University of Phoenix COM/155 Final

Final Essay
COM 155

Final Essay
In today's society, a college degree is almost required to earn an income that will allow people to live comfortably above the national poverty level. For years the only option to obtain a degree was to go to a traditional college; where students had to sit in a classroom, listen to an instructor, take notes, and attend at specific times during the day. In 1976, Dr. John Sperling founded the University of Phoenix, wanting to provide an alternate means of obtaining an education for people who either: had a job without a degree and wanted to earn one, or who had a job with a degree but wanted to change their career path so they needed to get a new degree. With the advances of technology, college courses became available through one of the very first online classes in the world in 1989 by the University of Phoenix. This made earning a college degree even easier for many people. While there are advantages to getting a degree online, there are also advantages to sticking with the traditional style of education. How a person chooses to attend college is completely up to them and their decision should be made based on what their personal needs and wants are regarding scheduling concerns, classroom styles, and the resources that are available to help them through school. To make the best decision on how they obtain their higher education, potential students need to compare the advantages and disadvantages of both online and traditional education.
When comparing online education versus traditional education, the most important factor potential students need to analyze is their scheduling concerns. While there are numerous students who attend college directly out of high school, there is a substantial amount of college bound individuals who already have a full time job and family when they start. The author of this essay was like many other college students in that she had to withdraw from her classes on a physical campus because of scheduling conflicts. The demands of having to be in class at the same time, same place, multiple days a week is easy to do for someone who has no worldly responsibilities other than to be a young college student. However, for someone who works full time and has a family, adjusting an already hectic schedule so that they can attend a class on campus, is next to impossible. While going to college online gives students flexibility, it can also cause problems for students not capable of managing their time well. Traditional education would work well for those people who aren’t able to manage their time well enough to complete their online course work on time.
Another aspect of online versus traditional education that potential students need to analyze before making their decision is their preference in classroom style. Online schooling is done completely online in a forum style. To participate, students must post their answers to weekly discussion questions and their responses to other students’ answers in the online forum. Then they post their assignments in another section that will go straight to the instructor. For students who like their independence, this factor will be an invaluable asset. In contrast, traditional education will allow students to ask direct questions about their answers without having to wait for the instructor to post a response in the online forum. Some students need to have that face-to-face interaction with other students in order to grasp the concepts the instructor is trying to make. Others would just prefer to have the material in hand and go from there. Traditional education instructors dictate what information they feel is relevant to their classes by giving lectures. For students who cannot take proper notes of those lectures, the result is they tend to miss key take away points. With online schooling, the student can re-read every one of the instructor’s, who is usually on the same level as the students, messages any time they feel they have forgotten something they once read. Online students are also guaranteed to read several different answers to the discussion questions; for the other, this allowed them to think about different angles of the question that hadn’t been thought of before.
A third aspect that all potential students need to consider when evaluating online education versus traditional education is the resources that are available to them while they are taking courses. Students need to take advantage of every opportunity they can find that will help them achieve their goals, and their degrees. Most online colleges, like University of Phoenix for example, have an entire portion of their website dedicated to the life resources the students may need. They can help with anything from counseling services, to help with quitting smoking. These helpful resources are available to students 24 hours a day, seven days a week because it is mostly online and there are staff members ready and willing to help from all over the country. The downside to these resources is that the student cannot speak with someone face to face. Some people are better able to handle tough situations when they can see the emotions the other person feels when they are speaking to them. This seems to show the empathy the other person may feel for the student. With traditional education resources, students can receive one-on-one attention from their own personal advisor. This can help the student feel like they truly matter to their advisor because that advisor took time out of their busy day to sit down with them and discuss any concerns they may have. However, because the advisors are physically on campus for only a set amount of hours of the day, students may have to wait to speak with their advisor until the following day (or few days if it is a weekend or the school is on a break). For students who need immediate help, this is not an ideal situation to be in.
How a student decides to attend college can only be decided by their own investigation into which features of online or traditional education work well for them. Using the critical thinking skills they will without a doubt need in college, students need to think about their current schedule and if college can fit in exactly the way they have it now, which classroom style will allow them to most effectively learn the skills they need, and what resources will that college be able to provide to help them on their journey through school. After all advantages and disadvantages of both online and traditional education or taken into careful consideration, then a potential student should decide which style of education will work better with their lives.