There’s a place for online schools, but I like the structure and the organization of traditional classrooms.
It is good to be forced to meet at a certain time or place to study a subject intensely for an hour. It is a plus to have a knowledge area expert leading and explaining.
I’ve tried both, and I definitely prefer the traditional format.
Unfortunately, the new format is the avenue that will free students from the burdensome liberalism hawked in so much of higher education.
Online needs to work harder at both student accountability and communication/teacher access.
Its the flexibility that makes it work.
Unfortunately, traditional public school is now “be sort of requested to show up, but not forced because that might hurt your feelings or self esteem and we can’t have that, so you can study members of the opposite sex intensely for an hour while someone who has no real grasp of the ostensible subject matter blathers on and on about why Heather Has Two Mommies instead of, say, math.”
It is good to be forced to meet at a certain time or place to study a subject intensely for an hour. It is a plus to have a knowledge area expert leading and explaining.
I’ve tried both, and I definitely prefer the traditional format.
I can relate to the point that if you don’t have a schedule, you won’t match the performance of those who do. It’s the whole “Failing to plan is planning to fail” thing. OTOH there is the concept of “flipping the classroom” advocated by Salmon Khan. That is, free online lectures and online drill-and-practice can replace in-class lectures and textbooks, allowing students to use the classroom strictly for direct interaction with the teacher and other competency models, and thereby meet, and be challenged to surpass, scheduled learning. If a student is behind, staying in lockstep with the class is pure stress, and less productive than catching up from where you actually are would be. So the fixed schedule of a classroom has inherent drawbacks.If you check out khanacademy.org you’ll see why I might think Salman Khan deserves a Nobel Prize (assuming that’s still an honor).
The bulk of my master’s degree was taken in a hybrid format. We had a once a month face to face 1/2 day seminar/discussion and everything else was done on-line.
I wanted to take an additional course and it was structured in the traditional format. I dropped after the first day as it looked like a complete waste of time for the material presented.
There is a lot of value in face to face group learning, especially in subjects that could use more immediate feedback and structure like grammar, basic math, and music.