Article One: September 17, 2015

Ta-Niyia Johnson

Ms. Sernell

Instructional Technology

September 2015

Article One Reflection

 

Online Education Today by: Frank Mayadas, John Bourne, and Paul Bacsich

 

            This article starts off by recognizing that online education is more prevalent today and that it will be around for most likely forever now. More school and students are offering and accepting online education today than ever before. The first concern brought to the reader’s attention was that learning in new ways can disconnect the way that people have been learning before. This stuck out to me because Mark Moss was also explaining that times have definitely changed in education. Moss says that students have difficulty taking notes and focusing and that is exactly what I thought Eli Noam (being quoted in this article) was alluding to.

            In addition, this article explains that online learning is used to be trained on specific modules and special topics. Online education is way to learn/or teach yourself about specific topics with the guidance of an instructor (still have to pay tuition fees and rates). This online education forces students to access teachers and peers via e-mail and does not create a face-to-face relationship. This can create problems with homework (how can it be assigned), exams (cheating/someone else doing the work), and confusion (how can a teacher fully explain a topic to student and help him/her fully understand).

            Even though online education has its flaws, it can also be beneficial. Online education can help students who attend larger campus with more students. Online classes allow the subject/class to be taught in multiple different ways and can most likely accept more students. This is beneficial because students do not have to fight to get into certain classes (especially good for general education classes that everyone has to take). Also, online classes become more molded to fit the professor’s and student’s schedules. Even though students still have deadlines, they do not have to show up for a particular class every day at the same time. The article explains that online education can help students achieve their degrees even if they have prior commitments such as work or family.