Starting college is fraught with enough challenges and many prospective students think getting an on line master degree has even more. Besides mustering the stamina to get through an academic year, virtual students have to maintain a working computer, find a place to study in comfort and meet all their deadlines in a timely manner. Another myth is that they are isolated because they are not surrounded by fellow classmates undergoing the same pressures they are.
Actually, far from being isolated, online students are immersed in campus culture. Freshmen just don’t know it. For instance, one way online colleges have gotten around this is make sure students have contact with their professors. This is causing an interesting phenomenon. Teachers have said they have more contact with their online students than with their on-campus counterparts.
There is a common bit of misinformation circulating that e-learners work in a virtual vacuum. That’s hardly the case. If anything, the volume of e-mail messages between online teachers and their students have been measured to be as many as 5-6 per day. In addition, the students spend a considerable share of time on group message boards and chat rooms with their classmates.
What’s interesting is that the teachers actually don’t mind the ton of e-mail. They even say they give these students more feedback than the students who spend their time waiting patiently at the professor’s office during the latter’s office hours.
This emphasis on electronic communication is leading many to believe the online student is more productive than his or her contemporaries. There’s something about the distance of e-space that emboldens some who would not be able to debate in the real world. There are even cases of a heated online debate between various classmates – with many of the participants actually in the same room.
The teachers are also getting some new and unusual benefits. A Montana university has a professor who claims the online classes she headed over the past eight years had students in a dormitory on her campus and as far away as Egypt in the same class at the same time.
An increasing number of students now understand distance learning degree use the same books, lectures, notes and teachers as physical classes. The only difference is not having to commute. In turn, as more and more students grow up using computers, they in turn have been choosing online classes simply because they are totally comfortable with electronic modes of communication. They enjoy the greater freedom having online classes conform to their schedules provides, particularly working students who can attend only around his or her job.
Professors are reaping some new, unique benefits, too. One, who meets with his students only online, doesn’t live remotely anywhere near his campus at all. Returning to that college in Montana, another educator is still conducting his classes up there in the Badlands while doing research over 3,000 miles away in New York. A third teacher made some headlines because he was teaching while being a solider deployed in Iraq. Due to the capabilities of online education platforms, all these teachers never missed a class. So, if students and teachers are finding and reporting these kinds of benefits, we should see this form of communications growing even more.
Every prospective student is busy with something – work, family, other responsibilities. No matter what the outside concerns are, an online accredited degrees can fit in somewhere. Drive and dedication can get students started with associate degree programs online and progress all the way through masters and PhDs. There’s no limit.
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