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Dabin Lee / 201521618


June 15, 2016
Essay 3
Prof. Vincent Gilhooley
Is online learning as good as face-to-face learning?
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (Adams 1). It
is a well-known saying which is about teachers. Like this, teachers have a significant effect
on students. Needleless to say, education is also important. Therefore, the teachers role and
teaching methods are really important. As scientific techniques have been developed,
students studying methods have changed. Depending on these changes, students can study by
utilising the internet. Studying with the internet means that student studies using the internet,
downloading and printing textbooks by themselves, watching video lectures, and asking
questions in internet message boards. All these things are a kind of online learning. In the
past, most of the studying methods are face-to-face learning, but online learning is also main
one nowadays. However, online learning is not as good as face-to-face learning because of
some aspects.
First, students can do other things, while taking online learning. When students are
taking online lecture, there is no supervision, so it is hard for the teacher to take care of
participation and attitudes of students like in-class education when he conducts online class.
Teachers find it hard to control many environmental factors for online lectures since students
might be able to do other things or be absent while the lecture is played (Lee 8). As students
are searching the internet, playing games, and doing something else, nobody controls their
behavior. When students use devices that is possible to do online learning, they can do other
things easily. As a result, they cannot fully concentrate on the lecture. Likewise, selfmanagement comes hard for normal people, they have to do their best and have strong will to

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do online learning.
Second, online learning requires internet using skills and expensive devices. They
need to have internet using skills so as to take online lecture. Before taking online lecture,
they must download a few programs for video playing. If video playing programs do not run
or an error occurs, they have to take action to make programs run immediately. However, it is
hard to take internet lecture if they do not have the skill. In addition, they need to get some
expensive devices to take online lectures. Laptop or printer that help student to prepare class
materials by themselves are essential devices, but these are so expensive actually. The
Average price of a laptop on the online market is about nine hundred dollars (Ryu 1). It is
very costly to students who cannot afford it financially. Moreover, private lecture or other
ones ask for additional tuition fee and financial burdens raise naturally. For these reasons,
students having poor internet using skill or financial difficulty cannot take online lecture
easily.
However, some people think that students can have a convenient interaction with
teachers in many ways by online learning. There are positive aspects of online learning. It is
easier to interact each other than face-to-face learning. Patients or handicapped people cannot
go to educational institutions easily, so online learning have simpler system for all of them.
For example, contents developers developed the content that is made by integrating three
dimensions technology into online education to help handicapped people (Kim 4-5). Man is a
social animal, though, they are destined to make direct connection in every environment. In
environment of education, direct interaction and continuous feedback is important to student
as well. There are five fundamental principle of teachers feedback and one of them is
continuity. Continuity is that written feedback should constantly react according to the
change of students level and step (Lee 149). Students depend on the internet message board

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to post questions. When teacher notice the question, only then does he answer the question. If
student has another question about the answer, he will ask another question and teacher may
notice it later. It repeats and takes a long time. On the other hand, on face-to-face learning,
students can have an immediate interaction on the spot. Online learning does not have a same
thing, so they cannot get quick feedback and have direct interaction from teachers.
Although online learning is more convenient method than face-to-face learning, there
are some flaws definitely. Student doing online learning has to endure these things to do it.
These days, many students are taking online learning method because of convenience and it
is sad that real connection between teacher and student has disappeared. As the number of
online learning programs are increasing and size of private online lecture market are
evolving, more and more students can have a chance of using online learning freely and fairly
when these inconvenient things are corrected.

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Works cited
"Henry Adams Quote." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 12 June 2016. BrainyQuote.com.
Lee, Juhyun. On Video Lecture, the Verification Technique of Students Attending Degree.
Thesis. Ehwa Womans University, 2007. Web. 12 June 2016. Riss.kr.
Ryu, Jaeyong. "Laptop, the More Expensive, the Better Sales." Acrofan News. Jaeyong Ryu,
15 Feb. 2016. Web. 11 June 2016. Legacy.acrofan.com.
Kim, Hadong. An Online Speech Reading Learning System for Auditorily Handicapped
Person.
Thesis. Chonbuk National University, 2010. Web. 11 June 2016. Riss.kr.
Lee, Eunja. Principles and Methods of Teachers' Written Feedback Writing study 9
(2009): 123-152. Web. Scholar.dkyobobook.co.kr.

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