Learning Entry Blog 10 - Distance Education

With the way the internet has grown in the world in the past several decades many aspects of our culture and lives have been changed. Many things that used to require a person to leave their house to do can now be done online. News, shopping, games,and virtually anything else you can think of can be done online. Learning is no exception. The evolution of the internet has allowed for students to be able to attend school without ever actually going to a school. This is known as distance education and while it has become very big recently it first started in 1728 with the University of London. Obviously, it has been made much easier now that we have the internet.

Distance education offers a great opportunity to people that might not be able to attend an actual institution. Many single parents who work full time jobs are now going back to school thanks to online schools like the University of Phoenix and Devry University. Most of these schools are fully accredited and their degrees carry just as much weight as regular university. There are, however, some "online schools" that are scams and will take people's money and give them a degree that is not worth anything so if you are considering attending an online school you must be careful.

The one problem with distance education is the lack of connection that regular classes have. When you have a class that you actually have to go to you not only build a connection with your teacher but you are also forced to learn. Online classes do not build that connection and require more effort on the students part to do the work. Unless you put forth the effort you will not benefit anything from an online class.

While I do think that distance education is a very useful tool I do not see any place for it in the medical field. I have taken a couple undergrad classes online and they were fine but I took them because I knew they would be easy classes. Most hard classes in undergrad are not offered online simply because they are too challenging. Medical school not only has many hard classes but the shear amount of information that you learn is too much for online classes to be able to convey efficiently.

Here is a good video detailing the guiding principles of distance education.