Education at curve

For better or for worse, the university education is moving into the curve.

No doubt, the technology particularly, Internet revolutionizes the way we process and search for information. It serves as a personal informant and in some ways as a private teacher. With a wealth of knowledge within our reach, many teachers are beginning to seek out the Internet as a means to streamline the classroom experience.

While the Web serves as an excellent tool to distribute the gift of knowledge, teachers should reconsider its use in the classroom before committing a portion of the curriculum to it. Online homework, tests, assignments and examinations provides many benefits to students, but its function at times can hinder rather than provide a boon.

The manual way of grading pencil-and-paper assignments, tests and terminal marks can often be a daunting task for academicians especially when grading hundreds of papers.

Online examination does provide instantaneous feedback to the students and makes grading considerably easier for the teacher, but it’s a flawed system.

Not only do online systems slap students with another steep and mandatory fee, they don’t necessarily improve the students’ performance.

Many studies in the west revealed, those who everything online exhibit only minimal difference in exam scores when compared to students who do their course work by paper and pencil.

Students may complete their tasks, but this does not necessarily indicate whether or not they have learned the material.  The teachers using LMS system for Distance Education Programs in Universities also complained Students’ attitudes toward online assignments as lukewarm one.

It’s no secret that using online systems may enable students to cheat or to search for answers in an unauthorized manner. Teachers have no way of fully verifying whether or not a student completed his or her own work through honest means. In attempt to finish work quickly, students may seek aid from other students in a way that does not enhance the learning process. Software limitations in many online systems may also frustrate hardworking students.

Typically, if online submission provides little to no benefit, not many students will wish to invest their time in the academics that does little for them in terms of academic mastery.

Online education systems can often provide a beneficial supplement to a curriculum. However teachers should look for better or more creative means of engaging students in the academic material outside of the classroom, and students should learn to immerse themselves more fully in their intellectual pursuits-especially when related to the professional degrees program. 

In short, Effort on both ends is needed in order to produce a generation of well-educated individuals.