Is online learning a substitute for the classroom or a distinct form of education in its own right?

Barbara Oakley joins the Overton Window podcast to discuss how attitudes toward online education have shifted over the past decade and what research suggests about how people actually learn.

Oakley is a professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, with research interests that span statistics, neuroscience, bioengineering, and industrial and systems engineering. She is also known for leading one of the largest online courses in the world, a role that has placed her at the center of ongoing debates about how people learn and how institutions adapt.

Oakley describes the course as “one of the world's largest massive open-air online courses.” Hosted on Coursera, the course is co-taught with neuroscientist Terry Sejnowski, whom Oakley calls “one of the few living human beings who's simultaneously a member of all three National Academies: engineering, medicine and science.”

The course focuses on learning through a neuroscientific lens, relying heavily on metaphor and careful design. “We teach about learning from a neuroscientific perspective using metaphors to help people go deeper,” Oakley says. “And it's a really fun course. We have so much fun.”

Oakley notes that the broader education system resists change. “I do believe that education is one of the most inertial of enterprises,” she says. “There's not much desire for change.”

She connects that resistance to shifting attitudes about online learning, particularly within the United States.

“In these past 10 years, I've watched as the world of online courses has evolved,” she says. “There's been so much pushback that the Overton Window has shifted back into ‘online learning is never as good as face-to-face,’ even though the research evidence doesn't show that at all.”

The COVID 19 pandemic briefly disrupted those assumptions.

“Everything exploded in the world of online teaching,” Oakley recalls. During that period, “We were getting 40,000 students a week signing up for our course.” The surge demonstrated demand, but it also revealed a lack of preparation. “But at universities and at schools, people in general don't know how to teach online. It requires more care.”

Oakley’s own teaching practice reflects principles drawn from neuroscience. She designs short video segments and focuses on sparking interest early. “What we've found from neuroscience is if you can get people curious about what you’re going to be teaching, it enhances dopamine throughout areas of the brain that you are using.” That chemical response supports memory formation and sustained engagement.

“Well made online courses are really just as good as and in some ways better than face-to-face courses,” Oakley says. “Overseas, there's a completely different perspective on online learning than in the United States.”

Oakley points to Singapore, where K-12 schools are required to operate online one day each month. “What that does is kind of keeps teachers with a little skin in the game — they have to learn some of these things,” she says, referring to online teaching skills and technology.

Dozens of universities have established online footholds in Kazakhstan. Many of these institutions take advantage of partnerships that permit an exchange of elite coursework. “You're getting the best generative AI coursework from Stanford, from Vanderbilt, from Princeton,” she says, adding that this arrangement benefits both students and faculty.

“One of the hardest things that universities will tacitly acknowledge if you discuss things behind the scenes is the hardest thing they find is to get their own faculty to upskill, to keep current,” Oakley says. Exchanging curricula with elite institutions or inviting experts to instruct remotely helps to fill skills gaps.

Oakley suggests that some American institutions hesitate to expose students to outside instructors. “I think US universities often think they're kind of at the top of their game and they don't really need to be nudged into learning something.”

Online education, Oakley argues, is neither a panacea nor a placeholder. When courses are carefully designed and informed by how the brain learns, online instruction can match and sometimes exceed the effectiveness of traditional classrooms. The challenge lies less in the medium itself than in the willingness of institutions to adapt.

Listen to the complete conversation on The Overton Window Podcast.

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