Every day, students around the world are discovering the world of online distance learning. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, there were an estimated 2.9 million students enrolled in distance education classes during the 2000-2001 school year.
It is not hard to understand the allure. Location is not a factor; all a student needs to worry about is if they can remember where their computer is located. Daily schedules no longer conflict as they would with attending an offline, brick and mortar school. Many questions still exist, however. The largest question, by far is whether online degrees are real.
The short answer to that question is, yes. Many online degrees are real. A prospective student would need to do their research, however, and understand the ins and outs of accreditation. The purpose of this article is to bring your attention to a different, less discussed problem with distance learning.
That problem is the classroom environment itself. The University of Phoenix and other accredited online schools have modeled their online programs to have small, instructor-led groups with participation requirements and a great deal of interaction between students, and between students and teachers. At University of Phoenix Online, participation in class discussions is required five out of seven days.
So, what is the problem? The PR ads make this sound to be a wonderful thing. However, let us take a closer look at the online classroom. The classroom is set up in forum style. Posts are made and responded to in the form of threads.
Participation is seen as posting five out of seven days. They ask that you respond to the instructors question and then post additional responses to fellow classmates’ responses. It sounds nice and simple. However, then you run into the problem of the responses to classmates tend to be something to the effect of, “I agree”. The room for discussion ends there. Yet, you still are required to continue posting. The idea of discussion is one that is almost lost in this classroom environment. Many times student responses do not invite further responses, as the rules state needs to be done. Thus, the agreement responses are made.
The discussion questions and assignments are scripted. What this means is that they are prepared ahead of time and written into the syllabus. The instructor does nothing but copy and pastes the questions into a post on the forums. Some instructors do try to further the process by joining in on the discussion with their own thoughts. Largely, however, one will see that the instructors merely follow the script.
So, are the assignments are scripted, as well? Point in fact, yes they are. The assignments are also pre-written into the syllabus. To show that instructors tend to copy and paste those assignments to the class forum, one example of a huge inaccuracy is that a former student claims that for three weeks straight the major assignment of each week did not match the reading assignments. When the instructor was questioned, the reply was that the issue was known and had been relayed to the University of Phoenix, but that the student was still instructed to turn in the assignment. The student, who wished to remain anonymous, went on to say that, he had completed the two assignments by accessing the internet, searching and researching for understanding of the assignment. By the third instance, he was fed up with the inconsistency and explained to the instructor that he didn’t understand why he was being taught one thing and having to hand in an assignment that had nothing to do with what was being taught. The reply from the instructor was that the student would need to hand in the assignment or fail the grading.
The issue with distance learning goes further. It has been commented by former students that the assignments were made to be hard, almost for the sake of being hard, it seemed. What they meant was that the assignments seemed to make no real sense at all in respects to what they were learning. The feeling of difficulty was supposed to represent an understanding of the lesson. Many of the former students were disenchanted by the process.
Therefore, the question is does difficulty equal education. Apparently in Online Distance Learning it does. Another problem that rivals the frustration of scripted class discussion is the students. Many online students seem to forget that they are still in college. They speak in Ebonics and corrupt English. Spelling and Grammar make you wonder if you are really in a school of education.
In some respects, you have to wonder if online distance classes are for those that could not get into higher education schools. It is sad, and these words may seem rude, however, considering that your distance learning education is highly dependent on interaction with your classmates, how educated will you feel having to discuss a topic with someone who cannot spell properly and uses slang?
