Is Online Education a Valuable Innovation that Improves Opportunities for Students - Essay Example

?Is online education a valuable innovation that improves opportunities for Or is it a poor substitute for traditional, room-based teaching? Introduction It has long been recognized that students and educators need to use a variety of tools in order to keep up with the skills that are needed in the contemporary world. Online education is becoming popular, but some people raise questions about its effectiveness in comparison with traditional learning. While teachers will always be involved in the education process, there is room also to consider new ways in which teachers, students and technology can work together. Technology is here to stay and everyone in an industrialized society needs to learn how to make the best use of it. This paper argues that online classes have numerous advantages over traditional classroom learning such as the following: the internet offers faster feedback, flexibility, and the opportunity to learn at one’s own pase. The case for online learning Online learning can be defined as “a form of distributive learning enabled by the Internet.” (Volery and Lord: 2000, p. 217). The term distributive learning in turn implies two essential ingredients: “first, a heavy reliance on technology, and second, self-learning.” (Volery and Lord: 2000, p. 217). It is important to remember that both sides of this equation are equally important: the technology must be there, and able to provide the learning opportunities, and the student must also be actively engaged and able to adopt a high level of self-management and motivation in order to engage in self-learning. A very strong advantage of the internet over other delivery messages is that it is extremely fast. A student can access almost limitless amounts of information through a few clicks of the mouse or taps on the keyboard. Questions can be entered, and responses appear instantly. There is even the potential to access quizzes and tests, complete them, and submit them for analysis. Feedback, often with grading and tips for improvement is built in and can be received also in an extremely fast turnaround. Human teachers just simply cannot deliver this high speed response because they have to deal with every student’s work consequentially and they are subject to the limitations of needing to eat, sleep and have a private life as well as being professional teachers. The internet is always available, and except in rare cases of technical failure, always reliably fast in its response. From a teacher perspective, online learning also provides economies of time usage. Instead of delivering information every year to each new cohort of students, the teacher supervising online learning only has to provide the main material once. Thereafter the job of the teacher is to keep the material up to date, and to monitor and support students as they learn. This is a far more effective use of time, and allows the teacher to achieve a much greater effectiveness with less repetition of tasks. Student participation and performance can be logged by the computer system, and this also removes the need for time-consuming administration. Teaching in a classroom usually operates to a defined curriculum with fixed content and clear goals. Online learning does this too, if it is well designed and focused on clear educational goals, but it offers so much more in addition to this core curriculum. The potential for hyperlinks to a vast global library of resources provides extension possibilities at every turn. A student who is not a native speaker of English, for example, can access dictionary and grammar support alongside the learning materials if required. A a student who struggles with mathematical or statistical concepts can immediately find advice on how to approach these matters. A student who is brighter than average, or one who has a special interest in particular points can undertake further research by using search engines like “Google” or encyclopedia and reference sites. There is even potential for students to contact other internet users anywhere in the world, or join interest groups and message boards to discover more about the topic that is being studied. In short, the flexibility of the internet allows the learner to tailor the learning experience to his or her own level. The practical advantages of online learning are in the distributed nature of delivery. In rural areas, for example, where people live far apart, the convenience of online learning is hard to beat. Ideally online learning should be combined with classroom learning, in a deliberate way. Scholars call this the concept of “hybrid learning” (Snart, 2010) and it has the useful side benefit of preparing students to go on learning after school, as independent learners, without the supervision of teachers in the classroom. As globalization becomes more obvious, and the world tackles pollution, and fuel shortages, methods of learning which do not involve expensive travel are going to become more popular. For environmental reasons, therefore, online learning presents a significant improvement on traditional classroom learning. Another major advantage of online learning is that it offers a great deal of variation in pace to the student. Learning times can be chosen to suit the student’s needs. It is much more convenient to fit the learning schedule into a student’s other life commitments and preferences. Some people learn better early in the mornings, while others need more sleep at that time of the day and are more alert in the evenings. There are people who prefer short burst of learning at an intensive pitch, while others prefer longer spells and more methodical but low intensity reflection. A real life classroom operates at fixed points of the day, and is aimed at the lowest common denominator. The teacher has to make judgements on what pace is best for the majority of the class, and this is not good for those who ideally need to go faster or more slowly than the middle range of students. There are some factors which can detract from the effectiveness of online learning and these include the initial costs for educational establishments of designing the materials and the costs for students in obtaining computer equipment and broadband access. These issues must be addressed to ensure equality of opportunity for learners. Some students also find that they lack the computer skills to make full use of online learning. This underlines the need for proper study skills, and IT competencies, to be built in to the beginning of all online programs. Not all students have developed the self-discipline and motivation to ensure success in an online learning situation. This too, is a matter to be addressed both by teachers and by students. Interesting program design and good linkup with group activities and curriculum assessment can help to minimize distraction and apathy on the part of students. In conclusion, then, it is clear that students and teachers have much to gain from the use of online learning. Most students are ready for online learning now, and they use social media and the internet with ease, both for learning and for entertainment. It is the teachers who will need to adjust and up-skill if online learning is to reach its full potential. By the time today’s teenagers are teachers, the classroom will be a thing of the past. The advantages of online education are so persuasive that we will not be able to resist them. Students will become more highly skilled and less dependent, and teachers will be freed up to concentrate on goal setting and encouragement rather than repetitive information handover. This can only be a good thing for everyone involved in the learning process. References Snart, Jason Allen. Hybrid Learning: The Perils and Promise of Blending Online and Face-to-Face Instruction in Higher Education. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Volery, Thierry and Lord, Deborah. “Critical Success Factors in Online Education” International Journal of Education Management 14 (5), (2000), pp. 216-223. Available online at: http://elmu.umm.ac.id/file.php/1/jurnal/I/International%20Journal%20of%20Educational%20Management/Vol14.Issue6.2000/06014ec2.pdf Read More