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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Taking Online Courses
Advantages
- The majority of students (79%) take fully online courses because of
the convenience of not coming to campus. Fully online courses consistently
have more females.
- You work from home, avoid heavy traffic at rush hours, and save money
for childcare.
- On the average, students who enroll in fully online courses are older
than those who enroll in web-enhanced or comparable face-to-face courses.
Ageism is not a concern at all. The salience of age is minimized and
older learners can enjoy an equality norm by contributing their experiences
to the community learning.
- Roughly half of students who take fully online courses are working
full-time.
- Those who choose fully online courses are not those independent learners,
but the high energy students who succeed in all modalities. A significant
and necessary demographic attribute of learners who can make it in online
courses is high energy. If you are highly energetic in learning, chances
are high for you to succeed.
- The majority of faculty indicate that more interaction occurs in their
web and web-enhanced courses than in their comparable face-to-face sections.
They also indicate that they feel this interaction is of higher quality
than what they typically see. Take an online course and enjoy more interaction
of high quality than other types of class delivery.
Disadvantages
- On the average, fully online courses have slightly lower success rates
and higher withdrawal rates than either their face-to-face or web-enhanced
counterparts.
- Students withdraw from web courses for a variety of reasons with the
most reported including technology issues, an underestimation of the
amount of work required for course completion, and personal conflicts.
- Having considered technology issues, an understanding of the amount
of work required for course completion and personal conflicts, fully
online courses have somewhat lower success rates and higher withdrawal
rates than others.
Source: http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~rite/
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