Online classes have many beneficial values
By Staff Writer: Marissa VanDaelen
I’ve always wanted to take an online class. During second semester of my senior year, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to. To be honest, I originally took the Study Skills course because I thought it would be the easiest thing for me. I was under a lot of stress and wanted a simple class. However, I actually have learned a lot from the course and it was incredibly convenient.
Starting the class was not difficult at all. The website is pretty self-explanatory. All of the links have headings that tell you exactly what they are. The first day I spent clicking on several links to get an idea of where everything was located. I was pleased with the fact that it was so easy to navigate and excited to begin the course the next day.
There isn’t a single thing I can think to complain about when it comes to online classes. They have always appealed to me. I’d much rather learn on my own time and at my own pace than learn on somebody else’s schedule.
There’s no doubt that online classes can cause procrastination in some people, but for me, procrastination didn’t exist. If you really wanted to, you could finish all of the assignments at once. That’s definitely my favorite feature about these online classes. It motivated me to get my work done quickly but not quick enough to where I wouldn’t be taking in information. What’s beneficial about finishing way before needed is that it’s one less class to deal with. Your online class can be completely finished early, and if you decide to do that, you won’t have to think about that class at all.
Obviously some online classes are harder than others, but since you can work at your own pace, there should be no reason for any online class being incomplete. Some assignments are extremely time-consuming and require critical thinking, but I like teaching myself and problem solving on my own.
If you ever have any questions about anything, you can e-mail your instructor through the website. This is a necessary and useful tool. I always got immediate responses from my instructor. Usually, she replied within 24 hours or less. I couldn’t move on with my work if she hadn’t replied, but she never failed to give me helpful answers. Of course, this depends on the instructor. Some instructors take more time to reply than others.
If you need help as soon as possible and your instructor isn’t replying, there are certainly alternatives. You can always go to the discussion board and post a thread asking for help. It’s more than likely that one of the many students enrolled in the same course as you is willing to help you out. You could also private message a student through the website as well if you don’t want everyone seeing your post on the discussion board. I believe that you should never feel awkward or embarrassed asking for help from a student. After all, it’s online. You aren’t asking “stupid questions” in person. You may need to do this if your instructor is taking too long to reply and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Additionally, online classes make it easy to take tests without feeling rushed. When taking tests and doing various work, people should already know not to plagiarize. Although it’s easy to plagiarize online, I don’t think that it’s done as much as it used to be. Plagiarism isn’t a big deal because there are consequences, and if you do it, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. People are aware that there are consequences to plagiarism and anyone who thinks they won’t get caught are sadly mistaken.
Overall, I believe online classes are extremely user-friendly and constructive for people who don’t mind learning on their own. You should take an online class if you like self-teaching, but you must be motivated to get the work done.
Why online classes should be banned from existence
By Staff Writer: Rachel Brauer
At the beginning of my senior year, I was still struggling between two dreams of mine: to become someone in the medical field (preferably some type of surgeon) or a journalist. Faced with not having a first hour, I decided to try an online class in medical terminology. This decision, thus far, marks my biggest regret.
It was not that the class was difficult, which it was, it was the agonizing fact that it was online. My generation revolves around technology, and I couldn’t figure out how to start it at all. It takes a week to process and go through the school to become accepted once one is enrolled in an online class, and I had already started the class later than expected. It put me so behind to begin with, which produced a whatever attitude regarding the completion of it.
The process made it so easy to procrastinate. I already have a difficult time getting myself to sit down and complete necessary work. Having a class online where attendance was not taken or reported to my parents made it so easy to avoid. Senioritis was already in its prime for me. This resulted in racing to finish the class on time, which caused me enormous amounts of stress. Of course, this was my fault that I did not work on it, but I felt like I was not even learning anything to begin with. It made procrastinating in other classes easier as well, due to the fact that I had a free hour during school to finish the homework I hadn’t done the night before.
Online classes are extremely time-consuming and anyone who says differently took, what I consider, a blow-off course like Career Decision Making or Study Skills. I basically had to teach myself the information, which took working on simple assignments twice as long to do than any of my other classes. Taking notes off the e-text (the online text book), was tedious and obnoxious. It was equivalent to copying down all the information.
Something else that really irked me was not being able to get immediate feedback. Whenever I did get myself to sit down and work on the class, if I had a question I had to wait for an email response from my teacher. That meant I couldn’t move forward with what I was working on until I got my answer. I could ask the question to the other students on the message boards, but no one ever really used it. Whenever there was an assignment where we had to interact with the other students about a posed question asked by the teacher, everyone just used a variation of what the other said.
Even though there was a discussion board implemented, where one could talk to other students in the class about the current unit, it was awkward because none of us knew each other well enough to give constructive criticism. If one brave soul ventured out with some honesty, nobody took it seriously. The usual comments were “nice job” or a bleak “great.” It was basically me teaching myself all of the information. That’s a lot to comprehend and then relay it back.
When taking the unit tests, one can simply copy the questions into the Google search engine and receive an answer in less than a click. Even if the answer is not correct, the information is not being retained. Or just any of the material can be completely found effortlessly.
In my opinion, online classes are horrendous and take too much time to actually complete. I would not recommend an online class to anyone, ever.
