Unless you go to the top universities in the world quality is, unfortunately, very variable, even inside the same university. A problem with a lot of higher education is that professor sometimes teach on the side, specially at big colleges, their main job is research and they only give lectures because it is university policy. On the other hand online courses are only for teaching. Moreover once you get the instructor to record the course he can happily return to his research, and only provide minimal input on the course. Or you know, you can fire them after that...Bellhead wrote: ↑Sat May 02, 2020 1:37 amAs far as value is concerned, it's a coin flip. No physical classrooms means no direct interaction, but also no major real estate overhead, whereas brick and mortar means commuting one way or another, and an opportunity for face to face communication with instructors and students alike..Technic[Bot] wrote: ↑Sat May 02, 2020 12:49 am And despite being cheaper for the end-user i think they do not offer as much value as more traditional form of learning.
On top of that most of schools have been force online due to the current lockdown, I do not take classes myself anymore but every student I know says that they are completely worthless. As professors do not know how to use online platforms and only leave homework and reading assignments.
That said, either platform requires people to know how to teach with it. When I was in college, there was a stigma that classes were meaningless. If you want to learn, spend your life savings on books and a room for 4 years and teach yourself, because your instructors literally couldn't care less. College, by the words of many who graduated, "is for parties and drinking, because nobody teaches you anything else". In that sense, online is far better.
But on the other hand, online learning severely limits the learning experience, as well as socialization. Physical schools have a much greater capacity for that, it's just that nobody gives a damn about it.
In my 7 years of college i did meet a lot of people that spent all their time drunk and partying. But not all. Some people did cared to learn something a took classes did their homework and studied hard. Either because they knew they could not pass the test otherwise or they knew they would eventually need to use some of that knowledge. And you know, some people were actually interested in what the degree they were pursuing.
Lectures and traditional teaching do get a bad reputation. Since you are graded for your performance thinking that classes are useless or pointless might make you feel better than thinking you are simply not doing great at school.
And you are absolutely correct learning in a social environment is better than in isolation.
There has been some research that point that online-electronic based learning actually had a negative effect on students specially those on elementary education.AnApocalypticLime wrote: ↑Sat May 02, 2020 2:14 am I don't think it would be like that. You would go to a physical school, but take classes based on your placement test and instead of having teachers hand out specific tests to specific students and kill a ton of time. They can just let the computer do the work. the staff would just make sure kids are paying attention, help them with anything the videos failed to teach them, and just being there for emergencies. One of the major flaws though is that government indoctrination could be a lot easier with this. not saying that will happen, but all governments of all nations are very uncertain and It could happen.