Write an argumentative essay after reading the uploaded article...follow the instructions please!!!

English and Humanities College Composition I

Writing Proficiency Test

Fall 2010

Form FL1O C

Time limit: 90 minutes

Read the attached article carefully, and then write an essay in response to the question below. Be sure that your essay reacts to the ideas and/or evidence presented in the article, but remember that you are explaining your own point of view, not the author’s

1$ online education as effective as in-classroom face-to-face education?

Your essay should

• support a clear thesis statement

• be organized into well-developed paragraphs

• refer to the attached article at least once

► You may use a dictionary.

► Spend some time thinking about what you are going to write before you begin your composition. You may use scrap paper if you want. All scrap paper and examination materials must be handed in with your final version.

► Do not worry about crossing out words or phrases, but be sure that your essay is legibly written in blue or black ink.

► Your instructor will tell you your score on this essay at your scheduled class session during final exam week. Scores are not given out over the telephone. Any arrangements for portfolio appeals must be made with your instructor.

Learning in Dorm, Because Class Is on the Web

Trip Gabriel

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Like most other undergraduates, Anish Patel likes to sleep in. Even

though his Principles of Microeconomics class at 9:35 a.m. is just a five-minute stroll from his

dorm, he would rather flip open his laptop in his room to watch the lecture, streamed live over the campus network.

On a recent morning, as Mr. Patel’s two roommates slept with covers pulled tightly over their

heads, he sat at his desk taking notes on Prof. Mark Rush’s explanation of the term "perfect

competition.” A camera zoomed in for a close-up of the blackboard, where Dr. Rush scribbled

in chalk, "lots of firms and lots of buyers.”

The curtains were drawn in the dorm room. The floor was awash in the flotsam of three

freshmen — clothes, backpacks, homework, packages of Chips Ahoy and Cap’n Crunch’s

Crunch Berries.

The University of Florida broadcasts and archives Dr. Rush’s lectures less for the convenience

of sleepy students like Mr. Patel than for a simple principle of economics: 1,500

undergraduates are enrolled and no lecture hall could possibly hold them. Dozens of popular

courses in psychology, statistics, biology and other fields are also offered primarily online.

Students on this scenic campus of stately oaks rarely meet classmates in these courses.

Online education is best known for serving older, nontraditional students who can not travel

to colleges because of jobs and family. But the same technologies of "distance learning” are

now finding their way onto brick-and-mortar campuses, especially public institutions hit

hard by declining state funds. At the University of Florida, for example, resident students are

earning 12 percent of their credit hours online this semester, a figure expected to grow to 25

percent in five years.

This may delight undergraduates who do not have to change out of pajamas to "attend”

class. But it also raises questions that go to the core of a college’s mission: Is it possible to

learn as much when your professor is a mass of pixels whom you never meet? How much of a

student’s education and growth — academic and personal — depends on face-to-face contact

with instructors and fellow students?

“When I look bach, I think it took away from my freshman year/ said Kaitlyn Hartsock, a

senior psychology major at Florida who was assigned to two online classes during her first

semester in Gainesville. “My mom was really upset about it. She felt like she’s paying for me to go to college and not sit at home and watch through a computer.”

Across the country, online education is exploding: 4.6 million students took a college-level

online course during fall 2008, up 17 percent from a year earlier, according to the Sloan

Survey of Online Learning. A large majority — about three million — were simultaneously

enrolled in face-to-face courses, belying the popular notion that most online students live far

from campuses, said Jeff Seaman, co-director of the survey. Many are in community colleges,

he said. Very few attend private colleges; families paying $53,000 a year demand low student-faculty ratios.

Colleges and universities that have plunged into the online field, mostly public, cite their

dual missions to serve as many students as possible while remaining affordable, as well as a desire to exploit the latest technologies.

At the University of Iowa, as many as 10 percent of 14,000 liberal arts undergraduates take

an online course each semester, including Classical Mythology and Introduction to American Politics.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, first-year Spanish students are no longer

offered a face-to-face class; the university moved all instruction online, despite internal

research showing that online students do slightly less well in grammar and speaking.

“You have X amount of money, what are you going to do with it?” said Larry King, chairman

of the Romance languages department, where budget cuts have forced difficult choices. “You can’t be all things to all people.”

The University of Florida has faced sweeping budget cuts from the State Legislature totaling

25 percent over three years. That is a main reason the university is moving aggressively to

offer more online instruction. “We see this as the future of higher education,” said Joe Glover, the university provost.

“Quite honestly, the higher education industry in the United States has not been

tremendously effective in the face-to-face mode if you look at national graduation rates,” he

added. “At the very least we should be experimenting with other modes of delivery of education.”

A sampling of Florida professors Leaching online found both enthusiasm and doubts. *1 would

prefer to teach classes of50 and hnow everystudent’s name, but that’s not where we are

financially and space-wise,” said Megan Mocho, who teaches statistics to 1,650 students. She

said an advantage of the Internet is that students can stop the lecture and rewind when they

do not understand something.

Ilan Shrira, who teaches developmental psychology to 300, said that he chose his field

because of the passion of a professor who taught him as an undergraduate. But he thought it

unlikely that anyone could be so inspired by an online course.

Kristin Joos built interactivity into her Principles of Sociology course to keep students

engaged. There are small-group online discussions, and students join a virtual classroom once

a week using a conferencing software called WiZiQ.

“Hi, everyone, welcome to Week 9. Hello!” Dr. Joos said in a peppy voice recently to about 60

students who had logged on. She sat at a desk in her home office; a live video feed she

switched on at one point showed her in black librarian’s glasses and a tank top.

Ms. Hartsock, the senior psychology major, followed the class from her own off-campus home,

her laptop open on the dining room table. As Dr. Joos lectured, a chat box scrolled with

students’ comments and questions.

The topic was sexual identity, which Dr. Joos defined as “a determination made through the

application of socially agreed-upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females and

males.” $he ashed students for their own definitions. One, bringing an online-chat sensibility

to an academic discussion, typed: “If someone looks like a chick and wants to be called a

chick even though they’re not, now they can be one.”

Ms. Hartsock, 23, diligently typed notes. A hard-working student who maintains an A

average, she was frustrated by the online format. Other members of her discussion group

were not pulling their weight, she said. The one test so far, online, required answering five

questions in 1O minutes — a lightning round meant to prevent cheating by Googling answers.

In a conventional class, “I’m someone who sits toward the front and shares my thoughts with

the teacher,” she said. In the 10 or so online courses she has taken in her four years, “it’s all

the same,” she said. “No comments. No feedback. And the grades are always late.”

As her attention wandered, she got up to microwave some leftover rice.