Online Education: Short-term vs. Long-term – Pros and Cons
Education online may have become the need of the hour with the Covid-19 crisis that’s overtaken every country.
However, every country has introduced online education in some capacity or other long before the first Covid-19 case was reported. Distance learning was first heard in the 1950s. The University of Phoenix made headlines in 1989 for introducing a fully-online college degree.
With the turn of the century, more schools and educational institutions offering both short-term courses and degrees requiring longer teaching hours have adopted the online teaching model. The relevant technical advancements to support a permanent virtual classroom model were not long in coming.
This begs the question: does online education cater to both short-term and long-term needs?
Yes, the sheer flexibility and adaptability, not to mention the scalability of online education make it suited to both short-term and long-term training needs.
But a granular examination reveals that learning online is suited better for the short-term than the long-term.
In the short-term, online education can bring in variety, various tools for engagement, practice, and revision. Sharing assignments, evaluations, and ensuring the authenticity of test results are easily achieved on an online platform. A short course is a bite-able chunk for the learner. He or she can repeat sessions, build a bank of notes, and practice aplenty with additional study material. Adding modules or experimenting with the difficulty levels is easy on the part of the instructor.
In the long-term, online education works better as a complement to other modes of teaching. Classroom lectures, field trips, and workshops or symposia are all the better for the addition of online teaching modules. They incorporate all the benefits mentioned above in short courses and have the additional advantage of continuity and consistency that learners look for. Contact classes where the learners engage with teachers in real-time enrich understanding of tricky concepts. Still, learning online is a fillip that clarifies learning outcomes. It does not take away from a learner’s experience in the long term. Teaching online need not be done by the same instructors who handle brick-and-mortar classrooms. The option to access an extra session is always good to have for students with different learning styles.
Pros and cons of online education
Pros:
- A rich variety of media and modes of delivery
- Option to make learning student-centric
- The flexibility of time and place
- Opens up avenues of research and collaboration across a wide forum of learners
- Classroom management ceases to be a hindrance to the learning process
Cons:
- Feedback can be solicited, but no active, immediate feedback loop runs between the teacher and student
- Less-motivated learners can easily play truant
- Easily disrupted by logistics failure – power and internet non-negotiable requirements
- Pupils of all ages might not enjoy a similar level of comfort with tech
- The lack of a direct human presence can be felt if the lesson is not of good quality
In the true spirit of learning, online education can play a strong catalytic role. But for this to happen, several practical difficulties have to be weeded out. While it’s a great advantage for many, it doesn’t suit everyone.
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