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Old 02-12-2016, 09:03 AM
 
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Course is a pain in the buttox. Not a fan of online courses very rigid. Read chapter go online complete assignments complete test. Test are short some only 3 questions get 1 wring you fail. Some bugs with the course where you complete activity doesn't show up. The course requires you to discuss with your classmates on Blackboard. If your working over the weekend most classmates don't post till the last minute your up a creek without a paddle.

Think we P.O. the instructor sent us a email telling us how to write discussions and need to cite our work. None of us in class did, ha.

Without the bugs and offered more questions on a quiz I prefer online courses.
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Old 02-12-2016, 09:12 AM
 
Location: League City
3,842 posts, read 8,230,326 times
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It depends. It really depends on the teacher, the platform used to deliver the course, is the course amenable to online learning... etc... It's like predicting the weather.

I am out of college, but I always take something online for fun or to keep current. A few years ago I took 2 college courses that used blackboard. The instructor was terrible and unreliable. They stunk. But lately I have taken a few Moocs where the course went smooth as silk.

Currently I work at a college. The people who administer blackboard are in my department, and I hear them talk about the issues they have to deal with. It can be the teacher, an issue with blackboard itself, stupid departmental requirements, too many things to count... With online courses you get a lot more freedom, but a lot more things can go wrong.
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Old 02-12-2016, 10:36 AM
 
Location: Harrisburg, PA
2,336 posts, read 7,762,536 times
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I took 21 credits of my undergraduate degree online and my entire MBA program was online. I also registered for online courses at my local community college. But they were so bad, I dropped most of them (except for one). Here is my take:

1. I've had excellent online courses...and horrible ones. The excellent ones involved interactivity in spite the course being online. So a mix of videos, interactive Flash demonstrations (especially helpful in the math courses, were you can pause and rewind the steps of solving an equation), live chats with the professor and your classmates, and tests that allowed a variety of response methods (i.e. multiple choice, fill in the answer, etc.). The horrible online courses were where a professor would just upload some documents and links. You would email in your assignments. And then take a buggy multiple choice online (in one course I actually had to go on campus to take tests with a proxy). No interaction. Just read, homework, test....repeat.

2. Not all professors and students do well in online courses. Some professors of online courses spend a lot of time designing the course and setting up the course shell (which is good). But then they just sit back and expect the course to run itself. I have an insider view to this because I used to work for a college in a department that administered online graduate degrees. They would be slow with responding to emails and G-d help the students if there are some technical issues. Some of the professors are like a deer in headlights and sadly, the burden gets passed to the student to try to stop themselves from sinking in the course.

For students...what I found that in general, online course require more self-discipline and organization than on campus courses. While you have deadlines, it's up to you to carve out and dedicate enough time for your studies. Especially in my MBA program...when I had a lot of group work, it would never fail, someone would underestimate the time their portion of the project took. Many times, turning in assignments and tests online, the deadline is very firm (in that the online system will not allow you to turn things in late). Don't get me wrong....you have deadline in every type of college course. But many times if a professor knows you've been struggling, or you have something going on, you have some wiggle room.

Which leads me to my final point....

3. Good communication is crucial! If the professor doesn't have it, you may not get all that you can out of the course. If you don't have it, your experience and your grade will suffer.
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Old 02-12-2016, 08:53 PM
 
Location: 89434
6,658 posts, read 4,722,913 times
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I've took an online class for a community college once. It really wasn't that bad. All I had to do was complete the assignment and submit it online. And then the exams were online. I can't turn things in late because instructors can choose when the online system to stop accepting assignments. But it's just like a regular class-- if you don't do the work you risk failing.
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Old 02-12-2016, 09:19 PM
 
Location: Middle America
37,409 posts, read 53,335,525 times
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I'm not a huge fan of all-online. My current grad program is 60 credit hours, and one class (3 hours) is totally online. All the rest meet regularly in person, but have various components where online learning management systems are used. How effective they are depends on the class, who is teaching it, and how is it is designed. I have found that when a given class is online, the assignments are much more lengthy due to there being no classroom component.
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Old 02-13-2016, 08:05 PM
 
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I like them as long as they don't use busy work to make up for any perceived lack of difficulty in comparison to classroom attendance. I can do without lectures. All they do is take up time, and I have to spend money on gas and sit in traffic to go to class. But, I do have to say that it is easier to sit in class and say a few sentences or nothing than it is to complete discussion board assignments and be required to respond to classmates with substantive posts.
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Old 02-15-2016, 03:15 PM
 
Location: San Marcos, CA
674 posts, read 607,433 times
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I used to teach online.

When done right, it can be fairly effective.

The way I did things, I used software that allowed my students to log in to a discussion room where they could hear me talking into a microphone. They could type questions into a chat window, and I'd give lectures and write notes on a .pdf file I'd prepared ahead of time. I'd write with a stylus and tablet. At the end of the lecture, I'd post the .pdf file with my notes on my website, and I'd allow temporary access to a recording of the lecture.

Since the lectures were done in real time, and I would have quiz questions during the lecture (the quizzes were basically there to take attendance, though), students had strong incentive not to get lazy about the course.

Students seemed to like the format, and they still had direct interaction with someone who knew the subject backwards and forwards. I liked being able to teach from my living room during the evening. Since I was in charge, I could make sure the material wasn't dumbed-down at all. I expected everyone to learn the material better than undergrads usually learn it (that's a low bar to clear).


Now, the majority of free online "courses" I see around the internet, most of which are just recordings of lectures alongside a discussion board, don't strike me as any more useful than a book. I hate having to watch video recordings of anything, and I remember things better if I see them written down. Plus, most of the time, online video-based courses are dumbed-down.


That's my most serious issue with online courses. The free ones are usually extremely dumbed-down. Even the free ones offered by top professors at top schools. They're like those accursed "TED Talks." People go through them in order to feel good about having learned a little bit about a subject, but they don't carry any weight. I can say for a fact that someone who went through a free online course on machine learning from one of the world's most famous machine learning professors wouldn't even learn 10% of what someone would learn reading through any intro textbook on the subject, and that's being generous to the online course.

That's why I laught when someone says she or he took a "Harvard" or "Stanford" course over the internet. No, you watched a glorified YouTube video. Not the same thing. Go read a book.
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Old 02-15-2016, 09:09 PM
 
7,005 posts, read 12,428,081 times
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Harvard, Stanford, and Yale do offer online courses directly from their schools for credit, not just MOOCs through edX or Coursera. You can earn a degree completely online at Stanford and almost completely online at Harvard.
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Old 02-15-2016, 10:33 PM
 
Location: Middle America
37,409 posts, read 53,335,525 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by L210 View Post
I like them as long as they don't use busy work to make up for any perceived lack of difficulty in comparison to classroom attendance. I can do without lectures. All they do is take up time, and I have to spend money on gas and sit in traffic to go to class. But, I do have to say that it is easier to sit in class and say a few sentences or nothing than it is to complete discussion board assignments and be required to respond to classmates with substantive posts.
My experience in online academia (which is pretty limited, as noted, so perhaps not indicative of the norm, and offered through a graduate program at a selective private university) is actually the opposite.

In-class discussions in my program are far more robust than any of the online forum discussions (which are required both in the very few all-online classes offered, and as an additional component of classes that regularly meet in person). In-class discussions have decent participation with an organic flow and give and take. But people tend to view the assigned online discussions as a "do the bare minimum to meet the requirement and get the points" scenario, so they don't gain much traction or yield much by way of enriching discussion. It's, "Well, the professor said I have to do one short essay answer post,and then respond to two other people's posts, and I'm not doing any more than that." So online tends to be more the domain of "say a few sentences and call it good," whereas in class, there are actual freely flowing discussions.

We don't as a rule do any lecture online.
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Old 02-16-2016, 12:28 PM
 
Location: Middle America
37,409 posts, read 53,335,525 times
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^^ It really depends on how the program is set up.

Some are self-paced, others have definite due dates for assignments like any classroom-based program, and are just as deadline-driven, so the flexibility varies. It also may depend on whether you are working toward, say, a degree, in some cases, or if you are doing training independent of obtaining a degree.

Overall, online learning can take many different formats and look very different, depending on specifics of setup.
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