Online Class not Like the Past

The move towards this change started when large and reputable universities all over the country adopted the reality that it was a viable way to educate someone and starting offering online classes to students that lived far away. You might be surprised to know that these same universities also offer these to enrolled students that live within walking distance of campus simply because this is the only platform they have for delivery of the class. Enrollment in real class is not even an option for some courses at Universities that were founded on in class method. Technology has come so far in distance education that there are many reasons that an online class is arguably better than a physical class. For one, with the overcrowding that exists in universities, online class allows a student a way to avoid an overcrowded lecture room with poor visibility and audio. Some large universities can have lecture halls that have 500 people in class. Depending on the content of the course an online class allows the presenter to display exactly what they are doing via their computer literally on the computer of the student. You can imagine that this up front method might be enticing to a student in a math class that previously depended on seeing the black board from a distance. Another thing online classes could benefit someone with would be their interactivity. The stagnant page is a thing of the past in online classes these days. Despite preconceived notions that online class consists of blankly staring at a screen and left clicking every now and then to get through the content you can look into methods actually employed in the online learning experience and see this is not true. Of course there may be classes that are set up poorly but that applies to real life class as well. Many new online classes have video, chat, forums where students can discuss engaging topics, and a variety of methods that make the learner feel like they are part of the content. As online learning excels we need teachers that are skilled in these delivery forms using them to their best ability so we can eliminate the stagnant page style of learning once used in online delivery. A great open source site dedicated to online learning is called http://docs.moodle.org/en/About_Moodle Moodle. You'd be surprised to know that it is a free project and has become the life work of many programmers and educators trying to bridge the gap of programming code to making the learning process work effectively in an online class. Moodle is not alone with this goal. Glancing at Moodle's site you can see evidence of thousands of peoples effort and contribution in their free open source cause. To wrap up a topic that could be talked about at great length. We are just beginning to unveil the possibilities that learning can accomplish through online class. Faster computers, faster Internet speeds, smaller file sizes, video, and programming, to name just a few is opening doors for creative educators around the world. The key is for educators to be aware that they do indeed need to be creative. Teaching methods are not black and white and never have been. Whether it was 50 years ago or 1,000 years ago, good effective teachers used careful thought to get their point across. Newer technologies are giving a way to creatively play with delivery and interactivity and the online class of 20 years ago is no longer a stagnant html page. I for one am very excited for the new tools that are being developed every day for learning new things.