Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Online Learning Vs Class Room Training In IT

By Donna Willis


With the availability of the Internet along with the increasing availability of elearning content, people frequently wonder whether online learning is developing into a much better substitute for traditional classroom teaching in the area of IT. In this short article, you'll discover which of these learning techniques offers the most benefit to the modern student.

Distinction

Before going deeper into the showdown, it's most appropriate to differentiate between elearning and classroom learning. First of all, online education or more popularly known as elearning, refers to any kind of learning process that makes use of electronic media. This kind of media generally refers to the Internet, though it can also encompass the use of stored education resources in the form of instructional videos, electronic books, and even graphics, so long as it is computer-based or digital-based.

Classroom learning or training is undoubtedly known to almost everyone. In contrast to on-line training courses, it takes the employment of instructors, classrooms, training laboratories, etcetera. Typically, you have to join a given training course and adhere to the rules of the school in this type of setting. On top of that, the student is required to pay for tuition and various school fees before he or she can start going to the class room.

Effectiveness

Schools nowadays regularly lack properly trained instructors who can truly instruct students on a variety of IT topics, including programming, networking, web development, and so forth. The content of each class usually varies depending on the teacher and the program provided by the school. Subsequently, this kind of setting is frequently lacking in several important aspects of IT education. On the other hand, each student can easily work together with the instructor and the other trainees anytime during classes. This makes the class room more suited to the social desires of learners.

Online IT training, on the flip side, provides a stronger foundation for the students since the content of the lessons usually is produced by genuine experts in various fields of IT. The content found in e-learning is also extremely consistent and pretty-much up-to-date. Even so, e-learning can be isolating for the learner. Even so, there are online alternatives to the social isolation and these include the use of social technologies, online forums, interactive video, chat, and so forth.

Price

On the subject of classroom learning, there are various things that students need to pay for. For starters, they must pay their instructors (as part of the tuition), college fees, textbooks, uniforms, daily travel to the university, perhaps a place to live, etcetera. If you add together the money necessary for attending a conventional classroom, the expenses can really add up.

In e-learning, you can use re-usable course content again and again. If you forgot an important element of a certain lesson, you can just review it again. Online training does not require you to ride a bus or drive a car on a daily basis. You don't need to invest in textbooks or uniforms. In fact, you can put on your pj's and still receive the training you need. All you have to pay for are the e-learning materials, your pc, and access to the internet. You may literally spend 1000s of dollars in the usual classroom setting, but you certainly save thousands when you decide on online IT courses instead.

Motivation

In a typical classroom setting, all students are believed to be equal. The learning pace in the classroom relies upon the entire group rather than on one person. Everything has to be established through the class. The choices made by the group ought to be adhered to, even when you, as part of the group, do not prefer the choices made. The entire education discipline has to be dependent on the group as well.

In an elearning environment, you set the pace for studying. There is no need to advance to a more advanced lesson until you have mastered the prior lessons and the choice of topics to study is always your own. On the other hand, you need to set the learning discipline by yourself, which may be challenging, given that there are several temptations which may distract you from learning.

Summary

Online education or e-learning obviously has better advantages over classroom education. E-learning is cost-efficient, flexible, and very dependent on the learner and his or her commitment to study. Even though the student may usually have to learn in isolation, e-learning does have more pros that outnumber the cons profoundly.




About the Author:



No comments: