China: Some people think distance-learning programmes can never be as good as courses taken in person. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Today the world is witnessing a huge revolution in education system. This is obvious where students have the option to choose to study in regular classroom or online. It is argued that, although distance learning has many advantages, it can not be as rewarding as classical school learning. This will be proven by looking at how distance learning lacks important live skills as well as hand on experience.
Firstly, online learning program does not provide students with important business skills. For example, students are not able to communicate with each other to discuss a topic or share ideas. As this example shows, the lack of physical interaction prevents this kind of skill to grow and developed, unlike traditional classroom teaching where students are free to have face to face communication with classmates discussing, arguing, sharing or exchanging ideas or methods, and that will help them on their future career live. Thus, the efficiency of normal classroom teaching is clear.
Secondly, online-learning makes students have no hand on experience. For instance, in most engineering courses students are required to carry out a lab experiment to test their understanding of the subject. As this shows, students will need to have a physical contact with lab equipment and measuring devices to get the feeling of how it works and that will do them a great favor in their professional, all this can only be happen with the traditional classroom learning, while it is extremely impossible with distance learning. Therefore, distance teaching style can never be as rewarding as classroom.
After analyzing the area of workplace hand-on experience and significant live skills. It has been proven that classroom teaching style is much better than distance learning style. It is hoped that online learning is to be a supplement to normal classroom style in the foreseeable future.