The Benefits, Problems and Features of Distance Education - Essay Example

JASSEM KALDARI ENGL Final paper A lot of people misunderstand the meaning of “distance learning” or otherwise believe that it is harmful and isnot affective enough for adapting students into society. Sometimes we ask ourselves questions; what do we mean by distance learning? How can it be affective in society? How can we benefit from it? These questions let people decide how they feel about distance learning. Distance learning means that students study their courses online; they can study overseas. We believe that distance learning improves our society by increasing the number of literate people. It is very important for societies to have a huge number of literate people. It enhances the experiences of people and makes learning easier. However, we have two sides of the argument; there are people that believe distance learning is helpful and improves learning skills; on the other hand, there are people that deny these facts and are against distance education. They find that distance learning is useless and harmful to our society and we have to stop it. Different thoughts about distance education do not stop this type of learning and we always respect others’ opinions even if we believe that they are wrong or are against our thoughts. People who believe that distance education is helpful prove so by providing evidence: Firstly, distance learning means that we can study at anytime or anywhere we want, and we can also contact the professor by e-mail. It is also quieter than working in a classroom as classes are often too noisy for concentration. The students do not have to travel to classes and leave their home, work, families, and friends. Also, distance learning increases literacy in the communities. This can help needy families to enhance their education. It also promotes job retention and career advancement (Thomas). Secondly, it helps people save time. Some people do not have enough time to study, which causes them to face many difficulties; for example, people who are married do not have time to study because they want to spend their time with their spouse and children. It they attend class, they will be away of their families and they will spend the majority of their time in these classes. Furthermore, they have jobs, and they have to divide their time for their family, jobs, and education. It becomes difficult for them to have three main things in their lives. They always will be busy and struggle, which means that they are under pressure and cannot focus on all of these things. People who have difficult subjects find it difficult to attend all of their classes. They need to have a chance to prepare for their difficult subject; therefore, they will confuse spending their time on difficult subjects then spending their time on easy subjects and then going back to the difficult ones. It happens for many students because they have difficult subjects or classes that that need to spend a lot of time on such as engineering, physics, chemical and statistic classes, etc. Students who have many credits and difficult subjects can take online classes to offer them time for difficult subjects. Also, it teaches them how to manage their time and how to give everything its time because everything needs specific time like family, other subjects, friends, work, and free time. Distance learning saves time and gives opportunities for people who struggle and have difficulties in attending classes. All these type of classes have two sections, the lab and the normal class, which means the students will spend all of their time on these types of classes and they will find no time for their other classes. However, it could be a solution for them because they do not have to attend online classes. It offers great time management for people who do not have time. They can do their homework, solve quizzes, and search online. They only need one thing for online classes, which is a computer, to contact the professor from your home. Using technology in distance education reduces the gap between the on- and off-campus students. The aspects of distance education is that deviate from what has been practiced for hundreds of years (Stella, Antony, and A. Gnanam). If they attend the class, they will be away from their families and they will spend most of their time on these classes. Thirdly, it does not cost as much as normal classes cost. The tuition of online classes is cheaper and students do not have to pay to travel to the classes. It offers money for people who cannot afford it otherwise. They can take online classes while they are working. They will get the same level of education with cheaper price. They can save money by not buying stuff like books because most of the online classes do not require books, they depend on slideshow presentations and video clips that can be accessed from the Internet. Finally, it improves your skills like reading, writing, and computer techniques. The student only needs to read and write articles and essays to explain their thoughts. They will write like a professional because of the amount of time they spend writing. As students do not physically attend class, they will need to seek out help from someone else. They will learn to search on different websites and will ask people to explain the difficult problems. Online classes could be seen as a chance for people who have skills and great thoughts, but seek solitude in their studies because they are shy or do not want direct contact. There are people that do not like to contact other people directly because they are shy, but by attending online classes they can discover the creativity of shy people because they deal with other students solely through online discussion. Also, it lets you depend on yourself; you have to do your homework by yourself, reading the lectures to understand the ideas of the lessons on your own, taking notes while you are reading the lectures, making revisions for yourself, and evaluating your own work. All of this can help you in your personal life; you will never ask for help from anybody because you want to depend on yourself. Students can learn wherever they are, from any place and any time. They should depend on themselves to learn the material (Hwang, Kuo-An, and Chia). On the other hand, we have people that have evidence against distance learning because they find that it is useless for students. I think that they disagree with distance learning because they do not have enough information and experience in regard to it, or if they haven’t taken online classes. I am sure that they would agree with it if they tried to get information about it. Even with their evidence, they make their assumptions about distance education without experiencing it for themselves. Firstly, they think that online classes are wasting students’ time because students will become responsible of everything such as managing their own time. Distance education does not usually have specific times during which to submit assignments and there is no specific time for the lectures. They believe that students will waste their time while they are trying to manage their time by spending more time in one specific subject and ignore other subjects; this is something that they will not be aware of until the end of the semester. Students will find problems with managing their time in online classes because many students cannot manage their time equally with all their subjects. Secondly, online classes make students lazy and they begin not care about the subjects because they only need the Internet to complete the subjects and they can submit their assignments anytime they want. Distance education is different from regular classes in which you always feel that you are in a competition and you want to be the best. In online classes, they always postpone doing their assignments and reading the lectures. They become lazy and they will never be positive with their courses. They may also depend on other people to help them or to do their homework for them, defeating the purpose of taking any type of classes. Thirdly, they are against the online classes because of cheating. Many students take online classes to cheat and they have different methods of cheating with ease (Lanier: 244). For example, some students take online classes and they get help from other people to solve the homework. Others search the Internet for anything they misunderstand, or even the answers. In my opinion, that will hurt them because if they find something that is difficult for them, they have to ask people who have experience in the same subject like the professor. Because students need to have experience in different fields, and not only in a specific subject, to be positive people in their society in the future, they have to study hard and ask for difficult subjects to get the proper experience. I think that cheating is not a big problem because there is a solution, which is to let the students take their exams and quizzes in the specific place to stop cheating from other people; for example, the USU uses the “Eccles Conference Center” for testing students. Fourthly, they see that regular classes are better than online classes because it lets students contact other students and help them to be social. Students will understand the material faster and better than students in online classes. You also have a specific time to spend in the class on the subject; you will not be confused in managing your time. Fifthly, regular classes are more fun because it lets you know more people and you can discuss difficult problems in the class with your classmates. You will become social with other people; you will enhance your relationships with new international students and you will learn about different cultures. Online classes do not help students to work in groups. They require you to work alone. Working in groups lets you get experience because you deal with different students, exchanging your ideas with their ideas. You can ask them about difficult problems and discuss whatever you find to be difficult. If you follow this and ask for help, it will enhance your experience and you will get knowledge in different fields. Even online classes are cheaper than regular classes, but regular classes are better and useful more than online classes. Sixthly, online classes do not improve your skills, but regular classes improve your listening, writing, reading, speaking skills, and communications with other people. In regular classes, there are people who will help you to improve your skills and help you to understand the material. Seventhly, it helps older people to learn, which means it lets literacy increase in our society. Older people do not have enough experience that allows them to use technology such as computers. They have to attend the classes to learn step by step instructions on how to use computers, improve their knowledge, and practice what they do not know (Durrington, Berryhill, and Jeanne: 190). In online classes, you will find students from different countries, and that will have an affect on yourself because their thoughts will be different and you will find difficulties matching their thoughts with your thoughts, but in regular classes they can understand better and you can help them to be on the same level as you (Mehlenbacher and Carolyn: 166). Finally, each online class has a huge number of students, which means that the professors cannot keep track of everyone, and they will get confused with the huge number of students. These are their thoughts as to why online classes hurt students and do not help them to improve their skills and learning methods. In addition, I have experiences in distance education too. When I came to USU last year, I tried online classes. I took two classes at USU online. It was a good experience for me. I really liked this kind of learning; all the time I felt that I was free and had a lot of time to focus on other subjects. It also helped me to manage my time better because I work on the subjects by myself. I did all the assignments and read the lectures by myself. It taught me to depend on myself even more than I already did. I did a lot of researching on some subjects while I was at home. I did not need to go to the library because I had gotten my VPN connection to the USU servers, allowing me to find resources for secondary research, and to support the topic with some evidences, I did research through database that is called Academic Search Premier. However, I found some problems with my sponsor in my country because they are against this kind of learning. They did not describe the reasons, but they wanted their students to practice English with other people and get experience while they deal with international students. They tried to punish me and I explained to them that I did very well and got a great experience with this type of class. They told me that they would not pay for online classes, so I had to either drop the classes or pay for them. Fortunately, they forgave me and explained to me deeply about which classes I should take. They could be used as examples of people who are against distance learning. From my experience, it is easier now to decide my position, which is that I agree with distance education because I found that it is very helpful for me and for all the communities as it improves all the skills and lets you be an affective part of the community when you depend on yourself. It taught me the importances of researching, reading the lecture to understand the material, and being creative. I felt that I was creative in those classes because I worked alone, which I learned to like. Some people feel shy about dealing with others, so this kind of learning helps them to be creative when they deal with others online. They will not feel shy because they are away of them while still being communicative. Some people are against this idea though. They believe that nobody can stay alone and that everyone should share their work with others to get opinions about what they are doing, so that he can improve himself by listening to other people’s opinions. In conclusion, as the saying goes, the differences in opinion do not invalidate the case. It means that if people have different opinions about one subject, it never becomes a problem because we have learned to respect their thoughts. Now we have exactly the same thing with distance education. Some people agree with distance learning, claiming that it is helpful in increasing literacy. They also believe that it is better than regular classes because you can be creative. Distance learning also helps to improve your skills, but others tend to disagree with it, believing that online classes waste our time because there is no specific time set for the lectures, making the assumption that it could lead a student to be unfavorable and lazy in the community. Work cited Durrington, Vance A., Amy Berryhill, and Jeanne Swafford "STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING STUDENT INTERACTIVITY IN AN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT." College Teaching 54.1 (2006): 190-193. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2009. Hwang, Kuo-An, and Chia-Hao Yang.. "Learner attending auto-monitor in distance learning using image recognition and Bayesian Networks." Expert Systems with Applications 36.9 (Nov. 2009): 11461-11469. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. 29 Sep. 2009 . Lanier, Mark M. "Academic Integrity and Distance Learning*." Journal of Criminal Justice Education 17.2 (2006): 244-261. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2009. Mehlenbacher, Brad, and Carolyn R. Miller "Active and interactive learning online: A comparison of Web-based and conventional writing classes." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 43.2 (2000): 166. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2009. Stella, Antony, and A. Gnanam.. "Quality assurance in distance education: The challenges to be addressed." Higher Education 47.2 (Mar. 2004): 143-160. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. 27 Sep. 2009 . Thomas, Rebecca L. "Using Distance Learning to Increase Literacy Among TANF Participants." Journal of Technology in Human Services 27.3 (July 2009): 216-226. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. 27 Sep. 2009 . Read More