Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Online Education
Levinson writes about the bounds and constraints of normal education environments that online courses can allow. It is true for many people that an education cannot be pursued in order to maintain their job and reasonable way of life. Online courses offer these people the opportunity to be enlightened and gain an education while they complete the responisbilities of work. It may be difficult for some of us to understand that there are people who would love to be in the classroom environment but simply can't because of their obligations to family and their need for survival...e.g. working. I believe that online courses are a great idea and give an opportunity to those who are not fortunate enough to have the leisure time for the physical classroom to emancipate themselves from the boundries which the physical classroom may entail.
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Online classes are something that I have never attempted to take and honestly were very skeptical of at first. But a good friend of mine did a few and after hearing more and more about them I began to see their merit. It may be a learning style I wouldn't prefer, but it seems to be a style that some people appreciate.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that different learning styles may predispose individuals towards or against online learning, but more significant, in my opinion, is the economic factor of a less expensive education that traditional on-campus college.
ReplyDeleteBut what are you really getting if you never leave the classroom? The whole education "experience" can't truly be experienced if you never leave your computer. I understand that there are outside reasons as to why an online education would make more sense than a traditional classroom environment, but is that really an education? To really make a distinction on this, we need to define what an education is in terms of the student and the teacher.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the point about experience. Education outside the classroom is just as important as textbook education. Experiences teach us things that textbooks can't- isn't this the whole point of doing an internship? Real work experience teaches us things that we cannot learn in a classroom, such as interpersonal skills and even important details about a job we might have in the future.
ReplyDeleteI feel like many of the larger classes at Fordham could be taken online. While it is more difficult to reproduce the experiences in more discussion oriented classes, I feel as if a lecture class could be created online. When a student is just sitting and accepting information, what difference is doing this online?
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