How Can Online Education Bring Equality?
Education is one of the most important and valuable aspects of our life that opens diverse opportunities to those who want to learn and efficiently use acquired knowledge in the future. However, not all people are able to afford an education of a high quality due to financial status or other issues. Fortunately, with the rapid advancement of science and technology over the past few decades, many parts of our daily life have been transformed to digital environment, which helps to communicate easier and is widely accessible. Yet, not only spheres of communication, market or entertainment became virtualized, but now education can be also web-based. Thus, with the new opportunities that solve limitations of traditional studying techniques, web-education is now regarded as not only an acceptable alternative, but rather as the demand of current time and fast-paced environment. Statistical data indicates a rapid increase of online enrollments by 832% between 2001 and 2009, while general rate of growth of web-based education has risen by approximately 21% (Stone & Perumean-Chaney 394). According to these results and rising popularity of e-courses, the existence and development of online education have brought up numerous advantages, which might help in addressing the problem of inequality found in the common full-time education practice that limits opportunities of certain social groups. In this essay, the effects of web-education are addressed and analyzed in terms of equality.
First of all, online education makes students equal because web courses can be accessed at anytime and anywhere. According to a survey taken at Ball State University in order to see and analyze perceptions of students themselves, approximately eighty percent of participants displayed positive attitude towards online education techniques due to its high convenience and flexibility (Alexander, Truell, and Zhao 196). Indeed, students are not required to dress specifically or attend the lectures at a certain time and place. Essentially, some of the students may work on a part-time basis or have certain family responsibilities that coincide with the timetable set at school or university, which creates unequal conditions for their studying process and decreases the chance to succeed in it. According to McNaughton (2001):“Distаnce leаrning affords educаtional opportunities to individuаls unable to attend convеntional clаssroom settings” (O’Donoghue, Singh, and Green 64). The group of students that can have such problems can also include people with disabilities and rural residents, who struggle to attend usual courses at universities. As a result, by providing online resources for learning that can be reached from any location with access to Internet regardless the time, educational institutes provide equal conditions, which, in turn, may help to significantly increase the performance of the students.
Secondly, web-education is more affordable in comparison to common full-time programs at universities, which creates more equal conditions for studying. The reason is that online studying does not require money for traveling, educational supplies, classroom facilities and other expenditures that are usually made in conventional educational setting. Moreover, video-recorded lectures can be filmed by limited number of good professors such that afterwards many students can view the lecture, and it is not needed to hire more teaching staff, thereby having the cost of education. Besides general education related to school and universities, nowadays companies offer web-based versions of corporate education for training their employees. Time benefits and cost-effectiveness of online education create necessary conditions for studying in spite of the global economic situation (Bartley, Golek, 169). Due to these circumstances, face-to-face classroom settings are being slowly replaced by the advantages that are offered by online platforms.
In addition, online teaching techniques can positively affect educational process because the pace of studying web-based courses can be adapted to the personal schedules of students. The aforementioned example of video-recorded lectures that actually reduce cost and human resource issues is beneficial in terms of the pace of studying, which is quite individual. Since students are able to watch the lectures and access course materials in their convenient time with higher chance of concentration, it can be supposed that the effect of understanding these materials will be more significant and useful. Also, it is important to emphasize that in a conventional classroom setting, there is a difference between groups of students in terms of performance. Some of the students understand theoretical concepts much faster than their peers and want to go through the lecture at a higher speed. In this case, it is more convenient for them to go through materials online and finish some of the courses according to their level of knowledge and independently of those who learn more slowly. On the other hand, some groups of students with lower performance or different background struggle at lectures with face-to-face instruction. Usually, professors cannot repeat topics that are under discussion such that every student can confirm understanding. As a result, students may find problems associated with these conditions that will affect their academic performance. However, with the development of online education, it became possible to access course materials and study them at individual pace with the possibility to return at certain points that need more clarification as well as opportunity to go through them faster and more efficiently. According to students that were interviewed on the topic of perceptions related to online education, approximately 70% of both males and females have indicated that the ability to view and review video lectures as needed is one of the most important benefits of online courses over the usual ones (Alexander, Truell, and Zhao 198). Thus, online education offers all students equal conditions by providing flexible courses, which consist of materials that can be learned according to the pace of each student.
Another issue that has risen around conventional education is psychological difficulties and stress for some individuals that struggle to work in teams or suffer from other students that may distract learning process. Online education, instead, is based on one to one interaction of a student with course materials and lecturers without any needs for interacting with other students, though it might be useful in terms of practicing communication skills. However, not all students are proficient in it, and the problems associated with psychological barriers should not affect the major goal of education – acquiring knowledge. By learning online, students are not disrupted by inappropriate, irrelevant, unrelated or obvious questions of their peers. Students may better concentrate on their own studying process. This opportunity also makes students equal in terms of cutting psychological barriers, since the learning process of students enrolled online is more individual and implies absence of distraction that takes place in a usual classroom.
It is true that the effects of online education in terms of getting away from inequality have some limitations. They might be structurаl, psychоlogical and pedagоgical, and altogether might bring many challenges to the educational process (Bartley & Golek 394). Generally, from the information given by educational institutes, academic performance and completion levels for well-designed web-courses instructed by experienced teachers display similar results as in equivalent conventional education (Mayadas, Bourne, and Bacsish 51). However, the absence of real interaction is quite significant disadvantage of online courses, though it can be argued that face-to-face communication is not equally required in some of the courses of science or engineering compared to social and humanitarian disciplines. Another issue is associated with the software platforms that need to operate efficiently and involve additional personnel responsible for the proper functioning of online courses (Bartley & Golek 395). According to students themselves, online education requires more responsible behavior and self-discipline. Due to the flexibility and wide access of web-courses students may start to procrastinate, get disrupted by the Internet or even cheat (Alexander, Truell, and Zhao 198). Therefore, online courses have to be designed with maximum attention to the students, take into account time management problems and give all students possibility to reach and communicate with the online instructor if needed.
In conclusion, online education provides many solutions to the problems associated with conventional studying. Despite of the possible disadvantages, it offers opportunity to learn regardless the time and place, which creates equally flexible conditions to organize personal schedules convenient to each student. Especially those who have some physical disabilities, family issues or other reasons that do not allow to study at usual classroom setting may use technology for the benefit by enrolling to online courses. Convenience, flexibility, and lower cost of studying via Internet are seemed as advantageous alternative to conventional education. Finally, the positive effect of education online on the performance of students may be reached because online courses might be adapted to the individual pace of learning without cases of being disrupted by other students.
Works Cited
Alexander, Melody W., Allen D. Truell, and Jensen J. Zhao. "Expected advantages and disadvantages of online learning: perceptions from college students who have taken online courses." Issues in Information Systems 13.2 (2012): 193-200. Web. 19 May 2016. <http://iacis.org/iis/2012/114_iis_2012_193-200.pdf>.
Bartley, Sharon J., and Jennifer H. Golek. "Evaluating the Cost Effectiveness of Online and Face-to-Face Instruction." Educational Technology & Society 7.4 (2004): 167-175. Web. 19 May 2016. <http://www.ifets.info/journals/7_4/16.pdf>.
Mayadas, A. Frank, John Bourne, and Paul Bacsich. “Online Education Today”. Science 323.5910 (2009): 85–89. JSTOR. Web. 19 May 2016.
O'Donoghue, John, Gurmak Singh, and Charmaine Green. "A comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of IT based education and the implications upon students." Interactive Educational Multimedia 9 (2004): 63-76. Web. 19 May 2016.
Stone, Mischelle T., and Suzanne Perumean-Chaney. "The Benefits of Online Teaching for Traditional Classroom Pedagogy: A Case Study for Improving Face-to-Face Instruction." Journal of Online Learning and Teaching 7.3 (2011): 393-400. Web. 19 May 2016. <http://jolt.merlot.org/vol7no3/stone_0911.pdf>.
