of computer. If they do not possess technological tools, they cannot succeed in the virtual learning program. Also, we know that even the most sophisticated technologies are not 100% reliable. This also causes the lack of success of online education

Little or no face-to-face interaction can be identified as another weakness of online education. Teachers can give students face-to-face feedback immediately in traditional classrooms. Problems in the curriculum can be resolved quickly and directly during the lecture and that motivates the students. Traditional classroom students have to follow certain disciplines, but in online learning students tend to do some unethical activities as a teacher cannot recognize the one who did it properly.

One of another biggest issue in online learning programs is that there is no way to prevent cheating during the online assessments. When on-campus students and online students are compared, online students can easily cheat on assessments as they complete assessments in their own home environment and they can use their personal computers and mobile phones. Therefore, it is complicated to observe those who are cheating while assessments without video feed.

In online learning platforms, lecturers or teachers only focus on the theoretical side rather than the practical side. In computer programming classes, students have to face an unpleasant situation since they don’t have practical sessions for their learning. Theoretical lectures are considerably easier to conduct an online learning environment that practical lectures. This online learning can be appropriate for the social sciences and humanities field rather than scientific fields.

To an online learning system to be successful, curriculums, lecturers, technologies and students must be carefully considered and balanced to take full advantage.