My Experience With Online Education

Online Education has been around for a several years and has
been the target of many skeptics. Many skeptics feel that there
is not enough interaction with the teachers and other students
to make a virtual campus as educational as a traditional campus.
They also feel that the material is not as educational. While
this is dying out as a topic on the critics list, because they
are being proven wrong, I felt this was pretty interesting. I
have attended both types of universities, online and
traditional. I have to disagree with all of the skeptics
statements.

I personally attended a traditional campus throughout my
freshman year. During this time, I don’t think I spoke to ten
students and I was never able to contact my teachers. After
sitting through a two hours lecture that they called class, I
usually was so brain dead from trying to soak up all of the
information or too tired to think of questions that I had. So, I
would go home ponder on the lecture and come up with questions.
At this point it was too late to ask them. How does this benefit
anyone? I don’t think it does.

However, when I began to obtaining my online education as a
sophomore, I found there was so much more interaction. I could
e-mail my teachers and get a response from them usually within
twenty four hours. I also found that I was not embarrassed to
ask any questions. As a student, I often wondered if my
questions were stupid or ridiculous. I was always afraid to ask,
for fear that I would get laughed at by other students or that
the teacher would look at me and say, “Duh.” Which never
happened, but it was always in the back of my mind. I have had
discussion through chat sessions, e-mails, and phone
conversation with hundreds of other students throughout my
sophomore year. I personally have enjoyed the experience so much
that I have decided to continue my online education and obtain a
four-year degree.

The material that has been covered in my online education
institute has been as challenging, if not more so, than when I
attended a traditional university. I have had a large increase
in my GPA as an online student. This is mostly due to the fact
that I can review the material as many times as I want and add
to the material whenever I want. In my freshman year at a
traditional university, I spent many hours sitting in a
classroom listening to lectures. After I left the lecture, I had
several questions, as I stated above, which never got answered.
The other problem was that the teachers speak very quickly and
it is almost impossible to catch every point that they make. The
next time I would go to the class, the teacher would have a pop
quiz or a test on the lecture. I did not score very high on
these.

After I thought about my personal experiences with online
versus traditional education experiences, I began to wonder how
others felt that had been in both atmospheres. I began looking
at forums and talking with other students at my online
university. There are hundreds of students that feel they are
getting a better education at an online university than they
were at a traditional university. But I guess the critics have
to have something to talk about.

Online education is not easy. It takes a lot of self-discipline
and responsibility, but it does work. My personal experiences
are proof that you can get a decent online education. Is it for
everyone? No, there are many people out there that need to have
the classroom atmosphere for different reasons. Traditional
classrooms offer a motivated work environment instructed by an
educator. Some people need that in order to complete their
degree program. They need to have someone motivate them. They
need to have a teacher tell them that there assignment is due on
a daily basis or weekly basis. That is not a bad thing. But,
that doesn’t mean that online education is any worse or better
than a traditional classroom either.

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