Describe the benefits of online education.

by debbielyy (student)

In our day and age today, living in the 21st century is both challenging yet easy at the same time, with everything within a small handheld device that can do the simplest things from communicating to making a presentation. With over half the population being able to access Internet, it only seems like the next step is to promote education online. Imagine this, your at home wearing whatever you want and had just eaten breakfast but instead the usual rush of the morning hour trying to beat the traffic to school while balancing looking smart for school, or perhaps you had overslept a little and missed the school bus, your class is right in front of you in your room and all you have to do a press a single button and you are able to access the exact same course as you would if you were sitting at a desk at a school.

Online schooling is both a convenient and effective way of learning instead of the usual traditional classroom setting; over the years its popularity around the world has skyrocketed. In a recent study called “Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States” that was performed in 2011, it was reported that over 6.1 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2010, an increase of 560,000 students over the previous year. Now, with many students opting for online learning, there is a much bigger range of subjects available that may not even be available to a student in school. For example, in our world today with many people being able to travel all over the world the desire to learn and speak a diverse set of languages has increased but in many public and private schools, many cant afford to hire multiple teachers that would be able to specialize in that particular subject. However, having a language course online would be much more cost effective and anyone at anytime would be able to practice this subject making it more flexible. In the good education article written by Liz Dwyner, it states that now, more than a million Key Stage 12 students take online classes studying everything from Chinese to AP English. In Malaysia, due to the lack of space in government schools they are often unable to cope with both primary and secondary students at the same time. With this problem, secondary school students have to attend school in the afternoon from 2pm to 8pm and primary students attend school from 6am-1pm. These timings can often be troublesome and some students often find that they can’t work best in the evening and prefer morning schools instead. Especially being a secondary student myself, the workload is much bigger and the difficulty of the homework and challenges that you face are much harder than it is in primary.

Password

Confirm Password

I agree to the terms of service and privacy policy

With online learning it provides access to course material 24/7 so this makes it more convenient to students and allows the students the choice of learning in the morning or in the afternoon. With the continual access to material online. Continual access to materials, allow the students to complete assignments during their peak performance times and overcomes the opportunity for disappointments and frustrations such as “the library was closed”, “somebody borrowed the book already” or “I missed all the notes of that lecture because I was sick”.

Next, online learning gives students a sense of equality. On ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Next, online learning gives students a sense of equality. On the online debating education website, more than three quarters of the students felt that they had a chance to speak up more and share opinions. In traditional, face-to-face classes, these students often felt uncomfortable sharing their thoughts with the group of people where snide comments may follow. However online, everyone has an equal voice. In online schooling, students will be able to overcome race discrimination, gender biases and even bullying. Studies have proven that online learning and discussions provoke more confrontational and direct communication between students.

Living in the 21st century and possessing so many different informative websites and search engines such as Wikipedia, Google and Yahoo the majority of students use the internet to search and read information rather than using the conventional Encyclopedia as it is much faster and reliable. Teachers can also present information to students in many different ways such a powerpoints or links small videos. Also, an online mind mapping website called Prezi has become a very popular alternative instead of writing down notes. With many web-based collaborative tools are available such as Google Docs, students will be able to coordinate group work without the need of meeting up at a specific time, date and place. Next, online learning can overcome many different problems that less economically developed countries face. As it is known that birth rates are often higher in these countries, they may not be able to afford to build schools to accommodate its population or many may not be able to access the schools easily. Building computer rooms for the public rather than building a new school will cost much less. Further more, the supply of teachers may not be high in such areas making accessibility to education difficult. However, with online learning, instructors that maybe situated overseas will be able to conduct lessons online anywhere making it vastly less expensive.

As all students often learn that different paces and styles, online learning can accommodate this. Students can skip topics that they know already and focus on topics that they are weaker in or review topics over and over again. Instructors can also present information in many different techniques or styles. For example, an instructor and record lectures appealing to more auditory learners or instructors can make presentation appealing to more visual learners. Furthermore, with recorded lectures, students can often replay them instead of scrambling to take all the notes down at one go.

To conclude, I am for online schooling, as I believe online education allows students to work at more flexible and desirable times and at the comfort of their own home. Also, online schooling is able to over come many problems that traditional classroom learning face and online courses allow many to save a vast expense of money spent on education.