Why Online College Courses Are Popular.

Essay Prompt: Why are online courses the most popular college classes? It is no surprise that online classes are the most popular sections of every course at CCSF as common sense tells me that the flexibility in schedule and location is attractive to many students. Of course, this common sense approach relies on my personal opinion rather than the sociological perspective. In this paper I will examine the matter from various sociological approaches, describe the part of online education in American culture, and how socialization occurs within this segment of society. If I were a working sociologist with resources for testing, I would employ the scientific method in explaining this phenomenon. I would do this by taking the data of how many students enrolled and waitlisted for online sections versus in-person sections and use it to formulate a theory about why this is the case. Then, I would test my hypothesis and apply it to future course structures. Based on the limited data I currently have about the huge demand for free online courses offered at www.coursera.org and www.khanacademy.org and the individuals that I know personally who have enrolled in these courses, I think that people are motivated to increase their knowledge. Our reasons for this motivation is also a very interesting topic to study. Witt’s textbook took us through some of the main sociological perspectives, namely, the functionalist, conflict and interactionist perspectives. A functionalist such as Émile Durkheim, would pose the explanation that society finds solutions to its problems organically, thus these online courses must serve some need and will continue to grow to meet this demand until we’ve reached an equilibrium of social order. A sociologist who holds a conflict perspective such as Karl Marx, instead, would explain this by first examining where resources are held and how existing institutions serve to maintain power for these holders of the resources. In this example, we