Online Degree Zone

The Future of Learning is Now

Yahoo News recently posted a story about the demand of online courses from college students. The reputation and creditability of these courses has spread so vastly that it is perhaps more strange for a college not to offer online courses. In the past few years online courses have gained respect and creditability as a source of academic instruction. However the Yahoo article pointed out something even more interesting, the online courses are in demand from "traditional" college students.

Apparently these "traditional" college students are drawn to online courses so they too can control their schedule and learning pace. Be that as it may, these course were not intended for traditional college students and some universities find they are at a cross roads with how to handle the online course boom. On one hand they want to accommodate their students especially since they boast to their distance students that the online courses are “just as good” as the real thing. But on the other hand they don't really feel comfortable letting their traditional students skip out on their dues that all of the rest of us had to pay, such as attend early morning lectures, participate in class discussions etc.

I believe that the future we have always dreamed of is now upon us. Students want more technology because we have now entered an age where the traditional college student has been raised with and on computers. They are part of the e-mail, cell phone and text message era and perhaps feel more comfortable participating in message board discussions or dropping their professor an e-mail or even chiming in on a class blog. Listening to a lecture from a podcast is just the next logical step. As much as we humans love to dream about and invent the future it is somewhat mystifying that we are afraid of it when it is upon us. Ten years ago when I entered college as a freshman my professors did not allow online sources for research. By my senior year my professors would permit only three online sources for research, only three! Even then my classmates and I thought our professors were stuck in the dark ages. Therefore, the demand for online courses from traditional college students makes perfect sense to me. After all the future is now. It won't be long before lectures are sent through a device that projects a 3D professor. Sound like science fiction? So did a podcast ten years ago.

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