Online education: a downfall of our generation
Dominic DeCono
If online school is the wave of the future, then education as a whole is in trouble.
The reason? There are many more problems than solutions that online schooling creates.
First, a degree from an online school such as the University of Phoenix to some companies is not seen as legitimate compared to a degree from a traditional college.
What is the point of getting an online degree if a potential employer does not believe that degree makes you qualified to apply for that job?
Secondly, online school actually requires much more self-devotion than traditional schooling.
Although this means students who are actually committed can actually move through a course more quickly compared to a traditional school, research shows that in most instances, this does not happen.
What normally happens is students procrastinate.
They end up rushing through tests and assignments and they do not really take in any of the knowledge that they would normally be asked to demonstrate in a real life scenario.
I, along with just about everyone who has ever taken an online course, have done this many times.
This brings me to my third, and probably most important reason why online school is bad: the general learning environment.
It is not the tests or homework assignments where students truly grasp the concepts about what it is they are learning.
It is the spontaneous and substantive conversations they have with their classmates and teachers.
The human element of learning comes from people bouncing ideas off of each other and progressively learning something.
You really can’t get this with a computer.
Sure, an online course can have message boards for these types of conversations, but most students do not really engage in them because they do not have to.
A computer screen can replace an overhead projector or a paper test, but it cannot replace the human element of learning.
A degree will help you get an interview for a job, but if all you had to do was manipulate the system an online course to get the degree, and you do not truly retain any of the skills those courses taught, you are screwed.
