Online Education has been around for a several years and has been the target of many skeptics. Many skeptics feel that there is not enough interaction with the teachers and other students to make a virtual campus as educational as a traditional campus. They also feel that the material is not as educational. While this is dying out as a topic on the critics list, because they are being proven wrong, I felt this was pretty interesting. I have attended both types of universities, online and traditional. I have to disagree with all of the skeptics statements.
I personally attended a traditional campus throughout my freshman year. During this time, I don’t think I spoke to ten students and I was never able to contact my teachers. After sitting through a two hours lecture that they called class, I usually was so brain dead from trying to soak up all of the information or too tired to think of questions that I had. So, I would go home ponder on the lecture and come up with questions. At this point it was too late to ask them. How does this benefit anyone? I don’t think it does.
However, when I began to obtaining my online education as a sophomore, I found there was so much more interaction. I could e-mail my teachers and get a response from them usually within twenty four hours. I also found that I was not embarrassed to ask any questions. As a student, I often wondered if my questions were stupid or ridiculous. I was always afraid to ask, for fear that I would get laughed at by other students or that the teacher would look at me and say, “Duh.” Which never happened, but it was always in the back of my mind. I have had discussion through chat sessions, e-mails, and phone conversation with hundreds of other students throughout my sophomore year. I personally have enjoyed the experience so much that I have decided to continue my online education and obtain a four-year degree.
The material that has been covered in my online education institute has been as challenging, if not more so, than when I attended a traditional university. I have had a large increase in my GPA as an online student. This is mostly due to the fact that I can review the material as many times as I want and add to the material whenever I want. In my freshman year at a traditional university, I spent many hours sitting in a classroom listening to lectures. After I left the lecture, I had several questions, as I stated above, which never got answered. The other problem was that the teachers speak very quickly and it is almost impossible to catch every point that they make. The next time I would go to the class, the teacher would have a pop quiz or a test on the lecture. I did not score very high on these.
After I thought about my personal experiences with online versus traditional education experiences, I began to wonder how others felt that had been in both atmospheres. I began looking at forums and talking with other students at my online university. There are hundreds of students that feel they are getting a better education at an online university than they were at a traditional university. But I guess the critics have to have something to talk about.
Online education is not easy. It takes a lot of self-discipline and responsibility, but it does work. My personal experiences are proof that you can get a decent online education. Is it for everyone? No, there are many people out there that need to have the classroom atmosphere for different reasons. Traditional classrooms offer a motivated work environment instructed by an educator. Some people need that in order to complete their degree program. They need to have someone motivate them. They need to have a teacher tell them that there assignment is due on a daily basis or weekly basis. That is not a bad thing. But, that doesn’t mean that online education is any worse or better than a traditional classroom either.