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Online Education Essay

Students should consider online education, because there are many advantages to it. Littlefield (2014) notes several key advantages to online education, including flexibility, good networking opportunities, open scheduling, pacing, savings, teaching and testing options, and effectiveness. Several of these are advantages even though they are normally considered positive traits of a traditional school structure. This paper will investigate these claims to provide the reader with a compelling argument that online education is beneficial for many students and a powerful force in the education system. First, a little bit of history. Online education developed with the emergence of the Internet, since that streamlined the ability of people to learn no matter where they were. Before the Internet, distance education was much more limited, for example, in remote locations, for prisoners and in other situations where physical attendance at an educational institution was difficult. As technology has improved, so too has the capability of online education. Today, with the synergies between different media technologies (video, online textbooks, etc.) and different forms of social media online education is a rich experience indeed, and the better the technology gets the richer the experience will get as well. The time is coming when online education provides...

This supports the idea that networking opportunities are strong with online learning -- networks are so much online now anyway that an online school network is really no different than any other social network.
The flexibility of online education has always been one of its main drawing cards. Some of the early adopters of online education were working adults, as the online program allowed them to perform the coursework whenever they had the opportunity to do so. This flexibility has proven very attractive to many students, who must juggle their studies with work, family and other aspects of their lives. In a world where we are constantly pressed for time, online studies allow people to complete degrees at their own pace, which is a tremendous benefit over traditional education programs that leave little time for other things.

In addition to flexibility, financing is another big benefit of online education. For many people it is hard to finance a traditional degree, because you have only time for maybe a little part-time work during school, summer jobs seldom pay well and student loans only defer payment. An online school will also offer student loans, but more important is that anybody can take courses while they are working, which means that they can pay for their school with their earnings, and therefore get a degree without taking on crippling debt. Add to this that you do not need to relocate, so you can control you costs much better with an online degree.

Much has been made about the quality of online education, whether it is good enough, but…

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References

Allen, I. & Seaman, J. (2004). Entering the mainstream: The quality and extent of online education in the United States. Sloan Consortium. Retrieved June 13, 2014 from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED530061

Littlefield, J. (2014). 10 reasons to choose online education. About.com. Retrieved June 13, 2014 from http://distancelearn.about.com/od/distancelearning101/tp/10-Reasons-to-Choose-Online-Education.htm

Parker, N. (2004). The quality dilemma in online education. Athabasca University. Retrieved June 13, 2014 from http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/ch16.html
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