I don't think it's about study strategies, per se, Michaela.
I think it's about being more or less autodidactic.
True autodidacts do tend to struggle in conventional/Socratic models because their ONLY means of understanding material is top-down and entirely internal and idiosyncratic.
They really can't use someone else's "system" for understanding a series of concepts or a body of work. They have to see all of it, then pore over the material themselves, then figure out how to mentally organize it into a coherent (to them) whole.
I've seen students like that, and yes, online education is perfect for them.
Those people are rather unusual, however-- particularly among 18-22 yo's. We all develop some ability to teach ourselves information, and most college students get better at it as they get older, which suggests to me that it may be a matter of a modality of learning which tends to emerge along with mature executive skills in those who are not truly autodidacts by nature.
It seems really foolish, though, to think that a model which is structured so specifically for the autodidact (which is, IMO, at most about 10% of the population even among adults)... would be a good idea for the general population of children or adolescents.
This is why I suspect that the entire model may simply be flawed for 90% of students. MOST of them are like my DD and Val's DS.
It's not that they can't learn, or that they aren't ready to learn the material. It's that they need a human being interacting with them in order to get the most out of it.
People criticize large lecture settings in universities, but I have to say, most of those people haven't ever DONE that. They really don't appreciate that even a lecture section with 200 students in it is a unique, and collaborative environment. Ask yourself this-- is seeing Kenneth Branaugh's many fine films of Shakespearean roles the same thing as watching him live on the stage? Of course not-- but people who haven't ever attended truly great theater don't know the difference.
Canned instructional modules are the film. Live lecture is theater-- the pros respond to the audience every second of it.
