Are online degrees getting the respect they deserve?

Originally posted by jtaee1920
I agree that telecommuting is very similar to online learning. It is certainly growing but is limited in scope. Both lend themselves well to hard skill jobs such as IT, accounting, etc. I think it's a stretch to call those that telecommute a "new breed of employee". I sincerely doubt more than 5% or 10% of jobs will be truly telecommuting jobs within our lifetimes.

I would tend to disagree with 5-10%. I recall Bill Gates saying something to the effect that one would never need more than 640K of memory for their computer. I also had a supervisor in 1986 tell me that I would never see a computer on everyones desk in my lifetime.


I respectfully disagree that online learning takes any more discipline than classroom learning. Classroom learning may take more discipline. With classroom learning, a student must be at a certain place at a certain time. This is not required with most DL programs. Assignments are due each week with either delivery method and it is just as easy to procrastinate homework/reading with either program.

As a child and young man my parents, teachers, and drill instructors also demanded that I be at a certain place at a certain time and enforced it with penalities for failure to comply. I feel that classrooms are for those that need to develop discipline, not for those that already have it.

I'm sorry you had a negative classroom experience. Your experiences, while probably not unique, certainly are not the rule. In my experience, Regis University MBA students are highly interactive in class and outside class. In many classes, each student prepares a lesson plan and leads a class (under the supervision of the prof). This is great experience for those with aspirations of getting a faculty gig. In marketing classes presentations are made and proposals defended. These are all things that are difficult to translate in the online world. Anything that can be done online can be done in person. E-mail addresses exchanged, calls made to the prof, etc.

I didn't have a negative experience, it was based on 10 years of evening classes at four different schools (SUNY Farmingdale, Queensborough CC, Hofstra, and Fairleigh Dickinson). I had to transfer due to changing jobs. My opinion is based on experiences over this ten year period.

This thread is a perfect example of one of the downsides to DL. If all of us were in the same room, this discussion (up to this point) would have taken an hour. Because of the nature of message boards (which Regis uses), this discussion has now taken several days.

I also disagree that one hour would be enough. How often would your instructor allow a full session for such a discussion. Would the discussion be extended to multiple sesions?

 

My comment that this conversation could take one hour was not to say this conversation would or should take place in a classroom. My point was...while message boards may be effective, they are most certainly inefficient.

 

In a B & M environment? Hardly. Though I'm tempted to say that this thread has taken multiple branches, a few pointless squabbles, and veered off target from the original subject, if nothing else it illustrates one of the strengths of DL. A subject is examined until it no longer has any value added, the instructor (moderator in this case) kills it, or it is eventually resolved.

Dave

 

I guess it depends on your opinion of efficiency. If you mean timely ,then you are right message boards are not timely. If you talk about quality and dialogue,I find for the most part the message board allows dialogue that may not be available if we were in a conference room and to be of better quality often. This can be because of behavioural conditions(e.g. a loud mouth taking too much time or shyness). This is also possible because a larger array of people are able to make it to the board that may not be able to make your conference. So I'd say it may not be the most time efficient conversation but the dialogue is far superior. So it depends on what and how you measure efficiency.

 

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