Online Distance Education Courses and Degrees - Pros

Online and distance education courses and degrees are starting to become a fixture at many colleges and universities. There are many good reasons for the explosion of offerings. Let me give you some reasons why I think this is the case.

1. Ease of attending "virtual" classrooms - If you are employed full-time, have a family, or other responsibilities that make getting to a traditional classroom challenging, then online or distance education is immediately attractive. You can log in at whatever time is convenient to you and post responses to the week's questions, submit your assignments, and email a professor or fellow student. If you live far away from a college that offers a program or class you want to take, being able to enroll in an online or distance version is your only option.

2. Interactivity is potentially increased - This was mentioned in the last post, but it is important enough to repeat. In many online formats, student-student and student-professor interactivity is higher than it is in traditional formats. Student-student interaction is often the most interesting because many traditional classrooms stick to the teacher knows best dichotomy. Most of the discussion comes from the front of the room, with few questions and little discussion coming from the back of the room. In many ways, the discussion flow is opposite in an online course. It is amazing how much you can learn from classmates when they are truly given a chance to speak.

3. The potential exists for learning to increase - Note: This point is based on personal experience, and not based on any scientific studies. I have found that online courses force you to do all the reading, reflect on it, and discuss your views on the topics at hand with your fellow students and the professor in ways that aren't always possible in a traditional classroom. In doing so, you often find yourself defending and then altering your views as you take in the views of your classmates. You re-examine the readings in light of what other people are writing. In this way, you are engaging the learning material more substantively than if you merely read it and listen to the professor talk about it. The other side of the coin is that online courses can be more demanding than their traditional counterparts.