Online vs. Traditional Education

Online vs. Traditional Education

Introduction

The Internet is increasingly a fundamental component of the American home. Email, music, television, radio, newspapers, scientific publications, and magazines all have a presence online. And Americans, in ever-increasing numbers, are using the Internet as a part of their routine life. Additionally, more and more people are using online technology to obtain college degrees. In 2006, an estimated 3.5 million Americans were taking at least one online course, and the numbers are increasing (Swan et al., 2008). It is obvious that there are differences between land-based and online college programs. The most significant difference is the lack of physical proximity among students, the university, and the faculty. Still, this lack of physical proximity is not a barrier to learning.

Discussion

Online higher education classes and programs have become increasingly popular in the U.S., with existing brick-and-mortar schools offering more online courses at the same time those new distance-only institutions are emerging (Smith et al., 2002). Teachers of distance education courses have unique instructional responsibilities and must develop enhanced competencies for electronically mediated learner engagement and interaction. Online course instructors may use streaming videos, must understand the course management system used by the institution, and must have a different set of teaching skills.

It is important to study student course satisfaction for a variety of reasons. Student satisfaction and course achievement are positively correlated with both traditional and online courses. Course satisfaction in individual courses is also positively related to cumulative academic factors such as grade point average. Level of student satisfaction with courses has also been shown to predict retention.

Some of the important factors that affect student satisfaction are shared between traditional course delivery and online course delivery models, but others are unique to online courses, or at least more prominent in them. For example, the quality of interactions between the instructor and the student are important regardless of the course delivery model. However, Shae (2006) reported that the quality of these interactions may be more important in the online learning context. In addition, the comfort with the online medium for both instructors and students' play a large part in the successes or failures of online courses, while Olgren (2000) concluded that the responsiveness of the instructor to entails and other electronic communication attempts are crucial to student satisfaction with online courses.

This study is conducted to compare online vs. traditional class education. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume it is also important for online students. To date, the online education literature hints of this importance.

Students who enroll in online courses come from different backgrounds and age groups, but all online courses in a higher education context are for adults. Therefore, online classes often have from the beginning 18-year old college student to the 40-year old student in search of a mid-career change. Therefore, the adult learning model of Knowles, Holton, and Swanson (2005) provides a theoretical framework for this study. Central to the adult learning model is that learning models that are valid with children ...