Argumentative essay: Online Learning

In this modern era, internet is so prevalent in the society that it has penetrated into every inch of human lives. Most of our daily life activities involve the uses of internet and cause a great transformation to the way of us doing things. Education is one of the aspects that undergo revolution due to internet. A new way of education is emerging, that is online learning. Online learning refers to the anticipation of internet in the teaching process to deliver information to people participated. It has gained its reputation where 80% of students think it offer course that is not available in school. (The News 2007) However, I strongly oppose online learning because it is not suitable for everyone, involving high cost and deteriorate the quality of teaching.

First, online learning is applicable to certain types of people and some people may found it ineffective. To utilized the availability of online learning, student need to have responsibility, discipline, self motivate and good time management. (The South Australian Gazette 2007) Students who lack of motivation may used to put their work aside because using internet to complete work is too convenient till didn’t like studying. Hence some students may allocate too few time. (Dominguez 2007) Other than that, less discipline students can fall behind when they skip school and learn by using internet. This make learning more arduous. (Mussared 2007)

Moreover, the quality of teaching and course may be decline through online learning. Online learning denies the value of face to face interacts between people.(Mussared 2007) There is no real people that can offer guidance and explanation and students have barriers to engross the knowledge. Furthermore, teachers have more task as they need to handle their students individually online and teaching process is slowed down which stymies the progress of learning. Besides, the course quality and the course available online are considered by people in order to embrace online learning. Lack of practical training reduces the quality of course provided. People also doubt the credibility of the online course due to plagiarism and forging of certificate. (EduCon Pty Ltd 2007)

Apart from that, high costs are incurred during the implementation process of online learning. Courses need to be redesigned and tailored to enable the uses of email to pass up assignment. Huge investment in technology ought to be funded continuously which is quite costly. (Mussared 2007) Problems also arise from the uses of internet in teaching, such as general administration of school like timetabling, communication and others become much harder. Teachers also require extra training to adapt them for executing internet in teaching. The expenses involved to solve this shortcoming surpass the saving of money on daily maintenance of infrastructure, printing and so on. (Nurit 2007)

In short, online teaching is not a good option to be implemented because it doesn’t fulfill the need of everyone, deteriorates the quality of teaching and course and incurs high cost during the development of technology and retraining of teachers. Prerequisite conditions are required before online teaching can be applied. However, the replacement of traditional method by internet as the medium for teaching will inevitably vulgarize in the society. Therefore students and teachers should upgrade themselves to survive in the robotized world of education.