Xi, 1 Wei Xi Kristen Foster CO 150.

401 17 November 2013 Online Courses Can Not Replace Traditional Courses at This Time Not long ago, one of my younger cousins told me that he was going to enroll in some online courses in order to get prepared for TOFEL test, which is a test to examine overseas students English proficiency. He asked me to recommend one educational institution to him. I am not very familiar with this new kind of access to higher education indeed, but the fact is, online education is developing with an incredible speed. According to the academic research article Going the Distance Online Education in the United States, 2011 by Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, from 2002 fall to 2010 fall, the students who take at least one online course increased from 1.6 million to 6.3 million, which has 18.3 percent annual growth rate from this period of time. This really surprised me a lot. There seems a tendency towards that online courses will replace traditional courses and actually many scholars claim that they believe so. According to Tom Snyder, the president of lvy Tech Community College, online courses has large potential since online courses just started to develop. He strongly believes that the future of higher education lies with online education (Snyder) However, Id like to say that at this time, online courses cannot replace traditional courses for it has many big issues. Students usually lack of close contact with the instructor since they are facing the computer almost all the time. Many researches also show that students who take online courses perform not as well as those who take courses in classroom. There exists a

Xi, 2 large amount of online courses which are not well designed, so the quality of these courses needs to be worried about. As we all know, it is important for students to maintain close contact with the instructor and other students. While in online courses, students lack close contact. According to Muilenburg and Berges research, the lack of social interaction ranks the first place among eight barrier factors to students learning online such as academic skills, learner motivation and so on. And in most cases of online courses, these students need engagement with their teachers to feel comfortable and to succeed. What they often get online is estrangement from the instructor who rarely can get to know them directly (The Trouble with Online College). To be honest, studying is not a process of so much fun, let alone facing the computer for a long time and having nobody to talk with. On the other hand, if we are in the classroom, we can give our feedback to the instructor of the place we didnt get as soon as he finished that part in the classroom. We learn by groups with other students to do brainstorming. As the UC Santa Cruz student body president Nwadiuto Amajoyi says It is in the classroom that we get to challenge each other, release inhibitions, test boundaries, and expand our frames of thinking and the notions that we hold about the world around us.(Amajoyi) Keeping close contact with the instructor and other students benefits the students learning a lot. Besides lacking close contact, students who take online courses perform not as well as those who enroll in traditional courses. Specifically, we found that males, Black students, and students with lower levels of academic preparation experienced significantly stronger negative coefficients for online learning compared with their counterparts, in terms of both course persistence and course grade. (Xu and Jaggars, 23). Whats more, it seems the students who takes online courses doesnt value it a lot, this lead to about half the online students even cannot

Xi, 3 insist one year. And they may do worse and worse so even when they insist for one year and at the end, they are further behind than when they started (Hubbard and Mitchell). Theres also a research done by Adam, Karl, Andrea, Lisa and Gretchen, reported that some studies shows that the students who likes online course more tend to perform worse in either online courses or traditional course. This leads to the fact that The increased presence of lower performing students in online sections may also be partially explained by student perceptions that online courses will be easier than F2F courses(Driscoll, Jicha, Hunt, Tichavsky and Thompson, 324) Moreover, the quality of online courses sometimes is not acceptable. According to a study which lasts for five years and whose target population is the 51,000 students who are studying in Washington State community and technical colleges. It is found that there are less possibility for those who enroll in more online courses to further their study by transferring to a 4-year college and finish their degree. The reasons for such failures are well known. Many students, for example, show up at college (or junior college) unprepared to learn, unable to manage time and having failed to master basics like math and English. (The Trouble with Online College). For more detail data, Allies article concludes that people are not satisfied with the quality of online education as only 5 percent viewed online programs as excellent, while 18 percent said the quality is poor, and 34 percent said those programs are only fair in terms of quality.(Allie). Brandon Mendelson, a former business owner, even if he found that somebody meets all his requirement and is exact the one he was finding, he would not hire him if that guy only has online degree. He dont think those kind of people have the intact learning experience. Instead, those kind of people lack of some part of learning experience. (Zupek) I want someone who

Xi, 4 made the full commitment, he says. These days, there are no excuses. Your job will pay for school; colleges have day-care facilities that are usually free; so actually going to the school gives a candidate the edge in my book. (Zupek) The quality of online courses really needs to be improved, as written in a editorial from New York Times The online revolution offers intriguing opportunities for broadening access to education. But, so far, the evidence shows that poorly designed courses can seriously shortchange the most vulnerable students. However, many people thinks that online courses is flexible, it saves money and saves time. Many full-time students enjoy the flexibility of online, self-paced courses because they can schedule them around their regular courses, and part-time students particularly may have difficulty fitting traditional courses into their schedules, said Rebekah Reysen, a learning specialist at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.(Ganucheau) Adam gives us the example of Ole Miss Online course. The cost of one online course is equal to a traditional course, no matter it is in state or not. Though it seems reasonable and I agree with that, I found out that sometimes online courses are not that flexible. Students may be required to learn new or enhanced computer and troubleshooting skills, Additional cost of high-speed Internet (Kumar) We have to have high speed internet at home and sometimes if theres no responses from the internet, we have to deal it ourselves. Its really big matter for not everyone is good at dealing the problems of a computer. And there are also many personal experiences showing that online courses are annoying and it wastes your time. I feel like I wasted an entire semester of my life, said Johnson, now working overtime to boost her grades in hopes the gap in her transcript will be less noticeable to colleges. She said technology problems kept her from starting classes until September and the social isolation quickly convinced her that online was not a good fit. (Hubbard and Mitchell)

Xi, 5 Online education is developing as a fast moving space shuttle inevitable due to its low price and flexibility. I agree that online education has huge potential, but I dont agree that it will replace traditional courses for there are still many big problems needs to be solved. Its incomplete. Educators need to improve the quality of online courses. Instructors need more interaction with the students who attend online courses and students must perform well to prove that it is worth taking. Furthermore, online courses should keep playing to its strength since almost everyone wants to get quailed high education easier and with a lower price. It still has a long way to go. Online courses cant replace traditional courses at this time, but lets wait and see, if the space shuttle reaches a New World or it just be lost on its way.

Xi, 6 Work Sited Allen, Elaine. Seaman, Jeff. Going the Distance Online Education in the United States, 2011 onlinelearningsurvey.com Babson Survey Research Group and Quahog Research Group. November 2011. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. Amajoyi, Nwadiuto. Can Online Course Replace Classrooms sfgate.com. Hearst Newspaper, 15 Feb. 2013, Web. 13 Oct.2013. Snyder, Tom. The Benefits of Online Learning huffingtonpost.com. The Huffington Post, 30 Jan. 2013, Web. 17 Oct. 2013. The Trouble with Online College Editorial. New York Times, 18 Feb. 2013 Web. 17 Oct. 2013. Bidwell, Allie. Americans Doubt the Rigor and Quality of Online Education usnews.com. News & World Report LP, 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. Xu, Di and S.Jaggars, Shanna. Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas ccrc.tc.columbia.edu. Columbia University. February 2013, Web. 25 Oct.2013. Hubbard, Burt and Mitchell, Nancy. Troubling Questions About Online Education ednewscolorado.org. ED NEWS COLORADO. 4 Oct. 2011. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. Driscoll, Adam. Jicha, Karl. N. Hunt, Andrea. Tichavsky, Lisa and Thompson Gretchen. Can Online Courses Deliver In-class Results? A Comparison Of Student Performance and Satisfaction in an Online Versus a Face-to-face Introductory Sociology Course tso.sagepub.com. American Sociological Association. n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. Zupek, Rachel. Employers On Online Education cnn.com. Cable News Network. 29 Mar. 2010. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

Xi, 7 Ganucheau, Adam. Online Courses Offer Flexibility to Students thedmonline.com. S. Gale Denley Student Media Center. 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. Kumar, Dhirendra. Pros and Cons of Online Education ies.ncsu.edu. NC State University. Web. October 2010. Web. 6 Nov. 2013