Disadvantages of Taking Courses Online

Even though there are a lot of advantages to taking courses online to get a degree, there are also some disadvantages of getting an online degree. Here are some of the disadvantages that people have found  about taking courses online and why some people have decided that it’s not for them.

When you take online courses through a college that isn’t accredited you are going to find that they don’t carry much weight and you have spent a lot of money for nothing. So it’s a good idea to look and see whether or not the college you are considering is accredited.

When you’re taking courses online, you are not going to have the interactions with your teachers and peers face-to-face like you would in a regular college. All of the interactions is through chats, emails, group discussions and other similar things.  For some people, it’s hard not to have those normal social relations.

Some people find that it’s hard to concentrate on their work when they are taking the courses at home.  There are noisy kids, dogs, chores staring you in the face. For people who don’t have the support they need from their family, they may find that they are unable to take this choice.

When you are taking courses through an online college, you need comprehension and independent study skills. The professors are going to be available at specific time to give you advise and instruction, but most of the work will be done on your own. You have to have a lot of self-discipline and self motivation. If you don’t have these, you are not going to succeed.

There are a lot of disadvantages when you are taking courses online. Even though online courses are handy and they are something that saves a lot of time and money, for certain people they may not be the best choice.

Online Education

Image representing Wikipedia as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

After online shopping the next new entrant into the online cart seems to be online education. Online education completely removes the process of attending lectures, uploading assignments, and even exams can be given online.

Students nowadays use internet for reading books, taking notes and completing assignment. When everything can be done on one medium, there seems to be no use for text books and even attending lectures. Lectures can be streamed live to your living room or even be made a little entertaining by taking a lecture outdoor. The thirst for knowledge and academic degrees can be quenched without the need for attending college.

When it comes to learning, students from primary schools to post-graduates use internet’s vast information resources to increase their knowledge. Though a degree cannot be guaranteed without actually appearing for an exam, a lot of information can be gained online. Apart from Wikipedia being an obvious and freely available online source, they are lots of other options that provide video lectures, recorder text books and lectures and loads of real text books.

One such valuable site is the MIT OpenCourseWare Initiative. This was launched in the year 2002 by the Open Course Ware Consortium to provide free quality education to people. Not just video and audio lectures from MIT but from more than 22 universities are available completely free. Another very valuable site is the Khan Academy, where one person teaches math with the help of YouTube. Then there is Academic earth which is similar to Open Course Ware Consortium but is slightly smaller and better organized. Academic earth also has a rating section which is helpful to avoid wastage of time. If you are more comfortable reading at your own pace than sitting though a slow boring lecture, you can choose from Wikiversity, Textbook Revolution and many universities singular efforts to bring as many text books online as possible.

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