10 Big Mistakes Online Students Make

Touches on mattbrent's thread re why students take online classes w/o appropriate skills/equipment.


What Are Your Tips for Online Learning?: 10 Big Mistakes Online Students Make - US News & World Report

 

People think it will be easy, but its not, you have to work at it harder than if you were in class. I have said this for a while now, but employers would be absolute fools to discriminate against someone with a online degree. Reason being, the student had to be motivated everyday, every week, they had to push themselves because there were no classes to attend, there wasn't a professor to stand over them. The online student had to all this on their own, motivating themselves. There's something to be said for that. I know a few times I wanted to quit my Electronics technician program, but I pushed on, and finished. In the first semester now of a highly technical degree and I see geometry and trigonometry coming up and I already want to quit, but I won't, I'll push on. There's definitely something to be said for that.

 

I've taken my share of both butt-in-seat classes and online classes and the online classes are almost always much more difficult than those taught in person. I think the reason for this is the instructors or course designers for the online classes feel like they have to make them more difficult to somehow make up for the common perception that online classes are somehow easier.

One of the easiest instructors I ever had was a guy (with a PhD, no less) who taught various humanities courses at a local college I attended in person (many years ago). His lectures consisted of shooting the bull about local politics and other things that were totally unrelated to the subject we were studying. All of his exams were multiple choice...but it gets better. The week before he would give an exam, he would hand out all of the questions and answers that were going to be on the exam. All a person had to do was memorize the answers. That's it. And yes, I made sure I took as many classes as I could under this guy. Didn't learn a darned thing in his classes, either.

It's ironic, I think, that there are many people who still think that in-person classes are better, regardless of quality of the instructor or rigors of the class.

 

I think that the "staying in a bubble" mistake is bigger than many people might guess. Feeling alone in a difficult process makes it far worse. Sometimes having your feeling validated (Isn't this Prof an asshole?) or just bouncing ideas off someone else can make a huge difference in the way you feel aas you move through your program.

 

I second that. The butt-in-seat classes I've taken were definitely easier than many of those I have taken online. That said, in fairness, I will also admit to taking a number of very easy online courses. I think it comes down to the instructor, the school, and the course. Grouping all butt-in-seat courses into the same category would be just as wrong as grouping all online courses together. I've never taken an easy class from Bellevue, but some have been on the easier side while others have been quite challenging. I took a number of Penn Foster courses years ago. Art and Math for Business were extremely easy. Algebra and English were ball busters. In fact, Penn Foster English remains the only course to date that I have ever struggled with, and I aced the CLEP English with Essay and CLEP Analyzing and Interpreting Literature exams. Briercrest College remains the toughest school I have attended when it comes to overall rigor and enforced writing standards.

The biggest mistake I made when I first started taking distance education courses is the belief that a self-paced format would work for me. It doesn't. I definitely need set deadlines or the time gets away from me.