Online education is potentially the greatest boon ever experienced by mankind. Students in western China, Tanzania and Chile can get the same education as anyone else, theoretically. Finally, education, no matter what grade level or which scholastic discipline of school, is available to almost anyone with an internet connection and a laptop computer. The reality is that there is both good news and bad news.
The good news is the hurdles to receiving an education are quickly vaporizing. As the cost of PC’s and laptops drops and their availability increases, access to education, which historically required a student’s presence at the institution of learning, is disappearing as a requirement to gaining knowledge. The costs of food, housing and transportation can be dropped from the budget for an education in many cases. The bad news is that not all courses and education can be conducted at a distance. You can’t learn a surgical procedure by pushing around a mouse and you can’t learn how to hit a high lob over the net by repeatedly keying the arrow keys (although you could do it on your Wii).
The fact is, like many things in modern life, an online education has its proper place and conducive conditions which allow the online student the best opportunity for a quality learning experience.
Listed below are the Top 5 Pros and Cons of receiving an online education:
Pro 1
Obviously, the best advantage to online education is going to class when and where is best for you. In other words, you can get your lessons and do your homework from the comfort of your home without ever leaving, generally. This allows for each student to learn at their own pace and in their own way. Gone are the days of sitting in a classroom, watching the instructor and listening to the guy in the third row snore. And you don’t have to park in the far corner of the lot and walk through the rain to get to class!
Pro 2
Money is the basis for all educations. A lack of funds used to mean going to the State College or local extension campus. As stated above, the costs associated with the other aspects of receiving an education, food, shelter, transportation, etc. have been all but eliminated. Now the student can focus their limited financial resources on what is most important – tuition!
Pro 3
Choices in life are always important. With an online education, a student can choose from literally dozens of schools and hundreds of curriculums. Gone are the days of “we don’t offer that here”. If you want to become a CPA, you can do it online. If you want to learn art history, business management or software networking solutions, you can do it with a program you’ve been able to identify and access via the internet. A student isn’t stuck with whatever the local schools have to offer.
Pro 4
Speed of education has always been a factor with respect to class attendance, course scheduling and professorial choices. Gone are the days of working 6 months and earning the money to pay for school for 6 months, and then working another 6 months and paying for the next 6 months… in other words, the six-year bachelor’s degree is now optional, not mandatory. Students can accelerate learning or decelerate learning, it’s their choice. If you’re smart, you can go faster and if you’re not as smart, you can learn at a pace that doesn’t put you in direct competition with your classmates.
Pro 5
Perhaps the most important advantage to online education is acceptance. Online degrees are accepted as readily as traditional diplomas and in some cases, they are more readily accepted. A student has the ability to learn, pass exams, and gain a diploma without concern for that diploma’s value. High quality education is no longer the exclusive purview of rich and advantaged. Colleges and universities have grasped the advantages they reap by providing online degrees to students. Class sizes aren’t limited by the number of seats in a room.
There are a few cons to an online education, which in some cases can be avoided and in other cases can’t be avoided.
Con 1
Diploma mills exist. They are a fact of life. Normally, they’re pretty easy to spot, for both the potential student and a potential employer. If you’ve decided to get your education online, be sure you’re not dealing with Ed’s Excellent Education and Putt-putt golf course. For the most part, these nefarious purveyors of worthless sheepskins can be easily spotted and avoided, but in any case, check the school out for its accreditation certificates.
Con 2
Being able to go to class in pajamas doesn’t mean a student can sleep through the classes. Additionally, the fact the student is at home can be a huge distraction. Kids, animals, pesky neighbors and a Star Trek marathon can be effective distractions, reducing the attention of the student to the classes offered. Students may not have to be in their seats at a designated time and place, but that doesn’t mean the professor’s lecture is any less important to the final grade. Remember, everything is on the exam!
Con 3
Campus interaction is severely limited if not completely eliminated. Students don’t really meet other students, except online. The smell of the autumn leaves rotting on the ground and the cheers of alumni from the football stadium are gone. Meeting other students is restricted and thus, social interaction is limited as well. Some courses require a student to attend certain classes on campus, but most online educators are doing away with this often-times difficult reality.
Con 4
Technical glitches can put a real hitch in a student’s giddy-up. Newer and more advanced software utilized by online instruction resources can leave some students (and their professors) staring at screens of gobbledy-goop. Submissions can be lost or destroyed by computer hiccups. In some cases, students and their instructors are both dealing with new technology and as with many new and evolving technologies, online education is not immune to these frustrations.
Con 5
Just because it’s a school and it’s accredited, doesn’t mean you’re getting the same education as someone else studying the same discipline at a different school. Standardization of coursework materials is still in process with many accrediting agencies, leaving schools wide discretion as to class content and subject materials. Accreditation overview of online content is ramping up and hopefully, in the next few years, the issues of standardization will be eliminated all together.
There are other advantages and disadvantages to receiving an education online, to be sure, however, the advantages vastly outweigh the disadvantages. The fact that higher education is available to so many people on terms much more flexible than historically offered makes online schooling perhaps the greatest leap forward for mankind since the invention of fire.
For more information on a specific online university and it’s pros and cons check out Classes and Careers.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Cons 2, 3, and 4 aren’t really cons.
Con 2 – With the flexibility of online learning comes more responsibility on the student’s part. Not everyone is wired for online learning, but, if you’re a busy, working professional, it can be a huge benefit to you.
Con 3 – How many people can say they formed deep relationships with students in their on-ground campuses? I know that for me, personally, going to class consisted of sitting there listening to the professor drone on. I rarely – if EVER – interacted with classmates. With the online format, many colleges require you to participate in discussion boards. You respond to fellow students’ thoughts and formulate your own. One could argue that there’s MORE interaction in the online format.
Con 4 – Yes, technical glitches happen, but universities are also aware of this. If something is amiss, it’s likely affecting multiple students. Deadlines can be extended.
As for Con 5, the same can be said for ANY school, whether online or on ground.
Thanks for your comments Jen. I agree with you, and I’m glad that there people that see that the cons of online education really aren’t that big.
Con 6.. Employers/almost everyone thinks less of online degrees in comparison to brick-and-mortar universities.
Thanks for the comment Timothy. However, we tend to disagree. The view of employers of online degrees is quickly changing and becoming more acceptable. I’m actually sitting next to a co-worker of mine who earned her degree from The University of Phoenix. Check out the post we wrote “What do employers think of online degrees?”
A degree is a degree. Technology is here to benefit students and sitting in a classroom doesn’t make anyone smarter than sitting in front of the computer doing course work. The study process and information absorption is almost the same. In fact, studying in the quiet of one’s home can be void of campus, crowd distractions so the student can concentrate more.
I agree with Troy that employers are more accepting of online degrees. Ultimately, though, it comes down the to the individual. A person can go to a traditional university and still not be a good fit for a job while a person who obtained an online degree can be a perfect candidate. I agree that certain degrees do require a physical presence in a lab or classroom, degrees that primarily involve invasive medicine, for example.
I agree with the article 100%. I do online schooling and I enjoy it very much!I can work from home and not have to ride the bus to regular school and stay there for 8 hours five days a week. I can go at my own pace,which is faster than the rate at normal schools,so I get much more accomplished and learn much more also. But there also cons to doing school online. My internet at home is slow,so watching instructional lectures can be a challange,A 30 minute video can easily turn into an hour video since it takes so long to buffer up.Distractions are also at an all time high.You have no teachers watching you do your school and telling you to focus on your work,so it’s always so tempting to go check you Facebook or go online shopping and not do your school.Another big con is lack of social interaction. Now for me,this isn’t that big of a deal since I attend youth group and see those friends up to 3-4 times a week,and on other days I’m usually always doing something with another friend or other people. But many online learners are not as lucky as I am to have that kind of social interaction. Many just stay at home all the time and they get lonely and start going insane from lack of social interaction.So all in all,online school is not for everyone.It takes commitment and you have to sacrifice things in order to make it work,but the pros and cons,in my opinion,are almost equally balanced.
i believe that virtual is and ok class, but i believe that its very tedious and boring. all the assignments are exactly the same. Its a pattern that you cant talk to the teacher about changing becuase there is no teacher. in my virtual class you do vocab, listen to a 30 min leture, online content, practice and homework, then a quiz every section. It becomes a bore and you dont want to do it. It is also very cold outside and snowing and we have to walk to the virtual center i believe if we should have to take a virtual course we should have it in the school instead of out of the building!
I think learning virtual is okay. But then again there are still pro’s and con’s to learning virtual because you don’t know if the student is really learning anything or even understanding the material that they are given. But you also have students that work at slow pace and get to work at their own pace until they understand the material and then also the students that work a fast pace that can just go right a head. So i guess you can say learning virtual is a good and bad way depends on the way you see it.
Online education is a great oppurtunity for many people all over. Online learning is convenient yet gives people a good learning amount of information. People are able to do online learning on their own time and pace, this way they are not necessarily ahead or behind. The flexibility of online learning gives students the ultimate benefit to go above and beyond. In a classroom a student is not always able to over-acheive due to time. Though there are many pros of online learning, cons are present as well. A student is not able to ‘raise their hand’ and get an immediate answer from the teacher. Also, a student is taken away from being around people, limitting their abilities to work as a group and collaborate with others.
Overall, online learning is a great oppurtunity for many, but there are cons that go along with this option as well.
I believe virtual is an “Okay” class. It depends on the student weather they want to finish the course on time or not. Yes, there is pros for having a class you can finish at your own pace, and there are some cons by not being able to finish the course in time. I like virtual because I am able to work at home and possible get things done faster. And you get the same credit rather then learning the subject in a class room.
Learning through virtual classroom setting, in my opinion, is much better than just a high school classroom. But that’s because I get frustrated when I’m ahead of the class and I have others slowing down the pace of learning. When I come to school, I want to learn something and get to the point, but people in the classroom can make it difficult to do such thing if they start talking in the middle of the classroom or just being disruptive.
A negative side of this online learning experience is the fact that you can’t create a relationship with a teacher. With a good teacher in a normal classroom, you create this relationship where they inspire you or motivate you to learn more on the subject and life lessons. I’m a part time student and I know that I would miss a relationship with a teacher the most, being able to talk to the in the morning before class starts about random things in life.
I believe that virtual classes are good now, but can be improved upon. I would like it if there was a teacher that I could meet face to face who is specialized in my subject(s). I often have questions that can only be answered by replaying the lecture repeatedly. I find this annoying and often stressful, especially when the lectures are over 15 minutes long. I also think that the software used to score the written responses has a tendency to grade correct answers incorrectly for not having the right key words in it or the other way around, when a total wrong answer is graded correct because there is a group of words put together that the software views as correct. Although it has its bugs, I still enjoy taking classes virtually because now I can excel at my classes instead of waiting for the rest of the class to understand the material. I also enjoy being free from a set schedule. I know that virtual classes have their problems and that virtual schooling is still a newer form of education and that it is still being de-bugged and worked out, and I can’t wait until it is.
I feel that virtual classes are not for everyone. If you are a person who lacks motivation and can’t stay on task, you probably wouldn’t do well with online classes. Also I agree that interaction is limited, especially if you are taking all of your classes online. I feel that there should be some sort of interaction when it comes to education because people need to be around others in order to make it in this world. So social skills are somewhat mandatory.
I like being able to do my classes anytime and anywhere so this is what keeps me doing online classes, otherwise I don’t think I would do them at all because I like to interact with others
I do agree with Timothy. I have found many colleges not as readily accepting the credits from online high schooling, as they would from an in class program. But the flexibility, and also the larger selection classes is much more appealing.
Personally, I really like virual learning, it’s much easier than classroom learning at times, yet others not because of a couple obsticals that can get in the way. For example, the second con. I find it difficult to focus during the daytime while everyone in my house is distracting me. Occasionlly I’ll miss a key piece of information during a lecture and have to review it again which can get irratating.
I’m actually consitering switching to virtual full time next year but am worried about the whole ‘lack of social’ thing also mentioned in this artical, I’m hoping to find more articals like this before next year so that I may be able to make my decision.
I agree with Pro 1 because being able to work when you want and where you want is very helpful. You wouldn’t have to revolve your schedule around school, instead you would revolve school around your schedule. You could manage your time in a way that would allow you to be able to succeed in your class.
In my opinion, there are so many different styles of online learning, that you can’t be too quick to judge. My online classes for high school are set up completely different than my online classes for college. Overall though there are pros and cons for both. I do agree that online learning is convenient, but i also know that it isn’t for everyone. some students can’t handle the independence and responsiblity required to succeed through online learning. Also, a huge con is not having a teacher to be able to interact with. This is pretty important, because not having a teacher to interact with and ask questions to, can make learning so much more frustrating and challenging. In this area, you just have to be careful what classes you choose to take online. For example, math and Science are subjects that usually need a lot of instruction, explaining through discussion, examples, questions, and interaction. Online, so much of that doesn’t happen, so math and science are rough classes to take online. I beleive that math and sciences shouldn’t be offered online, because it just doesn’t seem like it’s fair to a student to not have a teacher in those types of situations. It’s like crippling their learning ablilities. Personally, I enjoy online learning, because of the convenience to work around schedules, but there are many cons and pros to online learning. Online learning is fairly new, so there will probably be many changes in the next few years, that try to elimiate the cons, so we shall see.
when looking at the pros and cons of online learning you also should look at your self and your learning styles and capabilitys. for myseld i have not been able to learn very well at all through virtual classes. I feel like some people need the interaction of an actual teacher and students to ask questions and further their learning. Yes virtual classes are very convienet but you also dont want to just go for the convenience you want to get something out of the time you are spending on classes.
Online Education is very beneficial to me especially because i can take courses which aren’t offered in the highschool and finish at my own pace so i agree with pro 4 completely. I am also able to take extra classes without messing up my schedule too much. In a virtual class you success depends on your self motivation, your ability to manage your time properly and also avoid distractions. This is easily avoided if you are taking an easy class but in hard classes it is very hard to keep up your grade. I found myself struggling to finish hard classes last year but luckily i didn’t fail them.
I agree with most of the article except for the part about the lack of social networking. Personally I think my classmates aren’t very helpful and make it hard for others to pay attention in class.
it is a great way to learn not only because you can do it from home but it offers a better way to learn and when I was at bridgman Public Schools I diden’t learn as much as I learn now and looking back at it I am glad I left but there are some cons of online learning and it is the lack of not seeing your friends every day. and also there are some pros of online learning and that is you can do school what ever time you want to also the flexibility of everything now.
I think virtual classes are ok. I agree with what most of this article is saying. Online learning lets your work at your own pace which is cool. A con for me is that I get distracted. Sometimes I find myself totally zoned out, and then I have to repeat a 15 min. lecture. Overall, online learning has its pros and cons, but I think it’s the right option for me.
I personally like virtual learning a lot more than classroom learning. In my virtual class I know what to expect because there is a schedule set out for me. Many classroom’s do not give you a schedule so you can’t plan ahead. Also the ease of being able to log on to your class at home is the best pro for me. I am one that I will have a lot of energy to do my class late at night when I am done with everything else and the school won’t be open so I love the fact that I can just log and do my work without any hassle that it’s too late and I can’t see a teacher. Another reason why I like the ease of doing the class at home is because I get to manage my time a lot better. I get to choose when I think it is best for me to do my class. Also I do many extra curricular activities and sometimes that means that I miss a lot of school days. In a regular classroom a lot of the times I would just miss the section and I couldn’t really make up for it or if I could I would have twice the amount of work that day in all of my classes. That was the must stressful for me but with my online classes I could get ahead or catch up a lot easily than in a classroom. Even though there are many reasons why I like virtual there a couple things that make it hard for me to do my virtual classes. The main one would be DISTRACTIONS. At home there is sometimes too many things going on and sometimes I’ll want to just stop doing my class for a moment and do something else like check my email or Facebook or even go get something to eat. This isn’t good because eventually I’ll find myself not going back to my class because it will just be one distraction after another. Another con for me would be technical difficulties. Sometimes when I am doing my class and I am getting a lot of things done my internet will decide to disconnect. For me this doesn’t motivate me to do my class at home sometimes because I get impatient waiting for the internet to come back. Also it keeps me from accomplishing a lot on my classes. As to everything there is pros and cons but to me I believe that for my virtual classes the pros outweigh the cons.
I really enjoy both in classroom learning and online learning. It really depends on the class I’m taking however, to decide which I like best. For example, my algebra 2 course, I took half online and half in class, and I learned a lot more doing it online then in the classroom. But, in my classes like english 12, it is easier for me in class because a lot of the stuff we get help on from teachers, would be very difficult to comprehend online. So, depending on the course and difficulty of it, I would say both options, online and in classroom, are very beneficial options for an education.
Online learning is a fairly new thing that has emerged in recent years. Depending on what kind of student you are, online education can be beneficial or it can be harmful. If you are hardworking independent student, then online learning would be a comfortable environment for you. This type of education usually allows you to accomplish more in less time if you are self-motivated. Online learning also gives you more choices of classes that you can take. There are some disadvantages of taking classes online. For one, not having a real teacher in a tough class would make it more challenging since you are basically on your own. Another thing is that if you work from home, there tends to be more distractions that could prevent you from completing your work. Overall, your own personal learning style determines what is best for you, whether it means taking classes traditionally or online.
It is a great way to learn. It is flexible and I can work whenever, but there are some technical problems at times and that can be frustrating. but overall a great way to learn.