Online Education – advantages and disadvantages

What is Online Learning?

Some people may not know what Online Education is and this is totally fine. Let me help you and give the simplest definition that I can. Online Learning is a form of distance learning that takes place over the internet. It includes virtual classes, quizzes or even exams. Just like class-based studying, it has its advantages and disadvantages which will be discussed below.

As you may know due to COVID-19 a lot of schools and universities have been closed which can be a problem for some of us. There are as many opinions about online education as may people. So let me share with you some of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Education.

Advantages of online education:

• Reduced costs – Online education does not only reduce costs for schools or universities, but also for students and their parents (depending on what age you are). For examples, with the use of online education, schools are able to save money on printing physical copies of materials needed. It does not only help the organisation to save money, but it also helps to save the environment. Furthermore, parents and students can reduce their time and expenses on travel as all they have to do is log in.
• Improved attendance – Due to the fact that a lot of students have now online classes, there are fewer chances of missing out a lesson which improves a lot of peoples attendance.
• Accessibility – Online Education allows students to access their classes from any place they wish as long as they have an internet connection. Furthermore, all lessons can be recorded which allow students to rewatch the session again at their convenient time and capture more information which was covered.

Online Education has more than just what has been mentioned, but let’s look at some disadvantages. Feel free to share your opinion about online education.

Disadvantages of online education:

• Social interaction – One of the main disadvantages of online education is Social interaction. On a traditional class-based lessons people are able to have lively group discussions and people are more likely to have an intension of raising a hand that during the online class. Sometimes when students do raise their hands it takes some time for the teacher to unmute them during the session and by that time there is a possibility of forgetting the question.
• Not suitable for every topic – Some of the lessons include group work which involves group presentations which are much more difficult to do during online education. As a student, I can say that a lot of people experience a lot of technical issues and this is making group presentations even more difficult. You may be wondering how this is done, so let me explain briefly. The teacher has an ability to put students into a breakout session during which students are supposed to prepare their presentation. However, due to technical issues, some of the students don’t participate in them which sometimes leaves the whole presentation just to one person which sometimes can be frustrating.
• Network issues – A lot of students experience network issues which may be due to the number of people who are participating in the lessons especially at universities as some of the lectures have about 200 people. A lot of times people are unable to hear the lecturer properly as they are breaking up. However, with the option of recording it helps students to recap what has happened during a particular lesson.

Online education is a really broad topic and I could write and write about it, but lets leave it for the next post. If you would like to read more about online education please let me know in the comments below as I am more than happy and prepared to write more 🙂