There are some truly impressive advantages to pursuing a degree online. Freedom to choose when to do assignments and participate on discussion boards, easier organization of work and progress, no traffic, to name a few. But there are costs and problems as well, and in the interests of full disclosure I am writing about one of those.
The University of Houston at Victoria has a very nice system set up for online classes, which they call “WebCT”. It runs a lot like Microsoft Outlook, which happens to be the format for students’ e-mails as well. This past weekend, however, something went wrong and the system ran very very slowly. At times it was impossible to access WebCT at all. Tuesday morning, for example, the techs thought they had it fixed, but that was incorrect; most people to tried to access their online classes could not get in, and the ones who could found that the system did not allow access to their classes. For hours the techs sweated and struggled, and finally got the system up and running a little after 1:00 PM. It worked well enough for me to take my first on-line quiz (Chapter 1 in Accounting, I got 8 out of 10 right, need to study harder) and participate in some Discussion Boards.
I should mention again that online education is much, much different from in-class learning in how the student does his work. Where in the classroom, the student physically shows up and gains credit for attendance whether or not he actively participates or just sits like a lump, in the online condition the student is required to participate in online discussions (the Discussion Boards) as proof of a virtual “attendance”, which means that the online student cannot afford to slack off. Also, where the classroom instructor relies on subjective impressions to determine whether a given student has advanced the discussion and materially contributed, in the online situation the student’s comments and questions are posted on the board for everyone to read and address. The student’s volume and quality of work will be simple for the professor to verify, whether participation was regular, whether the comments were substantive, whether sources were cited, and so on.
Also, it seems that the volume of reading is much heavier for the online student. In the classroom setting, of course, there is the text and the assigned readings, as well as sources for research projects, but in the online class since there is no lecture – at least, not so far in the three classes I am taking this semester – the student is tested and challenged by the assigned reading and text. He must use his own judgment to consider the essentials of each chapter, and he must decide on his own how much time to devote to memorization and how much to analysis. Of course, as a rule whenever a professor repeats an instruction, like saying ‘read the whole textbook all the way through by the end of the second week’, he’s giving a strong hint about what he will expect in his quizzes and tests.
I discovered another unique feature to the online class today; one of my professors asked a student to leave the class because of unacceptable conduct on the Discussion Boards. In these days of blogs and chat rooms, it seems that some folks have forgotten basic rules of civil discourse. It’s a little bit tricky, when people discuss issues which they feel strongly about, to remember that how they say something can be just as important as what they say. The professor, understandably, was a bit displeased that a notice about courtesy and professional conduct now has to be added to the board.
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5 comments:
I found that one of the perils for me was that the whole "learning at your own pace" made it way too easy to put off studying due to family and/or work obligations.
DJ, I'm enjoying reading your back to school posts lately. I'm a (older) senior at ASU and it seems online learning is unavoidable these days. Online learning requires you to have more of a work ethic and to not procrastinate. It's convenient; I'm taking 19 credits and am only on campus one day a week. Like you said, that's less driving, finding parking, etc. But overall, I personally get more out of the lectures and enjoy the interaction with my proffs and fellow students. Good luck with your studies...for now I must get back to reading Beowulf!
I homeschooled my boys for one year (grades 4 and 6) using an online service, since I was also finishing my own distance learning masters degree, and the boys were crashing and burning in traditional school. We all benefitted from having to share the internet access -- got our work done faster than we would have otherwise, and the boys were very happy to spend an entire week working on only one subject at a time. I think online learning should be first choice for people with adhd or autism spectrum disorders. They can focus on learning without having to adjust their behavior to suit the neurotypical folks. They can practice socially appropriate behavior in social settings rather than educational ones. Both boys are doing very well in traditional school after getting that year break.
i am also in an online class, and i agree with the way you said it seems that there is more reading, but i think the simple fact is that there is no lecture, so reading is vital to ones success in the class. but now with podcast and other tools, and online course can have a more lecture based style. also i think that because i dont actually attend a class i feel that i do more for my online class then i do normally i think it is because i feel like i need to be on top of things because im not actually going to a class
I am also enrolled in an online class. It is my first one and I have to say that it was quite an adjustment. I am a bit of a procrastinator, so knowing that I have approximately one whole week before everything is due is not the best for me. In traditional classes I know that class is conducted at certain times on certain days, in the online class when I participate is left to me basically. It makes it hard because there is no set schedule.
I do agree with what you have said about the amount of effort that is involved. Especially about the commenting and postings required for online learning. I think that it makes people more interactive in their classes, when in a traditional class they might not participate in the class discussions.
It is a lot more work, but it has been a learning experience. Actually I think that it has been good for me, because I have realized areas in which I can improve on, especially in my study habits.
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