Telelearning

BY IN ITGS - Social Ethical Issues Comments Off on Telelearning

Advantages:

* As long as a person has Internet access, they have the opportunity to get an education.
* No set time for classes (except for scheduled interactive classes)
* Work around your personal schedule
* No commute to school

Disadvantages:
* No face-to-face interaction between students and teachers
* Social aspect of school is depleted
* Needs more self-motivation to stay on task, since there are no teachers
* Cost of maintaining hardware (computer, printer, etc.)
* Cost of Internet service
* Need for increased network bandwidth (Video/Graphic applications require more bandwidth than normal text applications)

Social/Ethical Issues

Equality of Access
Online learning has opened up education to everyone who has Internet access. Not only can students in the United States opted out of public schools to take online lessons, but as long as a person has Internet access, they have the opportunity to take the online lessons and get an education.

Authenticity
How do you know that the work submitted online is authentic? Instructors do not have the capabilities to check if the work submitted to them is the work of their students. Since the majority of the class is online, who know if the student’s parents have been the ones doing all their work?

Policies and Standards
Although basically everything is online, the online institutions should impose policies and standards for their students so that they do not take advantage of the “freedom” from the online classes. The online institutions need policies and standards to ensure that their curriculum is being followed, whether or not a student takes an hour-long break or not. Even though the lessons are online, the students should not be able to skip a lesson just because they wanted to. Rules and regulations should still be implemented.




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