Online Education and Face to Face Education
Online education (also known as e-learning) is gathering momentum across all universities, all disciplines and across all age groups of university students. Online education can be defined as technology-based learning in which learning materials are delivered electronically to remote learners via a computer network. A recent survey by Babson College [1] indicates in Fall 2014, 28% of students in U.S. were enrolled in a minimum of one online course. This is 3.7% higher from the earlier year. This rising popularity can be attributed to many factor including (a) The rise of technology and visualization tools to enhance the educational experience of students (b) The demands from working professional for them to have flexibility in taking courses at any time so that they can strike a balance between their educational goals and professional and personal lives [2] (c) The rising tuition costs in face to face courses (d) The lack of classroom infrastructure in the universities to accommodate high enrollment and more students in the campus (e) Learning at a pace that is appropriate to the students skillset and (f) freedom for those who are overwhelmed or feel stressful in the classroom environment.
This increasing popularity often translates to another question: Can online education replace face to face education, in the coming years? My position on this, is that the face to face learning is more effective, highly impactful, it has
Online degrees are becoming an ever more trendy method to receive a college education and many students are switching to online education due to the quality of material, ease, and the level of flexibility in distance education programs. Recently, the internet has developed into a reliable capital of information for college seekers. Everything from applying for financial assistance to taking a course can be done online. Now, a student can even obtain online degrees from one of many schools offering online education as a practical choice to a traditional classroom education. There’s a load of information regarding online education, and distance education is becoming increasingly popular for students everywhere.
With all the publicity over online courses, great professors alike have been determined to find out whether online courses are just as effective as face-to-face classes. There have been some controversies over the situation; therefore, several studies have been made. One study by Adam Driscoll, Karl Jicha, Andrea Hunt, Lisa Tichavsky, and Greatchen Thompson shows that given the appropriate pedagogy or instruction, online courses is just as an effective teaching format as face-to-face classes (Driscoll, Jicha, Hunt, Tichavsky, & Thompson, 2012). The study showed that when comparing online courses against face-to-face courses, the midterm scores for both teaching platforms are the same. Given that the GPA of the students is taken into consideration, the test grades do not improve or become worse when the class is taken online. The same study showed that when comparing online courses to face-to-face courses, the student satisfaction does not increase or decrease when
Alisa Stern’s article discusses the boom of online learning in higher education institutions and the major challenges an instructor faces with these online courses. According to Stern, the most challenging thing about an online course is replicating the same learning environment a student would get attending a regular face to face class. She discusses how technology has pushed online learning to become more collaborative and less isolated. Furthermore, Stern has experienced teaching an online courses and discusses the different tools that helped her recreate a conventional learning environment in an online course. Stern mentions that communication played an important role in the way she taught her courses and students felt as if she was interested
In today’s society, so many people are continuing their education beyond high school. We realize that in order to make a decent living, a degree is most likely a requirement. In some cases even a bachelor’s degree is not enough to qualify for many positions. Nevertheless, thanks to technology, we now have the option to learn online or in a traditional classroom setting. There are very few differences between the two, and students need to understand that as much time and energy will need to be devoted to the online courses as on a campus. “A 2010 meta-analysis and review of online-learning studies concluded that online learning was as good as or slightly more effective than traditional face-to-face instruction” (Mendenhall, 2011).
Computer based learning, as it stands, has plenty of disadvantages, but many in business and educational arenas remain optimistic about its future. There are two indisputable truths about computer-based learning, or e-learning. First, it will revolutionize education and second, such a future is just around the block. Educational experts agree that most types of study are not yet effective when delivered purely online, mainly because of bandwidth limitations, expensive set-up costs, continued resistance to the medium and a shortage of quality course content.
Online college courses are almost becoming traditional for students. Some may perceive that a student does not receive an equal education when taking an online class. People tend to think that if a teacher is not directly giving the information about the subject, the course learning experience is different or unjust. This assumption is wrong according to the perception of many online course takers. Online college courses offer students the advantage to learn on their own time. The skills that a student learns in self-discipline, scheduling to complete graded assignments, and advantages learned with technology gives online classes equal education experience compared to classes on campus.
However, advocates of classroom learning believe the online method isolates the students from one another as well as their professor minimizing the overall value of taking the course. They also claim that students learn better when working together with their instructor and their fellow classmates. Students learn better when they are given the opportunity to ask questions, join in class discussions, and they move the process of learning forward through their participation. Face-to-face advocates firmly believe that this kind of interaction is not possible over the Internet; and for many types of education, e-learning will never meet the potential of live human interaction in the classroom. An article in the New York Times titled, “Second Thoughts on Online Education,” backs up the points made above. A recent research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, comes to the conclusion; “A rush to online education
Technology is changing every aspect in our lives, even the way we learn. Online classes are a rapidly growing trend it today’s society. Online classes are a cost-effective substitute for traditional courses and more convenient for many, so more schools and universities are offering this option. Due to the increase in online course enrollment, people are questioning if students truly learn something from online classes because it’s not a traditional learning environment. Online classes are just, if not more, effective as traditional classes because grades have increased and online discussions provide students with the chance to interact through networking while earning a degree for less than what it would cost to enroll at the same university.
E-learning has come to dominate the strategic thinking of employers over the past decade in several countries. Only in recent years in India, there has been focus on e-learning, this is due to the recent development in MNC, BPO and IT concerns. This is widely seen due to the connected economy, become intangible and fast growing among organizations. Due to emerging MNC’s, globalisation has become one of the most important criteria to increase flexibility of communications, and hence become vital among the organization. Despite the emphasis on e-learning and large investments made on training it is still not clear and ongoing success have not yet been recognized, due to the ongoing structural changes among managements. The problem in
Education has undergone significant changes because of the development of information and communication technology over the 21st century (Lin & Jou, 2012:2). As a convenient and inexpensive way to gain knowledge while pursuing higher education, online learning, a form of training or teaching that takes place over the Internet, has been considered as an alternative to traditional classroom learning (Zhang et al, 2004). This essay will argue that even though online learning has benefit such as flexibility which could outweigh traditional learning, traditional classroom learning might still not be entirely replaced. This essay will discuss positive and negative aspects of online and traditional learning in terms of four criteria:
Education is an important part of people’s lives; it will either make them or break them in the future depending on the careers they choose. Education is greatly diverse today in comparison to the 1950s because of advancements in teaching and other great inventions that provide easier techniques of teaching. One major issue that has been raised is distant learning courses and online education.
The online era is beginning to change the way we deliver the message to the students. As brokers of information, we have to seek new mediums to reach our students or consumers. Online learning is becoming more popular to reach students to help increase their reading and comprehension of what they read. As a history teacher, it becomes frustrating to assign homework that the students do not do, because they can’t.
In many schools, online classes are becoming more available to students. Recent studies show that the use of online classes has been rapidly increasing over the past three years. Currently, there are a total of 6,700,000 students enrolled in all different variations of courses
Online education has grown since it first came about, there are mixed views on whether it is truly beneficial. The reasons for the huge growth of online education is money even though online education targeted working adults that have little or no time to sit in a traditional classroom for millions of men and women serving in the armed forces online education has made earning a degree much more possible.
Online teaching is defined as any educational activity that requires a student to complete some learning or assessment activity via a personal computer and a connection to a network (Murdoch University Academic Council 1999). This network connection is usually to the Internet (Demirdjian 2002). It is a seen by the Murdoch University Academic Council as a teaching and learning technology, not a method of study (2002), but this depends on how it is to be used and by whom. For example, distance education student using online teaching would be more inclined to see it as a study method than a QUT student who uses online teaching to download and print lecture notes to attend a lecture on campus.