Persuasive writing strategies and applications

Students should consider online education, because there are many advantages to it. Littlefield (2014) notes several key advantages to online education, including flexibility, good networking opportunities, open scheduling, pacing, savings, teaching and testing options, and effectiveness. Several of these are advantages even though they are normally considered positive traits of a traditional school structure. This paper will investigate these claims to provide the reader with a compelling argument that online education is beneficial for many students and a powerful force in the education system.

First, a little bit of history. Online education developed with the emergence of the Internet, since that streamlined the ability of people to learn no matter where they were. Before the Internet, distance education was much more limited, for example, in remote locations, for prisoners and in other situations where physical attendance at an educational institution was difficult. As technology has improved, so too has the capability of online education. Today, with the synergies between different media technologies (video, online textbooks, etc.) and different forms of social media online education is a rich experience indeed, and the better the technology gets the richer the experience will get as well. The time is coming when online education provides a richer learning environment than any other form of education -- and arguably even now the way people socialize in an online institution is very similar to way people socialize in the real world. This supports the idea that networking opportunities are strong with online learning -- networks are so much online now anyway that an online school network is really no different than any other social network.

The flexibility of online education has always been one of its main drawing cards. Some of the early adopters of online education were working adults, as the online program allowed them to perform the coursework whenever they had the opportunity to do so. This flexibility has proven very attractive to many students, who must juggle their studies with work, family and other aspects of their lives. In a world where we are constantly pressed for time, online studies allow people to complete degrees at their own pace, which is a tremendous benefit over traditional education programs that leave little time for other things.

In addition to flexibility, financing is another big benefit of online education. For many people it is hard to finance a traditional degree, because you have only time for maybe a little part-time work during school, summer jobs seldom pay well and student loans only defer payment. An online school will also offer student loans, but more important is that anybody can take courses while they are working, which means that they can pay for their school with their earnings, and therefore get a degree without taking on crippling debt. Add to this that you do not need to relocate, so you can control you costs much better with an online degree.

Much has been made about the quality of online education, whether it is good enough, but the reality is that online education is just as good as education elsewhere. As online education has gone mainstream, studies have shown that online students are happy with the quality of the courses that they are taking (Allen & Seaman, 2004), and the reality is that many critics of online schools come from the traditional education system, and therefore have a financial interest in discrediting a superior system. This is not to say that there is not an element of buyer beware, because the industry has seen an influx of new competitors and many have yet to establish the quality credentials of their programs to this point. So certainly one would be recommended to take a close look at the track record of the company that they deal with (Parker, 2004).

The final point in favor of online education is that it is only getting better. This is a fairly new field, and there is a lot of technological innovation. Online learning is a lot of how we learn today anyway, and the same can be said for the social interaction with your instructors and classmates. In many instances, the traditional schools are simply mimicking the ways that online schools operate, with the exception of the formal classroom. However, it is important to note that the even there, more traditional schools are utilizing online education technology in order to increase their reach.