English essay

With the development of computer science and internet technology, a new format of classes, online courses, has come into our sight. Online classes are classes taught through the internet. In contrast to traditional classes, online classes don’t have a face-to-face learning process, teachers and students communicate with each other through a web-based format. While many students benefit from this newly-developed class format, there also is a concern that lacking in-person interactions will have a bad influence on students’ learning experience and outcome. But in fact, online classes can be as beneficial to students as traditional classes.

First of all, statistics indicate that students participating online classes have the same academic performance as those who attend traditional classes. As described in “Comparative Analysis of Learning Outcomes in Face-To-Face Foreign Language Classes vs. Language Lab and Online”, by Claudia S. Salcedo, 32 students were randomly separated into two groups to attend either an online classis or a traditional class teaching the same material. Final scores were different by less than 2.5% between students attending online classes and those who attend traditional classes. Also, the article “A Comparative Analysis of Online and Traditional Undergraduate Business Law Classes”, by Daniel J. Shelley, Louis B. Swartz and Michele T. Cole, showed that, in a five-point scale, mean value of students’ satisfaction of learning for online classes was 2.99, and it was 2.76 for traditional classes. No significant difference in student’s satisfaction between online classes and traditional classes was observed. Though the two studies are from different institutions and selected different courses as their objective, general rules and characteristics of either online classes or traditional classes remain the same. Thus the conclusion can be drawn, that online classes can do as well as traditional classes.

What’s more, it is students themselves that mostly determine the learning outcome, and changing of instruction methods should not have a significant impact on learning outcome. On the one hand, students’ learning outcome depends mostly on how many efforts students themselves choose to involve into study. There is no fundamental difference regarding a student distracted by websites in an online course and the one who plays his or her cell phone in a traditional classroom. On the other hand, online classes are nothing different but just another variation of class format. And just like other methods, it cannot be suitable for all kinds of students. For example, flipped classrooms, in which students must learn materials first and take their questions to classes for discussions, are only suitable for those students who prefer to learn by actively interacting with instructors or classmates. If someone who prefer to stay silence throughout the entire class, his or her questions would not be discussed, therefore he or she won’t be able to benefit a lot from this process. Similarly, online classes are only suitable for those who have good self-oriented learning skills and prefer to have more flexible schedules. Yes, online classes will not be beneficial to all students, but to whom that are suitable for this particular kind of classes, this method would certainly be able to teach as much knowledge to them as traditional classes.

Despite online classes have the same performance as traditional classes in most areas, it seems that students in online courses would have less chance of asking questions if only taking into account class hours, according to “12 Good and Bad Parts of Online Education”, by Mark Thoma. However, asking questions is not a privilege for students sitting in a traditional classroom. Questions can also be asked or answered during instructors’ office hours or by teaching assistances. Also, traditional classrooms do not necessarily guarantee greater opportunities for students to ask questions or get their questions answered. This mainly because instructors have their own lecture styles and plans. Especially in today’s fast-pace world, teaching becoming more challenging with more contents required and fewer course hours provided. Under such a circumstance, the only thing instructors can do to guarantee their teaching quality would be leaving less amount of time to answer questions in class, so that they are able to talk more. Taking my classes for example, only two to three questions are asked and answered in class, even including those that are answered roughly. Hence, there is no difference whether the students are in an online class or a traditional classroom regarding the opportunity to ask questions.

In conclusion, though online classes might have some differences from traditional classes, they do have the same learning outcome and benefits as face-to-face courses. With several researches pointing out that neither students’ satisfaction nor final scores differ significantly between traditional classes and online classes, and realizing that learning outcome mostly depends on students rather than teaching methods, online classes are as beneficial to the right students as traditional classes. Thus, as a new teaching method, debates can help it to make improvements, but that shouldn’t become the stumbling block of the development of online classes.