This is a pretty good snippet about learning online. I, for one, am for a traditional learning method – meaning butts in seats at a brick and mortar school – but I also believe in utilizing the gifts the internet has to offer.

We just need balance and we also need some kind of regulation in place to gauge the quality of the instruction. After all, we are faced with a generation of students that aren’t getting the same level of education and are not held to the same high standards but are getting the same degrees.

Read the entire article here. I am providing some excerpts below:

Myth #1: Online courses are just online textbooks.

I’m not one of those students who can learn from a textbook. It’s a nice supplement, but I need to have demonstrations, practice, and I have to apply that knowledge with projects and teamwork.

It’s true that some online courses just provide the same materials a textbook would, but those are, more often than not, the least successful online courses on the Web. A good online course provides the complete instructional package, and is heavily committed to collaboration among students and applying knowledge to develop skills.

A complete online course goes well beyond just text and pictures; it harnesses the best that the Web has to offer. It is constantly changing, being updated, linking to new sites. It may include audio, video, or animation. Students may interact through e-mail, threaded discussion, collaborative Web spaces, chat clients, or in person, which leads us to the next myth…

Myth #2: Online courses will keep students glued to the computer.

In the traditional classroom, we’ve always encouraged students to think beyond the four walls. We utilize other resources in our school, have students investigate from home, or participate in field studies. An online course is no different—just because a course is delivered via the Internet doesn’t change the educational mandate to have kids exploring the world around them.

A good online course asks students to conduct interviews or case studies, take samples from the field, read great novels, or practice the skills they have learned. Teachers in online professional development courses might be asked to use the skill they are learning in the classroom and report their findings. An environmental science student in an online course might have to collect data from her yard. Students in a language course might be expected to meet with other students or a facilitator for speaking practice. In some cases, online courses don’t even happen entirely online. Some courses use a blended or hybrid method of instruction, where some of the learning happens online and some of the learning happens in short face-to-face sessions.

Myth #3: Online courses are easier than face to face courses.

People often worry that an online course can’t provide the same educational experience as a face-to-face course because they simply can’t see how the same wide range of activities could be delivered online. And they’re partially right: not everything that can be done in the classroom can be done online. However, the converse is also true; online activities often open up a wide range of educational experiences not available in the traditional classroom.

Instructors report that designing an online course is much more difficult and time-intensive because there’s so much less room to improvise in an online course. The entire curriculum and all of the directions have to be devised and tested for clarity before the students even begin the course. The instructor has to anticipate any problem areas and create supplemental activities in advance, because developing content is time-consuming.

Students have to work harder as well, because in addition to the learning the content of the course, they must continue to write more clearly than they may be used to doing. When the majority of the communication is written, students are consistently practicing the art and process of writing for a variety of purposes: academic, social, formal, informal.

Myth #4: Online courses are isolating and lonely

It’s hard to imagine that a course that takes place on the Web could possibly provide the same rich social and collaborative experience that the traditional classroom does. But they can. In fact, online courses may be more interactive for some students.

Luckily, we live in a time where communication is changing. Think back ten years, and you probably remember a time when you didn’t have e-mail. Your primary modes of communication over a distance were letters and the telephone. But now, you often use e-mail because it’s easily archived, quick, and doesn’t even require the other person to be present when you send it.

Communicating in the digital age is getting easier and easier, and more and more of our K-12 students are becoming proficient with instant messaging clients like AOL Instant Messenger or chat applications. Teenagers have a very active presence on the Internet, through online games, chats, and Web pages, and that participation can also be leveraged into a learning environment for synchronous or asynchronous learning.

Consider also that the classroom can be isolating and lonely. Do you remember a time when you gave the wrong answer in class? When people may have laughed or made faces, or even made comments to you later? That kind of negative reinforcement didn’t make you want to participate much the next time a class discussion rolled around. And you probably had to give that answer quickly—the classroom often doesn’t give you a lot of time to think before you have to give an answer. Or what if you had the right answer? You might have still gotten laughter or dirty looks for being an “egghead” or a “nerd.” You may have refrained from talking the next time, or “dumbed down” your answer.