While online learning has been around for decades, primarily in higher education, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced nearly all K-12 students to it. Although traditional classroom learning remains dominant, online education has become an option for K-12 students. As of 2023, about ten percent of the 49 million K-12 students in the United States were enrolled in full-time online schools, with many more participating in hybrid learning environments.
Unlike traditional classroom environments in which the majority of learning is face-to-face, a fair amount of online learning is done remotely. More often than not secondary students are enrolled in these online learning environments, since they’re more independent than elementary students. A variety of learning activities can be utilized in these synchronous and asynchronous platforms where students may read a good book, listen to an enlightening podcast, or review an insightful video; nonetheless, the function of these learning activities are intended to promote learning. The defining characteristic of a solid education, even in an online environment, is feedback which creates an interactive loop between the learner and the educator. Without effective feedback, learners may not realize when or where they've gone wrong or how to correct course and achieve mastery.
The problem is that providing feedback in online environments is more challenging than face-to-face environments even if the teacher and students can all see one another. In fact, a recent study during the COVID pandemic revealed that 82 percent of K-12 teachers had more difficulty providing feedback using online or hybrid models, compared to a traditional learning environment. This, in part, is due to having fewer "face-to-face" opportunities, reducing the number of opportunities for verbal feedback which is generally faster than written feedback. To compensate, educators would likely need to compensate by providing more written feedback, which undoubtedly is more time-consuming compared to verbal feedback. In online learning, especially asynchronous formats, written feedback needs to be delivered as quickly as possible so the activity and thought process is still fresh in students' minds.
While generative AI can provide quick answers to straightforward questions, it often lacks the nuance and pedagogical insight needed for personalized responses. This can be especially challenging for assessments, where timely, in-depth feedback is critical for student growth and understanding.
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