Students who are working for their on line college degree have enough challenges affording a good computer, Internet hookup and a quiet place to study. That doesn’t even include the energy and determination to complete their studies. Many times, new virtual freshmen feel totally isolated because they are used to being surrounded by other students in a classroom. They need that contact.
Actually, far from being isolated, online students are immersed in campus culture. Freshmen just don’t know it. For instance, one way online colleges have gotten around this is make sure students have contact with their professors. This is causing an interesting phenomenon. Teachers have said they have more contact with their online students than with their on-campus counterparts.
Those not familiar with online education may suffer from the illusion of the e-learner as some kind of a lonely laborer. If so, they are in for a surprise. Actually, it seems the lack of face-to-face contact increases the volume of e-mail messages between teachers and their online students to five or six times per day. In addition to e-mail, students spend their share of time on group message boards and chat rooms with the entire class.
What’s interesting is that the teachers actually don’t mind the ton of e-mail. They even say they give these students more feedback than the students who spend their time waiting patiently at the professor’s office during the latter’s office hours.
This emphasis on electronic communication has made many students be more productive than the on campus contemporaries. There is anecdotal evidence of heavy debate between several classmates – with the debaters actually both located in the same building; sometimes even in the same room.
The teachers are also getting some new and unusual benefits. A Montana university has a professor who claims the online classes she headed over the past eight years had students in a dormitory on her campus and as far away as Egypt in the same class at the same time.
An increasing number of students now understand online classes use the same books, lectures, notes and teachers as physical classes. The only difference is not having to commute. In turn, as more and more students grow up using computers, they in turn have been choosing online classes simply because they are totally comfortable with electronic modes of communication. They enjoy the greater freedom having online classes conform to their schedules provides, particularly working students who can attend only around his or her job.
Professors are reaping some new, unique benefits, too. One, who meets with his students only online, doesn’t live remotely anywhere near his campus at all. Returning to that college in Montana, another educator is still conducting his classes up there in the Badlands while doing research over 3,000 miles away in New York. A third teacher made some headlines because he was teaching while being a solider deployed in Iraq. Due to the capabilities of online education platforms, all these teachers never missed a class. So, if students and teachers are finding and reporting these kinds of benefits, we should see this form of communications growing even more.
Your college degree fits the time, lifestyle, and work commitments of students of all ages. For those just starting out, earning your bachelor degree is the first step in the educational ladder. Where one goes from there is as far as the student wants to, maybe even earning their master degree program.