In the last decade, there has been a great increase in the number and variety of online courses available to adults. This has been welcomed as a great opportunity by many students, however, other students see these courses as less effective than classroom teaching. What are the advantages and disadvantages of studying an online course?

The past 10 years have witnessed a significant rise in the quantity and choices of internet lessons for old people. Plenty of those learning see these studies as a huge chance but some view them as ineffective compared to those delivered in-class.

This

essay discusses the pros and cons of learning online namely: convenience, multi-tasking, absence of vital social relationships, and limited access to the less advantaged. Online education is convenient and provides for multi-tasking.

First

, people nowadays learn from distant places with ease, without having to worry about time, travel, and other

such

factors.

Secondly

,

this

allows the students to do several other things in their lives like working and parenting simultaneously with education.

For instance

, according to a recent survey, there was an increase of between 5 and 25 per cent in the number of women that attended college in the United States of America while nursing newly born babies. Contrary, online schooling has its disadvantages like preventing learners and teachers from developing the much needed social rapport and making access near impossible to the poor. A prominent theorist, Paul Bandura, argues that affective exchanges aid the learning and teaching process, providing for real-time feedback and group work, yet in online situations, trainees and teachers do not physically meet.

Further

still, online learning is problematic for those from poor backgrounds who may lack the required resources to support

such

an endeavour. In my own experience teaching university students during the Covid-19 lockdown in Hong Kong, only half of the students would attend classes, while the absentees cited erratic internet connection and scarce resources for data. In summary, it is justifiable to see an increase in online courses given the convenience and multi-tasking abilities internet education permits to its users, but the cons,

such

as the absence of vital social relationships and limited access for the underprivileged cannot be overlooked.