Online Education is Effective For Adult Learners - Essay Example

Online Education is Effective For Adult Learners Introduction Online education is one of the types of education that falls under the category of distance learning. Distance learning is referred to as learning that takes place between the instructor and the student and both these groups of individuals are distant to each other in the context of physical distance. Online education is a medium of providing instructions to students by teachers with the assistance of different forms of technologies. Importance for distance learning has been realized and has led to increase in popularity of online education among the adults. Online education has achieved success, still certain individuals give preference to traditional, classroom style education and certain are in the favor of online education. Those in the favor of traditional learning methods assert that students learn in a better manner when they are involved in learning along with other students. A recent change in education has been experienced as both distance and traditional learning methods have been integrated. One of the major concerns associated with distance learning is communication that takes place between teachers and students. Due to this, measures have been taken in order to increase communication between learners and instructors in the case of distance learning. Distance learning has undoubtedly made great progress and is one of the preferred methods of obtaining education for adult learners. This writing will pay emphasis to the issues and benefits of distant learning and why this learning method is considered effective by the adult population. Body History The notion of distance learning is not a new one, during the period of 19th century; both the US and the European regions implemented the correspondence based educational system and was used to assist those in attaining education who failed to obtain education by attending classroom settings. In this kind of distance learning system, the educator and the student used to correspond with each other through the use of mail postal system. Only the means of conducting this kind of education has changed and has made distance learning effective and efficient as the postal systems have been replaced by internet connections and have led to the development of e-learning educational system. Prevalence and Higher Education Necessity The Department of Education of US asserts that number of students enrolling in nontraditional means of education is increasing at a higher pace than number of students enrolling in traditional form of educational system (Fenton ix). Chun states that as the number of students enrolling in educational systems that are not traditional in nature, it is needed that the method of delivery of education should be flexible enough to meet the requirements of individual students (Information Science Reference 739). There has been tremendous amount of change in the demand for higher education throughout the world and distance learning has assisted traditional educational institutes in meeting these demands by overcoming several barriers of higher education with the assistance of technological advancements. Goddard has predicted that by the era of 2025 there will be over 150 million individuals that will be in pursuit of higher level education and this increase in demand will lead to various changes in the way through which individuals obtain higher education (Weller 8). In the 21st century employers have increased their demand updating of an individual’s skills and abilities while he works for an organization. Benefits Several benefits have been associated with online education, these include: meeting the requirements of nontraditional students who have various responsibilities such as career and family. These responsibilities do not allow or discourage nontraditional students from being a part of classroom style educational system. Due to these issues, various higher level educational systems have realized the importance of online education, while some have implemented this solution on temporary or permanent basis. Online educational system is created in compliance with the traits as well as requirements of adult students. Nafukho asserts that online education has provided the benefit of helping adult students in continuing to gain work related experience along with achievement of goals that are educational in nature (Kidd 3). Online education has contributed heavily to the needs of education of the current century by promoting the fact that education is very essential in socio-economic development. These programs need to be accepted and implemented by well recognized educational institutes so those individuals who are attaining higher education through this method can remain confident that their education will result in economic development. Organizations have become technology intensive and their requirement for employees who are skills and well educated have increased as these skills and knowledge assists employees in figuring out solutions to various issues that are social, economical and environmental in nature. Online education provides working individuals with the opportunity of learning these skills and knowledge and helps in meeting the aims and objectives of the employers. Students are located all over the universe, they are found in different parts of the world. Several students fail to attend universities and colleges due to financial as well as geographical constraints. Online education has even solved this issue as it allows students to attain higher education while living even the remotest areas of the world. Issues Instructors of online education suffer various issues while operating in the environment of distance learning. One of the major issues that experience is lack of face to face communication between them and their pupils. This means that online education is designed in such a way that it is more beneficial for the students. This is because in the case of online education, materials for learning are available in an online format along with various learning objectives and teachers even provide students with tutorials that are planned in nature. This even leads to the issue of lack of direction and leadership of teachers. In the case of online education, teachers can not ensure that students have learned as they cannot interpret facial expressions of students and even cannot provide continuous feedback in case a student’s experiences difficulty with the course. Moore asserts that interaction between teachers and pupils in distance learning needs to be increased in order to ensure that students understand what they are being taught ( Inoue 130). Another issue is that instructors are not able to alter the content of a course while the proceedings of the course are taken place and students need to be provided with course materials and assignments before the course is initiated. Due to this, teachers fail to innovate and fail to alter their teachings in accordance to cultural context of the student. Instructors are informed that they need to change their teaching practices from student to student. Students vary in the context of ability to learn and culture. Different students need to be treated differently by different teachers so all students can learn and distance learning tends to ignore this factor. Another issue with distance learning is that it might be resulting in unequal treatment of students. This is because every student is not enough well-off to afford the technological requirements of distance learning, thus certain adult learners are able to benefit from this form of learning, while others are left behind. Another issue of online education is that the content that is being taught in this educational system may not be relevant or similar to the content is being taught in physical institutes and the materials that are being used might not be up to the required standards. Solutions The issues related to online education is that it does not promote interaction between teachers and students and due to this teachers fail to solve issues and respond to queries raised by students. This issue can be solved through the implementation of hybrid form of distance education in which various communication technologies are used to create a network between the students and the teachers and these technologies can be utilized by students and teachers to solve issues. O'Lawrence asserts that hybrid form of education is a combination of both education that is face to face in nature and online education and it is the best method of meeting the student’s need for convenience and interaction with the instructors (O'Lawrence 93). The issue of online education not teaching material that is of high standard can be resolved with the assistance of accreditation service providers. These agencies can regulate and set standards for online educational programs and students can ensure that the programs they are getting enrolled in are following the set standards of the industry. Conclusion Online education is a mode of distance education which has gained popularity and is being adopted by well known educational institutes. Such educational system has existed since the 19th century when correspondence education was adopted by United States as well as European nation. Online education is a solution to various issues experienced by adult learners. It assists those learners in attaining education that have family commitments and even have to cope up with their jobs. It has even assisted in meeting the increased demand for higher skills and knowledge by the organizations of the 21st century. Online education seems to be a favorable system if it is used in combination with face to face educational system. Works Cited Fenton, Celeste, and Brenda Ward Watkins. Fluency in distance learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub., 2010. Print. Inoue, Yukiko. Online education for lifelong learning. Hershey, PA: Information Science Pub., 2007. Print. Kidd, Terry T.. Online education and adult learning new frontiers for teaching practices. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2010. Print. O'Lawrence, Henry . " Information technology and occupational studies at California State University: Distance education." International Journal of Vocational Education and Training 10(2) (2002): 93 - 104. Print. Web-based education concepts, methodologies, tools and applications. Hershey, Penn.: Information Science Reference, 2010. Print. Weller, Martin. Virtual learning environments using, choosing and developing your VLE. London: Routledge, 2007. Print. Read More