Virtual Campuses

In order to unravel college students’ desperation of choosing whether they should enroll in an online course, Content Marketing Specialist of Collegis Education, Kristina Ericksen, has devoted experience from taking online courses to produce and provide a solution for any student. Her written article for Rasmussen College, “What I Wish Someone Told Me BEFORE Taking Online Classes,” exploits the hidden challenges and the usual shortcomings that bears in the name of online learning, such as there are certain learning styles that are not meant for staring at a computer screen, so according to Ericksen, “an advantage to one student may be a disadvantage to another.” While learning styles is only one of her subtopics in the article,

Education has long been the frontier for society and academic advancement in one’s life. Long gone are the days where only a handful of people were expected to enter into college and earn a degree. In 2014, there are so many colleges and universities that one can choose from. Not only is the choice, whether or not they attend school, but the choice is, whether they want to attend school online or in a traditional college setting of brick and mortar.

Online degrees are becoming an ever more trendy method to receive a college education and many students are switching to online education due to the quality of material, ease, and the level of flexibility in distance education programs. Recently, the internet has developed into a reliable capital of information for college seekers. Everything from applying for financial assistance to taking a course can be done online. Now, a student can even obtain online degrees from one of many schools offering online education as a practical choice to a traditional classroom education. There’s a load of information regarding online education, and distance education is becoming increasingly popular for students everywhere.

Have you ever wondered what the best college learning method for a working adult is online or campus? If working adults took online courses they can do their work anywhere there is an internet connection however they have to ask themselves; would I get the same or better education I could if I was sitting in a classroom? In a classroom setting they would get the interaction with fellow classmates and the professor who all come from different places in their lives. If the working adult had a question or did not understand they would get the results right away, on the other hand, if the student is learning online they have to wait for their professor. The response time for their email to be read and returned will not be there when it’s fresh in the student’s mind. If one is planning on going to college as a working adult, he or she should consider the value of taking the time and attend classes on campus.

Around seven months ago, several of my classmates and I walked into our high school’s computer lab and logged onto Northwestern State University’s (NSU) Moodle website for the first time. Over the next seven months, we logged into our accounts several more times, often every day of the week. As dual-enrollment students, we have been attending online college courses through this website as high school students. These courses allow us to get a head start in our college educations. While this experience has been largely beneficial to us as students, it has not been an entirely pleasant one. The NSU dual-enrollment program has issues, but there are solutions to these problems.

Student attrition is a growing issue among community college administrators but there’s been little research into how community colleges’ policies and practices reflect this concern, or how they affect student attrition rates. Research has shown that students in online courses continue to experience higher attrition rates than their counterparts in traditional face-to-face classes despite the advantages offered by web-based technology (Shea & Bidjerano, 2014). In prior studies, researchers have found a multitude of factors contributing to high attrition rates among college students in online classes. A number of studies found that certain environmental/life circumstance factors can affect student attrition rates in online classes (Aragon & Johnson, 2008; Atchley et al., 2013; Harrell & Bower, 2011; Park & Choi, 2009; Wigenbach, & Akers, 2013: Shea and Bidjerano, 2014; Xu and Jaggars, 2013; Xu and Jaggars, 2014). These factors include:

While tuitions rose and salaries static, families no longer see the need to splurge on the “college experience”. Not only are students paying for the expense of academics, but on campus dorms and a meal plan as well. Although Students could choose to commute to cut out the cost of dorms, many colleges are too far away from home to do so. If living on campus and commuting were out of the question, then students may enroll in online schooling to get the education they need

The University of Florida’s (UoF) realization that brick and mortar schools no longer serve as the only means to attaining a higher education established an institutional paradigm shift (Kuhn, 2012) on education delivery. The university’s evolution of an online education developed alongside the growth of technology (Blocher, DeMontes, Willis, & Tucker, 2002) and the needs of the community (University of Florida, Distance Learning, 2016). For the UoF, online programs began transforming as early as 1947 when challenged to adapt during world events such as the need to deliver GED home study courses to nearly 6,000 immigrants (University of Florida, History, 2016). In years that followed, an increasingly competitive environment (Volery & Lord, 2000) led to the video taping of lectures in 1991 and to the online courses and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that initiated in 2013. In its early development MOOCs were housed under the Coursera website since it provided an opportunity to test online courses (Coursera.com, 2016; College Factual, 2016). Today, the UoF houses both MOOCs and online programs within the Division of Continuing Education (DCE), which the university established in 2009 and dedicated full-time faculty to it due to the steady growth of online education (University of Florida, Distance and Continuing Education, 2016).

In recent years, United States universities have experienced a large influx of enrollees over the age of 25, a group referred to as non-traditional students. After America’s relatively recent economic troubles, nearly all citizens feel as though higher learning is an important tool for financial success. Many non-traditional students include first-time students, and more than half of the student body over the age of 25 consists of stay at home mom attending online classes.

Historically, the quintessential college student leaves home at the age of 18 to live on a college campus for four years. These students have long been labeled as ‘Traditional’ college students with the learning category outliers such as Adult, Online, Part Time, and those working Full Time while earning a degree being considered Non-Traditional and a minority amongst students. However, the learning demographic across the United States is shifting, and our ‘Traditional’ learners have become a minority. According to the Department of Education, in 2011 there were 17.6 million undergraduates enrolled in American Higher Learning. However, just fifteen percent of

Online students are a unique group of individuals with many different needs. In order to be successful in earning their college degree, students must complete the requirements

Frustrated with current career options, considering a major career change or simply having a zest for learning sparks many adults to earn their Bachelor's degree. Years ago, the only way to earn a degree was within the confines of a brick and mortar classroom. Today, one can earn a degree from an institution 3000 miles away, from the comfort of one's own home! While classroom learning is always an option, many are finding it much easier to maintain their family, their career and pursue a college career at the same time by pursuing a degree via online learning. Learning via traditional classroom or online is a financial, strategic and personal decision for each student. This paper will compare and contrast these two options as well as provide a discussion on the merits and drawbacks of both. I contend that for many adults, online learning is the practical way to earn a degree while still maintaining their current lifestyle. Without the option of online learning, many adults would find it logistically challenging to return to school, stalling their opportunity to earn a degree.

In today’s society, so many people are continuing their education beyond high school. We realize that in order to make a decent living, a degree is most likely a requirement. In some cases even a bachelor’s degree is not enough to qualify for many positions. Nevertheless, thanks to technology, we now have the option to learn online or in a traditional classroom setting. There are very few differences between the two, and students need to understand that as much time and energy will need to be devoted to the online courses as on a campus. “A 2010 meta-analysis and review of online-learning studies concluded that online learning was as good as or slightly more effective than traditional face-to-face instruction” (Mendenhall, 2011).

Online college courses are almost becoming traditional for students. Some may perceive that a student does not receive an equal education when taking an online class. People tend to think that if a teacher is not directly giving the information about the subject, the course learning experience is different or unjust. This assumption is wrong according to the perception of many online course takers. Online college courses offer students the advantage to learn on their own time. The skills that a student learns in self-discipline, scheduling to complete graded assignments, and advantages learned with technology gives online classes equal education experience compared to classes on campus.

Education has undergone significant changes because of the development of information and communication technology over the 21st century (Lin & Jou, 2012:2). As a convenient and inexpensive way to gain knowledge while pursuing higher education, online learning, a form of training or teaching that takes place over the Internet, has been considered as an alternative to traditional classroom learning (Zhang et al, 2004). This essay will argue that even though online learning has benefit such as flexibility which could outweigh traditional learning, traditional classroom learning might still not be entirely replaced. This essay will discuss positive and negative aspects of online and traditional learning in terms of four criteria: