subject: Online Education Facilitates Flexibility [print this page] Findings of a recent research conducted by the United States Education Department has found that on average, students are performing better during online courses than during traditional instructional classes. This is a welcome note for many educational institutions that are now pursuing measures to go online. The findings of the study could very well serve as a proof and a further driving force that education should now be taught in non-conventional ways.
The same study also revealed that students are more likely to perform best during blended courses, wherein the elements of traditional and online classes are combined to facilitate learning. This of course is also welcomed by educators, especially those who are already doing the combination. The study showed that blending of online and traditional classes could be beneficial to both students and teachers. To students, they might not need to go out on several days and instead take learning into their own pace. For teachers, online teaching saves time and efforts, but the effectiveness still remains.
Flexibility. You can take these classes or do the work during your lunch break, while the kids are practicing soccer, or while cooking dinner (depending of course on how well you multitask). You do not need to be in the classroom every night at 6:00 pm for the next five years in order to get the same degree of education. This by no means indicates that you will not have to do the work. The work will not change nor will the fact that you have a limited time in which to complete the work. What will change is that you will have the option of doing the work in the morning, afternoon, or after those 2 a.m. feedings when you can't seem to get back to sleep.Location. There isn't enough that can really be said about this. Online education comes to you wherever you happen to be able to connect to the Internet. Whether you are at home, at work, or your favorite Internet caf you can have the convenience of taking your work with you and enjoying the environment in which you are completing your work.
I know that the idea of self-directed online learning opportunities appeal to me on many levels. These opportunities however, are not necessarily a good idea for everyone. We all learn in different manners and some of us learn best by actually being in the classroom and hearing what has to be said or from hands on experience. This type of learning is not necessarily possible when it comes to distance learning in an email or bulletin board type of environment, which is how many Internet classrooms operate.
Online learning is also not a good idea for those who aren't perfectly willing, able, and capable of holding themselves responsible for their learning. Face it, for some of us it is much easier to get up and go to a classroom than it is to force ourselves to log on and pay attention at home. We all have areas in which our discipline is well in hand and others where we seem to have no discipline whatsoever. If you can't hold yourself on task or have difficulties not being distracted by the many other novel things there are to do online you might be best served through an actual classroom experience rather than a distance learning environment like those of online classes.
The success of online education could be pointed to an effective combination of factors, which include pedagogy, curriculum, and of course time spent on courses. This way, studies agree unanimously that online teaching could facilitate more expansion to learning than its traditional counter part, face-to-face mode of instructions. This must reinforce teachers need and action to incorporate into daily classes digital content and open-source teaching management systems.
Education is obviously continuously evolving. It is not surprising that in a matter of years more graduate and undergraduate courses would be taught and facilitated online. Doing so would be beneficial both to students and to instructors as well. The Internet has really become an important venue for education.
