Originally posted by O.nerka
I'm sorry but i just dont see how an online degree can be as good as going to class and being able to work with your classmates, professors & TAs.......i found your peers to be one of the most useful tools in university...and hey it worked cuz I just graduated with an A average....mind you it was hard not to be interested when all i was learning about was fish....and more fish....
Typical OLD school mind set. The only people that have a problem with distance education are the professors that are like 70 years old. Of course, these are the people who shouldn’t be sitting at a computer anyway. I received my BS in a classroom setting at UT, and I'll never sit through another class again.
The Dean at this campus received his MBA and PhD online through Texas Tech and the professor in the office next to me is working on his PhD online through Texas Tech. The professor that is leaving Tech to do teach at Duke University received his MBA through University of Phoenix and his PhD through Texas Tech.
You might be thinking of correspondence courses, the ones where you have no interaction with other students and your professor. Yes, those are awful and you don't really learn anything. The program that I am in at UT is like a virtual class room. You work in teams on projects, the instructor is "looking over your shoulder" by way of chat logs, etc. The instructor participates in the discussions as well. You have weekly home work assignments, tests and quizzes.
I can provide you a paper that the professor next to me is writing concerning distance education if you would like. I can also provide you the entire log of posts from the beginning of the semester if you would like to read through 2,000 plus posts from the instructor and students.
Obviously distance education is a great alternative to the classroom setting or else most universities would not offer them.
Each of these universities offer distance education:
University of Texas
Texas Tech University
Texas A&M
UCLA
UC Berkeley
Cal State
Arizona State University
Duke University
NYU
Those are just the ones that I could think of at this second.
This quote comes from Sheila Tucker’s study entitled “Distance Education: Better, Worse, Or As Good As Traditional Education”. “This study concurs with the general body of knowledge that distance education can be just as good as traditional face-to-face education. No significant differences were found between pre-test scores, homework grades, research paper grades and final course grades. However, there were significant differences between the two groups with regard to age, post-test scores and final exam scores. Distance education students scored higher in all three categories.”
How many more academic journals do ya want???
