Some universities offer online courses as an alternative to classes

delivered on campus. Do you think this is a positive or negative

development?

It is true that in recent years, online learning has

become a common feature of tertiary education. From
my perspective, this has both advantageous and
disadvantageous impacts on students’ learning
outcomes.

On the one hand, providing online courses at

universities can be beneficial in several ways. The first
upside is that those courses allow students to have a
flexible learning schedule because they are able to
attend lessons at a particular time and place that they
find most suitable. This is particularly convenient for
students who live far away from campus. Another one
is that students can have access to an unlimited amount
of resources on the Internet, not to mention that the
majority of which are free of charge. This can facilitate
their learning process and improve their independent
learning skills.

On the other hand, online courses are a poor

substitute for traditional classes delivered at
universities as it has its own several downsides. Firstly,
these courses do not offer learners face-to-face
interaction which is still important to their
understanding of the lessons. In other words, this type
of learning does not allow discussions between
classmates either, and without peer support, student’s
academic performance might be affected in an
undesirable way. Secondly, there are so many
distractions from the Internet while studying from an
online website, students are more likely to
procrastinate. As a result, students may tend to lose
focus during online lessons that could contribute to
lower learning results

In conclusion, for the reasons mentioned above, it is

obvious that the growing popularity of Internet-based
learning at universitiy benefits students in a number of
ways. However, its drawbacks in terms of decreased
learning outcomes should be taken into consideration