Online courses vs. classroom courses, which is best for you?

Post Reply New Topic

I have the chance to take this course that is offered online and is also offered as a regular class in the classroom.. I'm wondering if any of you have had an online course and how it compares to a classroom where you can ask the teacher anything you need to in person? How did the online class go? Did you find that because of your autistic spectrum disorder that it was more difficult to understand the instructions without clarification from an instructor nearby?

Thanks!

Felinity

Online courses are the perfect place for an Aspie. I dread ever having to set foot in a real classroom ever again.

With online courses, you can always email or instant message the instructor for clarification. I took some online courses last year and I usually have problems comprehending written instructions but the teachers were very helpful and explained the assignments in different ways so I could understand. Not to mention online classes free up a lot of time and there's no social anxiety issues or environmental distractions to worry about. The classes went great and I got better scores in the online classes than I did the normal classroom based courses. I'd definitely recommend online courses.

I can't attend classes (people bad in person), so it's online for me.

no one in my industry really pays for classes anymore, so it's online or stay stoopid... A shame, because sometimes I interpret a question differently. It winds up being 'we don't want the wrong answer, the right answer, or even a different right answer, we want our answer...

Online, as a method, has worked well for me; now if I can just get the homework done.

You know, for as f-ing wealthy as my public school district is, you'd think they could invest in new learning technologies OUTSIDE the classroom.

I would pay a million dollars to go to school online.

Each has its own pros and cons for me.

I'm in my first online class this year and it's going pretty well; the only problem that I have is the short attention span I have when I have an internet connection right in front of me.

I find calculus to be interesting, but occasionally I get stuck on a problem and want to flip my screen over to Yahoo answers and then find myself answering a bunch of totally unrelated questions when I should be doing math.

In addition, I have a friend who sits next to me during the study hall where I do the coursework, and he is always interested in talking about everything BUT math, including his own physics course.

In a classroom, it's easier to stay on the subject at hand, but also much easier to get bored/distracted by environmental factors. I seem to pay attention until the teacher goes off on random tangent to tell a story, and then my mind just starts to wander and I start outlining objects in the room with my mind and daydreaming. Sometimes I find that I don't remember anything that was discussed and have to learn it all on my own before the exam.

Although this wasn't a problem before I started taking college courses, I also have an issue with high pitched noises, such as the sounds that come from TV's that are not turned to a channel and from florescent lights. I wholly wish there were an option to take that psychology class online instead of sitting through Anxiety Hell for 3 hours every week.

~S_O_S

I am finishing up a 27 credit hour gifted endorsement that will be added to my teaching license. I am taking it online. It is wonderful. It's the only way I would ever want to take a class again on the university level. I think most of these courses use Blackboard. These online courses usually allow interaction with your teacher. They also use a lot of message/discussion boards. I highly recommend these for us Aspies.

I prefer online because...

You don't have to get ready for class (hair, makeup, pick the outfit)
You don't have to actually go to class (weather, driving, be on time, etc.)
Unless the class has a required chat, it's pretty flexible about the time you read everything (or actually go to class so to speak)
I stink at lecture based tests, so that's less likely to happen online
You can turn your homework in early (as they usually are more up front on the syllabus online, and it is usually set up to turn your homework in whenever you want, even the last week worth of homework in the first week, and the teacher gets to it when he/she feels like it whereas classroom, if the teacher accepted the paper early, he/she might even lose it before grading it)
I'm less apt to argue with teachers, so my grade is actually based on performance
You don't have to deal with all the students (classroom equals stares and chit chat that online does not have) although I have managed to anger some students even online, but one was a narcissistic male, and I always tick them off.
You can't get distracted by a cute member of the opposite sex

Downsides...
You don't actually see your teacher to know if you are talking to the teacher or an aid. One class I took I swore the teacher didn't do anything with it because she had a PhD and was a published author, but her site's text was unorganized, didn't give enough information, and very poorly written, and she also seemed to have an attitude problem when I'd ask about the assignments trying to find what she wanted, and it was like she didn't know what she wanted in her own assignments, so it only makes sense for a person who teaches online and classroom while running a clinic while publishing a book to not have time for some of her teaching work and have an aid do it for her without telling people he/she was an aid.

If your internet goes down, you will be hitting up a library or something to get online because it's required (but if you have a laptop or i touch, many places like Wendy's often have Wifi).

If you take accounting classes at all, you will probably have to have excel, and other classes may require expensive programs for assignments

If the internet connection is slow, I always got frustrated by it

In one class, I met this girl (and I'm a girl) who was really cool and she and I were almost friends like, but I haven't talked to her since class because it was an internet type friendship which are generally a lot more short lived than face to face.

Something funny on it....
One class I took, I argued with this girl a lot, well, she argued with me a lot as I tried to not argue with people at all. Either way, she was just a troll as people would use here. I never knew what she looked like or anything, but you know you kinda imagine something when you are talking to people online when it's that heated like it got between us. Anyway, I had her in a group for a project, and all their emails are still saved in my yahoo address book. I just never realized it was still there to delete them. So then my friend here at home joined reunion.com and asked me to join it, so I did. It goes through every email in your address book, and anyone in the book who is already a member becomes a friend on your profile. That girl I always argued with had a profile and it had her picture. It was kinda weird, but she looked a lot like I imagined.

Sometimes I don' see the point of attending classes on campus. I learn best by doing things on my own at my own pace. If it is a class the requires classroom discussion, they have computer programs so that we could all meet online and be actively participating in discussion.

Last semester I took three online classes. English 101, Economics 200, and Psychology 101.

Psychology 101 wasn't exactly an online class, but it was a telecourse. A telecourse is a class in which you watch lectures on a DVD, study the book and study guide, and show up on campus once per month to take an exam on the chapters you've studied. Each exam covered four chapters in the book/study guide. There was no comprehensive final exam, just four exams on the text. I did very well in this course, receiving an A for the semester. For me at least, this is the best approach to learning in college.

Economics 200 was an online class. You would study the text, take online quizzes (which you can take as many times as you please), and then there were two major exams for the semester--a midterm and final exam. You were allowed to use your book during both exams, which made things a hell of a lot easier than trying to memorize everything for 10+ chapters of text. The first exam covered chapters 1-10, while the second exam covered chapters 11-23. I did quite well in this course too, receiving a B for the semester.

Online classes and telecourses are the best approach to learning for me. I don't have the burden of having to show up on campus everyday, I can work at my own pace, and I don't have to sit in a classroom and listen to boring lectures everyday. Having to sit in a classroom and listen to lectures really brings out my autistic traits--I stim like crazy, rocking back and forth, moving my legs, and rubbing the side of my index finger against my lips. I am also very distracted in class and prefer to learn alone.

Online classes are good if you have other responsibilities that would get in the way of attending classes. The main problem with them is that if you're the type to procrastinate, you'll likely fail. Actually attending classes kind of forces you to be at least semi- on top of things. When it's online, it's easier to say "Well, I don't feel like working on class work today." Before you know it, you're two weeks behind. That, and online universities aren't held in as high esteem as traditional universities.