My experience in a physical classroom in the pre-smartphone era is much the same: a good chunk of the students are spacing off throughout any given lecture. At that time it was passing notes, doodling, or just staring out the window rather than online distractions.

It might be worth considering whether synchronously sitting in a lecture with 30 other kids isn't, in fact, a good model for learning in any environment, online or otherwise.

> in a physical classroom ... a good chunk of the students are spacing off throughout any given lecture

Think of a meeting of 30 people in your own office environment and wonder how many people are spacing out at any given moment.

> At least that last factor is directly correlated with online learning.

Unless they live in rural settings, it’s likely a very loose correlation.

When I was a kid, I grew up in a neighborhood in a walkable town and my friends and I saw each other everyday, though we went to different schools or were in different grades at the same school.

I later moved to a rural area for high school and only saw people at school due to how far away we all lived from each other.

In the first situation, I suspect online learning would have been great for me since I could do it at home and I’d still have plenty of social interaction without the downside of hauling books between classes, sitting in an uncomfortable classroom environment, and largely not paying attention since there wasn’t any way for the teacher to track my participation in a large class.

I’m not sure how physical education would have worked at that time, but maybe fitness trackers help with that nowadays.

I do suspect that online learning isn’t great for lower income households since they may not have dedicate space set up for learning, and it would be a shame to create yet another class difference in education.