The Benefits of Online Education Introduction

To a degree, all educational institutions have migrated some of their services online, taking advantage of new media and new technologies to improve service delivery, cut costs, and enhance the learning environment. From eBooks to cloud-based collaborative work projects, the online environment adds depth to the classroom and expands opportunities for students from different backgrounds including those with special needs. It is therefore no surprise that enrollment in online education programs has been steadily climbing, with the greatest growth in the private non-profit school sector (Allen & Seaman, 2016). Online learning might never fully supplant traditional in person classroom learning, but it can help educators and students reach their mutual goals. Educational institutions should in fact work harder to improve their online education offerings, to promote social justice goals in education, enhance student engagement, and expand opportunities for a broader client base.

Enhancing Student Engagement

Online learning has the potential to either enhance student engagement or to isolate students due to the lack of social support that comes from traditional classrooms. Some studies show that dropout rates are actually higher in online educational programs because educators and administrators are not doing enough...

On the other hand, online education presents educators and students alike with “opportunities to engage in lifelong learning without the restrictions of time and space,” (Gazza & Hunter, 2014, p. 1125). When online education programs are designed to be student-centered, program retention rates will be high. For example, Kuo, Walker, Schroder, et al. (2014) found that while most types of student interaction with the online learning environment proved essential for overall satisfaction rates, the most critical indicator of student satisfaction was actually leader to content interaction and not learner to learner interactions. In other words, the most effective means of enhancing student engagement in the online education environment is to create programs that have engaging content but do not have artificial means of facilitating social interactions such as through mandatory participation in group projects or forums.
Cutting Costs

Online learning should be incorporated into every educational institution if for no other reason than it helps to reduce waste and cut costs. The online education model reduces waste…