Online and Face-to-Face Learning - Research Paper Example

? On line and Face-to-Face Learning Source Comparing perceived formal and informal learning in face-to-face versus online environments Author(s): Avner Caspi and Ariella Levenberg Source: Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects. 6 (Annual 2010): p 323. This journal qualifies as a source for my essay because it indicates that teachers who communicated with their students via the on line medium witnessed higher perceived studying or learning than those who used face-to-face medium of tutoring. Source #2 Title: An analysis of student self-assessment of online, blended, and face-to-face learning environments: implications for sustainable education delivery Author(s): Sidney R. Castle and Chad J. McGuire Source: International Journal of Education Studies. This source qualifies as a reference source to this essay since it accounts for a fact that on line learning offers more benefits than face-to-face learning. For instance the report states that on line medium of learning enables students from diverse backgrounds to access information thereby allowing huge dissemination of knowledge. Source # 3 Post University Website http://www.post.edu/online/virtual-library.shtml This website is a superb reference source because it is provides academic services exhaustively. Its virtual library is rich with information from databases such as Connecticut and Ebscohost, which comprises of more than 3000 journals that cover all disciplines. Do students receive the same quality education online as traditional classroom face-to-face education? Introduction How effective is on-line learning? Debate concerning the comparative quality of internet-established courses has varied almost as the beginning of this fresh teaching and studying medium. On-line courses equal traditional face-to-face learning in educational quality and rigor. Also on-line learning can realize the same goals as face-to-face education. Students acquire as greatly and as completely in on-line learning as they accomplish in face-to-face education. In fact, there are numerous ways, in which on-line learning surpasses face-to-face education. This paper is an argumentative paper on whether on-line learning offers the same quality education as traditional face-to-face education. Scholars have identified for decades the inadequacies of the faculty- positioned classroom, nonetheless it has become hard to break free from the pattern. Whether the schoolroom instructor uses discussions, lectures, small group activities, role-playing, or else any other method, it is conversely, the instructor overseeing the show. Within an online atmosphere, nevertheless, the instructor presently seats back. Students are encouraged to study as individual as well as they educate one another. Predominantly in the debate group mode, learners have the prospect to explicate, comment upon, share, critique, and cultivate course resources among themselves into a manner hardly seen within the face-to-face classroom. For numerous years, academics from English department have asserted that the soundest way to educate learners on ways to write out more efficiently is to let them engage in writing more frequently. Online learning has made this adage veracity. Typically, online curriculums are far above writing- exhaustive than customary courses have ever encompassed. In both face-to-face and internet-based classes, major projects are handed in a written form. However, in an internet-based course, general consultations, requests for assistance or elaboration, responses to directed queries, group tasks, majority of assignments, and numerous quizzes and tests are in a written form too. The accord among online instructors is that, the minute they want the students to submit prudently written and edited assignments, the value of most the learners' work enhances over the spell of the curriculum (Aragon & Johnson, 2009). Discussion forum is among the most thrilling features of an internet-based course. Within the traditional face-to-face classroom, the lecturer asks a query, and the similar five or six extroverted learners unavoidably each raise his or her hands. He or she offers impulsive, often un-explored responses within the restricted time fixed for discussion. Within the online situation, discussions get into a new aspect. Once a lecturer posts a query upon the asynchronous forum board, each learner in the tutorial is expected to act on, respond shrewdly, and for numerous times. Majority of online learners have specified that this could be the first instance they have “chatted up" in lesson and that most enjoy the prospect. Similarly, lecturers articulate that it is a gratification to pick up the remarkably compelling concepts of the more withdrawn participants of their sessions. Most online coaches have also witnessed that the comparative "anonymity" of internet-based discussions assists as a form of a level-playing arena for homosexuals, women, learners with physical disabilities, and participants of other possibly sidelined groups, since they can contribute in course undertakings without being maligned. Additionally, the set-up provides non-native mutterers of English additional time to envision queries and compose suitable answers. In their normal lives, persons do not retain an instructor by their side to point them in their attainment of fresh material. One of the functions that educators must perform is to educate students to locate and absorb information individually or in collaboration with their classmates. The internet-based atmosphere nurtures a self-motivated learning. Apprentices dictate their own usage of search engines, internet links, discussion boards, e-mail, chat, and other social media. Whereas such materials cannot warrant student inventiveness, they create a background that gives priority to the self-sufficiency of the apprentice. A well-assembled, creative internet- based curriculum can get anthropology learners to cultures around the globe, archaeology learners to functional digs, art apprentices to the best museum assortments, and business learners to establishments, small and large. Excellent reserves can be retrieved, viewed, and reviewed 3600 minutes a day, seven days a week. Students, if they appeal, teachers can combine these virtual encounters with physical experiences for a long-drawn-out benefit (Caspi& Levenberg, 2010) In an internet-based course, aid is just a click away. Teachers can present many kinds of interactive education aids at their course spots (for example flash cards, instant feedback quizzes, as well as PowerPoint presentations). Interaction with the teacher and classmates via e-mail can ensue any given time, not only in traditional (restricted) on-campus office periods. Learners can correspondingly use chat rooms, e-mail, and discussion panels to establish unplanned or planned study groups, which defy predictable space and time limits. Just as significantly, an internet-based course spot can make an entire host of university and college services accessible to learners, including academic advising, registration, financial aid info and forms, 24/7 library services for learners with incapacities and online coaching via Smart thinking or other alike vendors. Even although online students do not interact with an instructor across the tutorial room every single day, normally they have larger access to tutors. Traditional learners hurrying off to their subsequent lecture or off-campus occupations habitually cannot squeeze in a query to their teacher. Online learners, nevertheless, can as well as e-mail countless queries to their lecturers and regularly participate in a discourse that could be difficult to duplicate within the face-to-face world (Dellana & West, 2008). Conclusively, over a more official note, online quizzes and tests can be fabricated with a programmed grading capacity that provides instant response and citations to transcript and course notes that explicate the correct solutions. Assignments, comprising ratings and editorial commentaries, can be sent back to learners more quickly and typically with added detail than within the face-to-face setting. There is, therefore, no point of waiting for the next lecture to take back an assignment. Internet-based education is among top most exhilarating improvements to modern education. Internet-based learning is neither appropriate for all learners nor suitable for all teaching body, but it often meets the requirements of both in favor of a stirring, high-quality learning involvement. As per any instructional style, the value of online curriculums differs, but the prospective—often encountered and still growing—is within a par as well as in certain respects even sounder than in the traditional face-to-face method. It is, certainly, up to forthcoming research to reject or support the impressions made in this paper. The significant point, nonetheless, is that internet-based tutoring can be executed thoroughly, besides demand for online learning is such that everyone must to work toward making it better (Castle & McGuire, 2011). References Aragon, S., & Johnson, S. (2009). The Influence Of Learning Style Preferences On Student Success In Online Versus Face-To-Face Environments. The American Journal of Distance Education, 16(4), 227-244. Castle, Sidney & McGuire, Chad. (2011). An Analysis Of Student Self-Assessment Of Online, Blended, And Face-To-Face Learning Environments: Implications For Sustainable Education Delivery. International Journal of Education Studies. Caspi, A., &Levenberg, A. (2010). Comparing Perceived Formal And Informal Learning In Face- to-Face Versus Online Environments. Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, p. 323. Dellana, S. A., & West, D. (2008).  On-line education in a management science course: Effectiveness and performance factors. Journal of Education for Business, 76(1), 43-47. Read More