Online Education Pros and Cons

¶ … Online Learning

Since the advent of the Internet, online learning has increased exponentially. Online learning is utilized by K-12 schools, by public universities and colleges, and there has been an explosion in for-profit online schools as well. Twenty years ago, the industry did not really exist -- distance education was usually some form of correspondence course . In 2014, Forbes estimated the industry to be worth around $107 billion in the United States alone, to say nothing of the rest of the world (McCue, 2014). This makes sense, because all the world's information is basically at our fingertips every time we go online -- structuring that information in a manner that is meaningful is fairly easy to adapt to the online environment.

The industry has come under some criticism, in particular for its model with respect to student loans and the high default rate thereof (Taibbi, 2013). Yet, such business practices are by no means indicative of online learning as a whole. Indeed, such situations may reflect a case where the regulation has not kept up with the technology, and in that it by no means should reflect on the nature of online learning itself. Stripping away the fallacy of conflating a few bad apples with an entire method of learning, we afford ourselves an opportunity to understand the pros and cons of online learning on their own merits.

The booming popularity of online learning speaks to the fact that it has many advantages. These include the cost of delivery, flexibility and convenience, and time savings. On the cost of delivery, complex educational systems can be developed, knowing that the cost of that development will be spread among thousands of students each semester. Thus, there are tremendous economies of scale available in online learning, especially if schools pool their resources together. Even if they do not, the larger online schools can achieve tremendous economies of scale on the delivery of key programs, and quality need not be comprised (Bradshaw, Chan & Clarke, 2014). Theoretically, such economies of scale should translate into cost savings, but that is not necessarily the case. The biggest cost savings in online learning actually derives from the convenience factor.

Convenience is a critical benefit of online learning. Online learning can be conducted whenever the learner has the free time, rather than occurring at a fixed schedule as would be the case in a more traditional education setting. The benefit of this is that the learner can typically continue to work, something that often is not the case for students in a more conventional education setting. Along with convenience comes pacing. Students are able to work at their own pace, which means that some students can basically work ahead of the class, while if others need to take more time, they do. This allows students to fit the education into the daily lives instead of pausing their lives -- and especially their careers -- in order to learn. The cost benefit is obvious -- someone who can continue working with not only earn money while at school but will be able to use their online education as a springboard to a promotion. Someone who has to quit their work to go to school may take on debt, derail their career path and be forced to start from scratch when they graduate. Thus the financial benefits of online learning are not from differences in tuition fees but from the ability to balance work and school much better, and this balance is one of the big reasons that online learning is so popular.

There are some critiques of online learning, however, and these should be taken into consideration when evaluating it. There are many within the educational community who believe that one of the main positive attributes of traditional classroom learning comes from the interaction one has with their peers and with the instructor, and in addition, the contacts that are made. The idea is that learning is not just about recitation of facts and remembering of concepts, but that there is a human, interactive side (Fedynich, 2014). Online schools understand this argument, and the structure of their courses reflects this. Online learning usually incorporates the concept of a virtual "class" in that the students are divided into a specific class, there are discussion boards, message boards and the opportunity to chat with instructors as well. While such interactions may be viewed by the educational establishment as inferior, the blurring of the physical and virtual worlds is normal in today's society, so such remote interactions are not considered to be inferior by the students at all -- they are quite accustomed to forming relationships and dialogues with total strangers in a virtual forum.

Some other critiques of online learning seem equally dated. One such critique, according to Fedynich (2014) is that computer literacy is a prerequisite for online learning. The reality is that computer literacy is a prerequisite for daily life, so this should not be viewed as a reasonable complaint -- even conventional education makes extensive use of computers in research, note-taking and writing papers. Nobody goes through school without at least some computer literacy these days.