Can Coding Education Go Completely Online? Time, Work, and Relationship in Online Courses

Abstract

The emergence of online teaching has brought new opportunities to computer coding education. In this paper, we examine how the move online is generating a new kind of dynamic within computer programming classes on an online EdTech platform in South Korea. As the platform seeks to solve some old problems within large-scale programming classes, such as machine dependency and labor-intensive operation, its online classes face unique challenges arising from temporal and spatial separation. The new environment requires that class participants coordinate their actions and relationships with other members, which means technical adjustments and human adaptations. Instructors, students, and managers form a distinctive three-party relationship as they respond to the tricky problems of online teaching, such as the time delay between audio and video transmission. The automation of evaluation labor by the platform also influences the human relationship as well as educational efficiency. Our study suggests that the most challenging task in online EdTech experiments would not be to move classes online completely, but to rearrange roles, identities, and relationships within the class.

Keywords:

• Online education
• coding education
• EdTech
• automation
• South Korea

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The names of interviewees appearing in the paper are all pseudonyms, except for Kim Jae-won, the CEO of Elice, who is quoted from a published media interview.

2 As the learning system and business model of the Elice service have been frequently reorganized, the structure of the class at the time of this research and that of more recent courses are not exactly the same. Students were able to purchase individual classes, but in 2018 Elice launched a subscription model, which changed how classes were purchased and conducted.

3 AfreecaTV is the biggest online broadcasting platform in South Korea. People who run broadcasts on this platform are called BJ—an abbreviation of “Bang Jang” which means a room-owner in Korean. As the youtuber, streamer, and creator are understood as a job, BJ is also commonly understood as a job and identity in South Korea.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hanbyul Jeong

Hanbyul Jeong received his Ph.D. degree in science and technology policy from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea. He studies how education technology (EdTech) shapes the relationship between human actors and between humans and nonhumans around education policy in action.

Chihyung Jeon

Chihyung Jeon is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where he teaches history of technology and STS. He is broadly interested in the historical and cultural relationship between humans and technologies.