Old New Perspective
With the advancement in technologies more and more people think of studying online. Could it be a real alternative to the traditional studying or there are some pitfalls?
In recent years online education is much spoken about. There is no need to describe the advantages of studying online. While hearing such a phrase, an ideal picture is emerging in our imagination. You, being so productive, are listening to the courses you are really into, understanding everything and even more than everything, reading additional info and after that definitely becoming 100% professional in the field of your interest. Coming down to earth, it’s not that simple and here we will find why.
To start with, online education nowadays is a popular trend. And it seems to be quite a positive trend as the education is becoming available to all strata of the society. In fact, it is commonly believed that with the massification of the online education, its quality is decreasing. And there are several examples of that.
Floating around the Internet one can find tons of information: different lectures, online seminars, theme websites, tips how to process information and so on. All of the mentioned above may be useful in one’s studying process but only to some extent. The matter is that you never now the quality of information you found until it is not an official resource of a certificated or well-trusted company. In fact, from the economical point of view it is quite obvious. The greater the demand, the more rapidly the supply is going up. So that more and more people are starting to sell their infoproducts in the Internet. For instance, bloggers on YOUTUBE or Instagram or online tutors and so on. What should one be skeptical about is the resource of information. There couldn’t be any certainty in what you are buying without any provided evidence of the quality. This the first point – the quality of information.
The second point also related to the massification of the online education connected with free online courses arranged by the universities. While the quality of information is not under the discussion in this case, the effectiveness of such education does matter. Quite often a huge stream of people is subscribing to these or that course, so profound (in terms of knowledge obtained) communication between students and a lecturer is becoming less possible. So that, on the one hand, there is a probable decrease of the overall educational level of the graduators of the course because of the poor communication with a professor and, on the other one, still a significant number of details to be explored and learnt are for a full due of the students. And reorganization is playing a vital role in this connection.
What one should also take into account that online courses are not mainly oriented on the practical issues? Its goal is to cover the lack of basic knowledge on that particular theme or to fulfill one with the additional information but not practice. From this point comes another problem – the lack of legislation of this sphere in many countries. The fact that you get a diploma of an online course, unfortunately, doesn’t mean that it will be counted while applying to a job. Because for the majority of employers the certificate of online education is not a proof of your competence.
All things considered, these days studying online is still far from being a real alternative to the traditional education. Anyway, it can become a good supplement to it. How come? – you will ask. Well, starting with the idea of restricted schedule it is quite apparent that it is impossible to cover all the promising topics or details during the lectures or the seminars in the university. There is always a room for the self-growth. In addition, this purpose serve online courses or web-sites.
The most popular and well-known resources are Coursera, edX and OpenEdu (in Russia). The aggregators of online courses on different subjects from the top universities of countries all over the world. Here you can find almost all the disciplines existing in the traditional system of education or even more starting from studying languages ending with neuro engineering.
The second type of resources is based on the programming – rapidly developing sphere of the education. Among them can be named: Codecademy, Stepik and Datacamp. Mostly for free there displayed the courses on learning widespread programming languages such as Python, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP and so on.
If at least once you dreamed about the website that will locate all the possible information – there has already been invented one and it’s called Archive. The Internet Archive is a special digital library that instead of books consists of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in a digital form. According to the page on the net the main idea of the resource is to make a Universal Access to All Knowledge, that’s why it provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public.
To be honest, online education is not always about studying. Of course it does involve learning something new but it is not necessarily includes tests or paper works – especially if we talk about SnapGuide that is a «place for makers». As you can understand right from the title, there one can find various guides how to do something you eager to in all spheres of life like gardening, beauty, technology, arts and so on.
Finally, there is a source that somehow links all mentioned earlier and it is Alison and Udemy. Despite the fact that they are quite similar to traditional Coursera and OpenEdu, there is one extra plus that they provide – free soft skills lessons from the world leaders and top companies. How to build an effective communication, to arrange your time and even how to lead a company – one can find the answers to these questions searching these aggregators.
Jumping into a conclusion, online education is a priceless opportunity to study almost everything you are dreaming of but only in that case if you are ready to study in spite all the difficulties you may (and probably will) face. But as W. Churchil put it: «Never give in. Never, never, never..».
Text by
Yulia Lavrenkina