Differences in Online and Traditional Classrooms
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Online Vs Traditional Classes
All students who have attended the American K-12 school system have experience with offline classes. The instructor lectures, students take notes, labs are completed and learning occurs. As more colleges offer online classes, some students are left with the question, "How are online classes different than offline classes?" The main differences are the role of the instructor, the traits required of students for success in the online environment as opposed to the traditional classroom, and access to course materials. Unlike classroom lectures, materials in the online classroom are available for repeated viewings, giving online students a distinct advantage.
In online education, the instructor becomes a "guide on the side" rather than a "sage on the stage." Online students are dependent on phone, email, or chat rooms to interact with instructors. Instructors in traditional classrooms use a variety of techniques in the classroom to maintain student attention, and can quickly adapt the teaching methods if it is apparent that students are lost or confused. Online instructors must glean these problems from lack of participation, poor grades, or in the best scenario, student requests for aid.
Online students tend to think the instructor should be available whenever the student is ready to work. In asynchronous online classes, though, instructors and learners are seldom online at the same time, which may cause students to feel overwhelmed or abandoned. To help prevent this very real distress for online students, instructors should develop an acceptable method of communication for students to use in case of need. Some instructors will create virtual office hours set up in the course management software chat room. Others will specify a phone number and a time students are welcome to call for help.
Students in the online classroom must have a base level of computer literacy in order to access the class, download assignments and electronically submit assignments. While students rely on the offline instructor to impart knowledge to them, instructors in the online classroom provide access to content, but the student is responsible to be an active participant by reading content, watching presentations and movies, and listening to audio files available in the online classroom. In short, students must be more self-reliant and self-directed in the online class than in the offline class. Students who prefer to 'wing it' in class will not do well in online classes, since online courses require planning, time-management, self-discipline, and self-motivation. Without these traits, the online student will struggle to succeed.
For information and helps for the online student, visit http://www.studentagain.com or http://non-traditional-student.blogspot.com.
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Hi, Audrevea. You are right about the disposition to learn independently. I completed both my masters online, and I fully believe that the online course is harder, since students must depend more on themselves. If someone is not a self-starter, it really would be difficult, if not impossible, to do online courses. Thanks for dropping by.
Going back to school at 51 has been an experience in itself. To start, I have taken two traditional classes at the school and two online classes. For my online classes, I miss the in class experience and exchange of ideas that just are not the same on a discussion board. Still, I have one traditional class (American Government) that would have been perfect for the online class. Believe it or not, the teacher teaches strictly by the textbook, never veering off into current events to show the student how exciting learning government can be. Having just learned about the First Amendment, there are several exciting developments at the Supreme Court level that would have been interesting to discuss.
I think the online class can be beneficial, but if possible, I think that the student needs to carefully pick and choose which ones to take online and which to take traditionally in order to experience the class in the best possible way.
Since I take care of a sick granddaughter, taking two of the classes online was a great choice, since she ended up in ICU for 3 weeks right after school started. It was easy to slip out for the two classes at school and I was able to keep up with the online classes from my vigil at the hospital.
I am amazed that you ended up with two masters after starting school at 41. I am impressed. I took some classes earlier in life and have 33 credits to start with this time around. I am aiming for a bachelor's in communication at this time, with an eye at maybe changing later to get a teaching certificate so that I could teach middle school for a few years before I am too old to do anything....
Hi, Connie,
Online classes are not for everyone. As an online instructor, I can tell you that some students excel in the online environment and others flounder, even when I give my home phone number to them to get extra help. If a student is not a self-started and motivated to complete the course, a traditional class would be better. That said, online classes offer so much in the way of time management that I much prefer them when I am taking classes. I hope your granddaughter is well, now.
Thank you. My little girl, 2, is recovering from a brain tumor, so it will be some time before she is fully recovered, but we have every expectation that it will occur. Still, she ended up in ICU for 3 weeks right after school started, making me very glad that I had taken 2 of my 4 classes online. Being as old as I am, I don't have a problem doing the work, it is the other obigations that get me sometimes. I am currently taking a technical writing class and I do wish that was at school. Several times, I have misunderstood the instructions -- and MLA scares the heck out of me as all those years ago when I had composition, MLA did not exist.
Connie,
I taught classes for a year that were required by the school to use MLA for their papers. The librarian and I located http://www.easybib.com/ which will format the citations for you. Be aware that you need to double check them, since it may not update as soon as MLA format updates. However, it is a time saver.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ is also a great resource for students who need to format papers using MLA.
Best Wishes!
Thanks for the tips. We have Owl from Perdue listed on our online website for our online courses. Someone had already told me about a citation site (not this one). I obviously should know MLA at this point, and would have, if I had not been out of school for so long. From the viewpoint of the teacher, is it acceptable to use a citation generating site as opposed to learning it properly and figuring out how to do the citations personally? Again, I am speaking of during the learning process.
Whether it is acceptable to use a citation generating site is up to the individual instructor. As a graduate student, I used the citation generating sites to make the first draft of my citations, then checked them agains the MLA or APA manual to ensure accuracy. As far as learning it, it's not a bad idea, but the rules for citations change often enough that chances are you will have to relearn them again before you graduate. For the classes I teach, I give them the sites where they can get this done, then show them how to verify the accuracy of the citation. By the way, if you are using ProQuest or any other online research database, the citations they offer are not updated when the rules change. Always double check the citations provided by the research databases, too.
The differences of the online and traditional is the interaction between real people to virtual people, and yet there is always a pros and cons to its effect to the child especially to society the child is into. But learning in online / traditional is never a bad idea as long as he learned something out from a scratch. I think what important to us is the interest and determination to learn EDUCATION may it in ONLINE or TRADITIONAL way.
I think learning in a physical classroom is what the majority of people are used to, but that doesn't mean distance learning is any less valid or useful. Do you know how employers generally feel about degrees earned through online colleges?
I have never had trouble getting work with an online college degree. The main thing to remember about online colleges is that for the degree to be valid, the college must be accreditted. If it is accreditted, the degree is valid. I have worked for three different companies since I earned my online masters. All of them considered the degree valid.
My experience has been that some (a seemingly growing number)companies and many/most universities really only consider regional accreditation as the real deal. National and state accreditation just doesn't measure up.
The online degrees I have earned were both regionally accreditted, so I can't speak to the national and state accreditation issue.
Audrevea 2 years ago
If you have the right predisposition to be able to learn independently (some people do better in a clasroom) online learning is great. It opens up education to those people who could never afford to go to class every day but who can make the time outside of 9-5 business hours to get the study done.
I'm doing my Masters online - it's the same stuff, just delivered via a different channel (online rather than face to face).