CNN has an article on the apparent popularity of online classes. Why are online classes so popular?
Motives range from lifestyle to accommodating a job schedule to getting into high-demand courses.
One of those listed reasons really bothers me – accommodating a job schedule. It’s not that I think that students who have jobs shouldn’t take any classes – it’s that I’ve seen far too many students think that they can work a full-time job and use online classes as a way to take a full-time class schedule as well. These students almost always end up either flunking the courses or dropping out of them – wasting either their hard-earned money or someone else’s (through financial aid). The phrase “full-time student” means exactly what it says – online courses or not. This is especially true when that full-time load is a bunch of science courses. Most science classes are quite time-consuming, and trying to juggle a bunch of these is tough even for students who don’t have any other job!
One thiing some potential online students should remember:
But online classes aren’t necessarily easier. Two-thirds of schools responding to a recent survey by The Sloan Consortium agreed that it takes more discipline for students to succeed in an online course than in a face-to-face one.
I’d tend to agree. Online and distance-learning classses are usually harder than on-campus courses, presuming you’re going to a school that cares about its reputation. (Why harder, and not just equal? Likely because much more responsibility falls on the student in an online course with no scheduled face-to-face meetings than in a more traditional lecture-based course.)