Guide to Online Education - Elearning/E-work
Education is essential - and we all know that. Lately online education through online colleges for education - online courses for adults - online graduation education courses has been flourishing like anything and is becoming mandatory aspect of busy life and globalization. But in the last decade a hot discussion about online vs. traditional education is getting on to the nerves of people - Is online learning better than the traditional learning ways….and with traditional institutions boasting of their success - it becomes more than important that we discuss out some of the online education myths about future of online education prevailing in the 21st century.
Schoolandunoiversity.com brain storms nearly all the pros and cons of campus learning vs. online learning aspects of this disbelief - read it to believe it…
Unreliable Technology
Everyone and anyone including financial institutions - Businesses - Government - service providers and many more; from all walks of life ensure to update their procedures - protocols in a timely fashion. The fact remains that learning online programs needs a computer supported with an internet connection. Fancy tools and expensive software do prevail in the market - but they are not mandatory. Most of the people you try and speak about it - just to find out that their computer and internet connection is what they depend on for their most of the tasks. So where is the question of so called Unreliable technology?
Lack of social - group interaction
A recent survey claims that the social interaction between people attaining distance learning education has shown increasing trend in last few years. Social networking sites including Facebook - twitter are playing their role invariably. Looking at the popularity of these networking sites - online educationalists have envisaged these types of sites in to their courses - providing people with opportunities to chat - interact. It also provides online education seeking people with the opportunity to chat across the world - which traditional classes could never offer.
Teaching profession at risk
There was disbelief about computers replacing humans - which did not keep up to its hype. Computers have made it an easy task for everyone to get noticed by a variety of audience at the same time. Online education in no way can impact the teaching profession - on the other hand both - the teachers and the students have the opportunity to move out of their local setup to climb up the stairs of global market.
Students need constant monitoring
Students who lack motivation are likely to fail irrespective of the fact that they are constantly monitored or not. Place or time does play a vital role in the success story; however it is not mandatory for any student to be sitting in from of a teacher or needs a teacher to spoon feed the student for successful results. Online education offers students access to unlimited teachers - classmates - help and support in form of world wide websites which - traditional classes never did. The teachers can guide you towards success which is a easy task with online education - but they can never walk the path towards success for you - which happens to the case with traditional classes as well.
Syllabus is not vigorous enough to prepare students for tomorrow’s world
Awareness and apprehension about the different types of distance learning programs or syllabus your kid is studying comes natural. But it nowhere proves that online education or e learning does not match the vigor or thrust of traditional classes. If one takes a look at some of the best online education programs and popular free online course things get clearer. Top accredited online schools offering these free online courses have the syllabus - designed in a manner to work as exact reproduction of the traditional classes. The quality of the syllabus is directly proportionate to the educationalist who prepared it for online educational studies in a way that the digital method of imparting knowledge does not impact the quality of the syllabus and yields all the benefits of online education.
True Learning is not Quantifiable
Online schools are accredited and hence quantifying the output of efforts plugged in for any activity done is necessary. Similarly educationalists of top universities distance learning have been trying to assess how to quantify learning. Exams were the first and prompt response they got followed with workplace achievements - ability to reproduce the same legacy and many more. These arguments are not restricted to online education only. E learning or online education statistics uses the same methodology for assessing the learning success as the traditional classes have.
Online Education is one sided story
Doesn’t it sound funny….on the other hand sitting passively in traditional classroom listening to the lecturers seems more passive than online high school education. Students availing online education are more engaged and active as the responsibility is theirs to be attentive and interactive enough to attain desired results. Just try it once - keep on listening to someone waiting to speak out when the other person wants you to and a situation where you have all the liberty to send a chat to your online professor where ever you have doubts - It is different and amazing. Students studying online are more active and responsible as compared to others - this it is proved merely by the fact that they showed up in front of their computers when no one was watching over them to do so.
Students are not prepared for real world
We all know that world has become a global village - with much more computers and evolving computer technologies that a college or university campus or a small town or big city or field education can contain. All those who have opted for online education get the opportunity to interact with people from across the world. These students are all set and prepared for the so called digital and real world as compared to other students because they never leave this real world as they are gaining constant education from there.
Online education degrees are not given due consideration
One could have easily agreed to this fact a few years back - whereas now the scenario is completely different. Increasing number of employers have started recognizing the competitiveness and inexpensive aspects of degrees attained through online education. More and more graduates from online educations system are preferred nowadays as they are more Tech savvy - self motivated - self taught and need least of monitoring. America has been experiencing a rise in such online educational institutes followed with a tremendous hike in the number of people graduating year on year. Traditional educations systems will have to be on their toes to match up with these private online education providers as these private schools and colleges do not have to pave their way through bureaucratic offices.
No extracurricular activities
How many of you reading this would really agree to this? If we see - students gaining online education have more and ample time to attend these extracurricular activities. They don’t need to follow any time table - no need to travel all the way to the school or college to attend classes - appear for exams in a stipulated date and time and so on. The online educations system gives freedom to students to attend dance or karate classes of their choice and at their choice of time - which are not possible with regular school days. Routine community projects are the best example which take place during normal school hours –where students learning online can participate whereas regular school going students might not.
School and college connections helping your job search go missing
There are no doubts that connections are really important for a optimum Career research. It might prove to be a night mare to get back to the job market after attending traditional institutes - but for online students it is a cakewalk - as they live in that digital space which they never leave - so no question of returning back. Syllabus tutorials - on job training - alumni networking, all this happen hand in hand with online education. Online education is the only segment providing opportunities to get acquainted with people from other online courses from a totally diverse field giving a pleasant experience.
Online education is unfriendly - aloof approach - no campus life experience
We should not forget that online education works as is operated by real people. Online education offers customizable apparatus of Email - Chat - text - Skype and much more. Individuals who are handicap or shy in nature also find it to be the best medium to get educated - which unfortunately traditional classes do not cater to even through school counseling or special education. It is easier for an individual to send a mail or chat with a query to the online educator instead of raising the hand to ask question to the professor in a class of more than 150 students.
Professors - teachers are not serious about their online students
Limited interaction with instructor resulting in above situation cannot be a fact and we can prove so. Professors and teachers who take up the online education route are more involved and dedicated to their students and their teaching. It is so because of their reach to thousands of them at a go online via internet. Unlike others they have accepted this new fact of life and would certainly want to be recognized with the new era of online education. The more teachers taking this route will enhance the competition and hence the recognition - goodwill that they created would help them what they want.
Online Education is the way to go for people who are lethargic
Route to traditional colleges are tremendously expensive and full of problems. We know in our hearts that paying for online education is a tough task - as might have encountered people who are intelligent - motivated but cannot afford the school college expenses. Online education is not the way out for lethargic students; instead such individuals can earn something extra while studying online in the time they get due to the flexible scheduling of online studies. Hopefully it still remains a fact that lazy people will not go that extra mile of studying and earning at the same time to succeed in career and life.
School and college drop outs prefer online education
The statement would have been correct a few years back where we witnessed cases of school drop outs going online for their GED completion. However; now with the increased popularity - flexibility - quality and inexpensiveness; increasing number of students are opting for online education. Prestigious schools and colleges have started offering online courses - as it saves them from incurring the investment cost.
Online education supports typical learning pattern and variety of course options
There are a variety of patterns - styles available with online education including podcasts - videos - lecture - notes - slides - text - group discussions and real world testing at times. Online educators and students have no boundaries called the classrooms. This enables them to offer an opportunity to every individual to suit their self.
It is not easy to cope up with the expensive technology
Technologically also online education proves to be lot more cheap as compared to traditional classroom learning in schools or colleges. The cost incurred on the software - internet - computer/laptop is just a part of the total expenditure done for just one college level grade.
Lack of communication skills
It is a myth that individuals attaining online education lack at communication skills. In fact if we see online education teaches the students the perfect way of effective communication. Questions - discussions - comments and arguments that they make while learning online are supposed to be more thoughtful - accurate - written clearly.
Too many distractions in the so called real world - making online education ineffective
Fact accepted that Facebook - Twitter - YouTube are some of the thousands of other digital distractions that may take their toll on the education of an individual. But students opting for online education should take it as a challenge to balance their time - monitor their online habits and prioritize their needs. In traditional class room scenarios - the student is away from all these distractions but the moment he/she graduates - they will have to rapidly learn how to juggle between real life requirements and these distractions; whereas online education provides learning opportunities to the students to learn since the day of inception.
Online education needs updated technology
Everyone knows that the price of a considerably good laptop would not be more than the expenses incurred on a vacation or a birthday party thrown for friends. Nearly all the study software are from the internet. Slow internet connection issues can be manned with Wi-Fi hotspots available more in numbers than public rest rooms nowadays.
Online education does have access to traditional education resources
We spoke to some individuals who were of the opinion that traditional classrooms are better because the students had access to libraries - professors - extra lectures and so many things - Will online education provide these additional benefits? The answer is very simple - Online education means free knowledge - plentiful knowledge - easily available - anytime - anywhere - anything.
Colleges do not promote online education thoroughly as they themselves are not convinced
Colleges and universities are yet to attain that steam rolling mode of promoting online education - not because they are not convinced about it. The reason behind is something that we all know but not happy to hear - lot of money involved with traditional route of education making way for a lot of politics as well. A segment of educationalists are not ready to let off the traditional trends because that will bring an end to their bureaucratic reign.
Online Education means more time with your computer - which is not a healthy practice
At the time of inception of computers there was hype about the side effects of prolonged sessions in front of computer screens. Obesity - effect on eyes and many more. But we all have noticed that advanced technology has been catering ergonomic equipments and designs year on year to match the requirement. Computers and online education have become a vital part of our 21st century and so hopefully equipments will continue to flow in which are more adjustable and modified keeping in mind the health aspects of users.