HEADLINE
As one of the most discussed topics of today, it is still not decided if the online education
is more advantageous compared to the traditional education. To have a general understanding
of the term itself, it is defined as “the kind of education in which students may not always be
physically present at a school” meaning that the way that courses are taught is digital .One of
the most important issues about the education as a whole itself is that, even though it is
thought to be convenient, it is not within reach everywhere. Thus competition for education
can result in tragic events such as stampede just like the one happened in the South Africa,
University of Johannes. In this competition for education a mother was dead and 20 or
more poeple were injured. To prevent such events happening online education
offers a affordable education, accessible to everyone, a checker for understanding of the
students and allowing them to manage their lives/times efficiently which seems more
advantageous than the traditional education system.
One of the most important positive features of the online education is the MOOCs being
budget friendly and making the education reachable for many. In the US, raising health
expenses had been a great issue all over the country; however college expenses were
increasing at a rate doubling the health costs’ which makes the traditional education system
beyond the reach. Even thought in countries where education is reachable, it is not affordable
that students cannot pay their own college expenses therefore cannot get a qualified college
education. However as Daphne Koller, a CS professor in the Stanford University, mentioned
in her TED Talk “What can we learn from the online education?”, the online
program coursera “take the best courses from the best universities from the best instructors
and provide it to everyone for free” meaning that the best type of education is given to
everyone for free. If the students of the online courses want to get a certificate which can
help them to get a better job, it only costs around 50$ which is a seriously less number
compared to the college expenses which can exceed 1,000,000$. Another important example
given in Kollers speech is the specific student comment from India. In this comment a
student of the online education system coursera states that “Akash who comes from a small
town in India would never have access in this case to a Stanford-quality course and would
never be able to afford it.” In her speech by giving a real- life example, Daphne Koller points
out the positive impacts of the online education system all around the world by highlighting
the MOOCs being free. Therefore, the online education being free makes it reachable all
around the world, even to the small towns of developing countries.
Another important aspect of the online college education is the system which makes a
huge difference is the system being accessible anywhere at any time due to the internet-based
courses. One of the problems about the face to face college education system is that the
system being insufficient to reach out to small towns or developing countries since the
universities are far away than the settlements. Also the online education system can help
disabled or special conditioned people. As Daphne Koller mentions in her speech, online
education can be the way out for a single mother of two children who has to work
continuously, or it can help the father of an immune-diseased girl who is not allowed to go
out of the school. This way, education would be accessible to every single person who wants
to be educated. Also similar to Kollers thoughts on the online education; Manijeh Sadeghi
mentions the simplicity of reaching the course material of an international school even by
being a citizen of a different country. Even if the students get the subject wrong, they can use
another advantage given to them by online courses which is to rewind the courses and the
videos again and again until they understand what the course is all about. To sum up all these
points that Koller and Sadeghi gives, it is obvious that being an internet
based system provides a huge positive advantage to everyone who are using online education
system, by being reachable everywhere and every time.
Another significant feature of the online education system is its being interactive and
students being in touch with the course material continuously rather than a professor lecturing
to a big group of students sometimes not having enough time to have a real communication
with students individually. Online education is thought to have not enough interaction with
the students, however via instant feedbacks and active learning; online education helps the
students to get and stay in touch with the course material. In his TED Talk “Why massive
open online courses (still) matter?” Anant Agarwal mentions the methodology of the instant
feedback which is the following. Students answer the quiz questions, and when they do
it wrong they can get individualized feedback instantly to understand and correct their
mistakes which becomes much more engaging. Students can learn from their mistakes and
correct them and in this way the rate of failure fell to 9%(the percentage failure rate for
online education) from 41%(the percentage failure rate for traditional college education);
32% is not a small amount of students that can be neglected. Another point of him in the
same TED Talk is the online system providing active learning to students. In this
way students can watch short videos about the course and make the following examples to
develop and understand the core of the course which is more efficient when the students
interact with the material. The percentages prove that in these ways, online education
connects students with the lecture via short videos, exercises and feedbacks which make the
students learn better than the traditional online education.
Although many people think that online education brings more advantages than its
drawbacks; there are some people like Manijeh Sadeghi and Micheal Karlin thinking that the
online education has some serious flaws which can be summarized as high chances of
distraction, no interaction, staying in touch with the instructors and job markets not accepting
the certificates. First of all as mentioned in the very beginning of the essay, the chances of
distraction is reduced with system constantly checking your understanding by asking
questions. Even if the students are distracted, they can easily understand it and rewind the
video. The second point is stating that there are no interactions however in the specific online
education system called “Coursera” there are study groups to prevent this. In this study
groups different students from different cultures come together and work on a specific
problem, while doing this the cultural exchange happens as well. Another point that the
opponents of the online education system mentions is the hardness of staying in touch with
the instructors however this problem is solved through the instant feedbacks since in
this system students and instructors always stay in touch. In light of all these points, it seems
like online education brings more advantages than the drawbacks.
To conclude, after reviewing all the disadvantages and advantages, it seems like the
online education comes up with more advantages rather than drawbacks due to the system
being affordable, accessible to everyone, and being a checker for the understanding of
students. To summarize, as Daphne Koller and Anan… supported mostly, it would be better
to invest in the online education system rather than traditional face to face college education
since there is a generation has been raised by technology from the very beginning of their
childhood.
NOTE TO YOURSELF: (MOOCSdan bahset, face to face edu, traditional college education,
on campus edu) On the other hand MOOCs being internet-based makes the education system
updated and suitable for the current generation to make them learn better. ANOTHER
PARAGRAPH
The last advantage that the online education system provides to its users is checking the
understanding of the users continuously which is an important aspect of the MOOCs.
ANOTHER PARAGRAPH
SARI- DAPHNE / YESIL-SADEGHI /MAVİ- ANANT