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Essay about Online Education Versus Traditional Education

Decent Essays

With high speed internet available to potential students of all economic levels, schools are opting to implement online classes into their traditional teaching curriculum. As a result, our society is divided in two different ways of thinking on the education. Some believe the modern method is better than the traditional method of teaching. Personally, I believe both methods should balance one another instead of attempting to substitute one another; this way their purpose of educating will be far more successful.

Online education, also called long distant learning, can be defined as a new method of learning through a computer network. This modern way of teaching gives students an opportunity to take classes online. Bill Gates …show more content…

According to Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International, online education ultimate goal, is to provide learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.

However, advocates of classroom learning believe the online method isolates the students from one another as well as their professor minimizing the overall value of taking the course. They also claim that students learn better when working together with their instructor and their fellow classmates. Students learn better when they are given the opportunity to ask questions, join in class discussions, and they move the process of learning forward through their participation. Face-to-face advocates firmly believe that this kind of interaction is not possible over the Internet; and for many types of education, e-learning will never meet the potential of live human interaction in the classroom. An article in the New York Times titled, “Second Thoughts on Online Education,” backs up the points made above. A recent research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, comes to the conclusion; “A rush to online education

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