Weighing Online Courses
For me online courses gave me multiple advantages, regarding flexibility and accessibility. One main benefit is having the ability for people to learn at their own pace and on their own schedule. Flexibility allows them to balance between other courses and other commitments such as jobs, clubs, and family responsibilities. Also, since the course is online you would not have to commute to a physical location, which saves time and money. And the instructors usually give a week to complete assignments and that’s usually enough time to complete assignments during the week.
But online courses also come with their issues. One big concern for me was the lack of face-to-face interaction and consistent feedback from instructors. Because of this I felt like the instructors put too much time in for their in-person courses that they take longer to respond to and sometimes I would completely forget the course for the week because we are not physically meeting. Since online courses are sometime forgettable, students may also wait tell the last minute to complete assignments because they either forgot or they think it is not as important as their in-person courses. Additionally, technology issues can occur such as bad internet and software issues. Although I have not experienced these issues here, I did back in high school when the pandemic happened. Zoom calls would never load, there was no face-to-face contact and overall, the experience was terrible. Furthermore, the absence of structured in-person learning can impact students in a bad way if they aren’t self-disciplined.