In this day and age of media and excellent online resources, college students should have the option to take all their classes online.
Let’s be real. Most traditional classes do not need the entire class time that they are allotted to get through the course. A 90-minute lecture could easily be read in a much faster time than that; in fact, it could even be recorded and uploaded to a website at a faster pace.
Here at APU, the online program is being built up for master’s and undergraduate programs. This is an excellent move because students just don’t have time for traditional classes anymore. Students with a traditional class schedule usually have to work through the semester just to pay for college.
Because of their schedules, availability for work becomes severely restricted because those class sessions are non-negotiable. Online classes allow you to have more flexibility so that you have time to work and earn enough money to stay in college.
That’s not to say that online classes aren’t any work. They are, but generally the assignments can be completed around your schedule before the due dates.
A 2012 Survey of Online Learning by the Babson Survey Research Group found that more than 6.7 million students were taking online classes during the fall 2011 semester. This shows that there are many, many students who are finding online classes a good option.
Some colleges are even offering something called Massive Open Online Courses. These courses are free and can hold thousands of students. However, the Babson group found that only 2.6 percent of institutions had established MOOCs in their programs. Certainly, it would be easy to get lost in the crowd in one of these classes, but they are a great option for anyone who wants to get a class taken care of easily.
It may seem like a disadvantage to online-only classes would be the lack of interaction with classmates and the professor. However, mandatory discussion boards can be just as effective as class discussions. Also, it is possible for entire group projects to be put together online.
For some people, the lack of face-to-face interaction may be an issue, but really, we’re all used to living our lives through social media, so why would an online discussion board be overly concerning?
The reality is that we are very comfortable on the Internet. Our classes should be there; at least we should all have the option of taking all our classes online. Each person learns differently and each person has a different life situation, but many people could be benefited just by having the option.
Maybe having all online classes would allow some people to work more, or others to be able to get more involved in a campus club or leadership position. Professors will still have a job; there will always be assignments to grade and lectures to write or record.
This shift from on-campus education to the Internet is a change we should all embrace. The online system can provide opportunities for those who do not live close enough to a specific college campus. It can also give great ways for students to complete additional classes over the summer from the comfort of home or even the beach.
If you have the discipline and desire for online classes, you should have the freedom to choose those classes over traditional classes. We’re the ones who are paying massive amounts of money for our education, so we should have the option of choosing what method we want to use to accomplish that.