The Advantages and Disadvantages of On line Courses In today s modern fast paced society computers and technology are everywhere Everyone from the budding new student teacher to the 30 year veteran teacher are scrambling to prove to their administrators and parents that they are technologically savvy Internet and distance learning classrooms are popping up in high schools and universities all over the country While there are many advantages to having an internet class there are some setbacks as well After taking two on line courses PHY 605 How Things Work I from the University of Virginia Uva and PHY 500 Physics Education Seminar from Buffalo State College while completing my Masters Degree in Physics Education I have some insights to offer on the pros and cons of on line learning Originally I signed up to get my Master s Degree at Buffalo State College I had completed about one third of my master s work and moved to Rochester about an hour and a half away from Buffalo and was worried about finishing my master s program Luckily there were enough on line classes offered to cause me to have to commute for only one class to finish my Masters Degree The obvious pro of taking an on line class for me was it would save me a lot of time traveling back and forth to class While not all students who take on line courses have to worry about living a prohibitive distance away from their school a major advantage of on line courses is that they do offer flexibility I could do the lessons of the UVa class any time I wanted Students can do While this requires students to be motivated and organized and may not work for non motivated students it allows students to take Physics courses that normally would not be able to due to time constraints 11 4 7 This includes a growing number of college students who are also working full time while going to school or students with other responsibilities such as child care The flexibility can also be a negative Like many students I am a bit of a procrastinator I found myself completing assignments closer and closer to the dead line as the course went on Although there was always enough time to complete the assignments One major advantage of completing the assignments on time was lost to me I didn t get a chance to discuss the problems with my peers It usually takes between one and two days for a posted message to get answered and when you are doing homework the night before no one has time to discuss problems with the homework Relatively little information has been written on whether on line teaching of physics course promotes just as much comprehension as a traditional lecture based course In the letters to the editorial section of The Physics Teacher James O Connell asks this very question and invites colleagues to comment on the subject 2 Several teachers responded to O Connell s letter and offered some insight into his question Nora Thornber a teacher who is teaching a conceptual based physics course based on Paul Hewitt s book says that she has been using WebCT to promote student discussion and feels that students benefit from the course because the students must participate whereas in the classroom it is much easier to escape participation Not only do students need to be more motivated and self sufficient in order to pass a course where lectures are not given at a set time the student must also participate in order to pass most on line courses where as in a lecture a student can sit in the back corner and never speak a word Most professors find this aspect useful to helping their students learn physics concepts While taking the How Things Work course I noticed that even though I was confident in answering some of the conceptual based questions sitting down and writing a response caused me to think through my ideas more quickly It forced me to be concise and careful in my wording On line courses may aid considerably in concept development of students In class discussion does not always allow for all voices to be heard Also in most classrooms there are gender race income and other bias to contend with a person s voice might not be heard the same way coming from two different people An earlier study of the a text based course on special and general relativity found similar benefits saying that online dialog is largely raceneutral location neutral status neutral age neutral income neutral disability neutral and would be gender neutral except for the clue of first names 7 Nora Thornber notes that when students write out their comments it helps them to focus 3 Smith and Taylor also agree to this benefit stating that forcing the students to comment on their learning is a central advantage of computer conference courses 7 A great example of how this worked to my disadvantage from the How Things Work course is the following One a week our professor would use the Wimba Horizon Chat room to get some class discussion going This chat room was horribly attended Since attendence was not mandatory only about 1 4 other students were in the chat room at a time One night I found myself the professor and the Teaching Assistant were the only students in the chat room I felt a little foolish since I didn t really need any help with the material but I asked the professor a bunch of questions anyway He was nice enough to respond and then he ended the session with a series of open ended questions Horizon Wimba has a feature on it where all students in the chat room can anonymously post an answer to a question for the professor to read and discuss This would have been great for me as a student since I was a bit of a wallflower I usually had an idea of what was going on in class but never answered any questions because I was too shy if I could have anonymously reported my answers I would have participated more but I digress Anyway the professor was asking the questions so the teaching assistant and myself were answering the questions The teaching assistant got two of the questions wrong and each time the professor assumed that I was the one with the wrong answers A common program that many universities use to grade problem sets is Webassign which allows professors to write their own questions and have a computer grade the answers The Uva course used web assign to grade all of their student s responses Although writing questions and programs is very time consuming the first time a teacher teaches the course after several runs through the course having a computer aid in grading cuts
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