After the advent of the Internet, thousands of websites have started online courses on a wide range of subjects that cover not only the educational field but every aspect of human activity. You could now have online lessons as to how you should operate your microwave oven and cook great recipes. However, most online courses still mainly focus on the realm of education. There are advantages and disadvantages in taking online classes. Hence, you should weigh the pros and cons of online lessons before deciding whether they are suitable to you or whether you should attend regular courses.
Benefits of Online Classes
There are several benefits to online classes and learning. The major advantages are
• Classes through the Internet offer high flexibility to the learners in terms of time of learning. They are particularly suitable to full-time or part-time workers, who can devote their free time in attending to these courses and learn their subjects without putting extra effort or straining themselves.
• Online courses provide easy access to faculty members and asking questions online to clear doubts, solve problems, or get answers to difficult questions become that much easy.
• It is easy to select from a wide range of subjects available from various colleges, universities or other institutions, which interest the students or the learners.
• Most of the online courses provide accelerated completion of courses, so that you could finish the courses earlier than the normal course schedules and earn extra credits faster.
• For persons planning to enhance their career through advanced knowledge, online lessons on the subjects related to their field of work helps them in getting acknowledgement from the management and even early promotions.
• Finding the exact courses that you wish to take up is quite easy with a search in Google providing you hundreds of colleges and universities or other specialty institutions offering courses that are suitable to you.
Disadvantages of Online Classes
In spite of the above advantages, there are a few disadvantages to online courses, such as
• You might not be able to reach the specific faculty member when you are online and clear your doubts due to time differences across the globe but most courses usually have alternate arrangements for such eventualities.
• Since you are on your own in learning, the greatest danger is lethargy and procrastination in meeting deadlines. You would tend to postpone the learning and only a strong motivation could keep you on course in your online learning process.
• Online courses could be costlier than regular courses.
Online tutoring and free online tutorials offer great benefits to learners due to flexible learning timings, interacting easily with faculty, and selecting from a wide range of courses. However, procrastination and lack of supervision are the main disadvantages.
