Looking over my old blog posts, I read conflicted opinions in most of them. I must admit that these conflicted attitudes still exist relatively openly. Education is such a highly charged social issue today. Whether it is face-to-face or online education, there will always be people who challenge both the status quo and the innovations. This is both reassuring and frustrating. Like any social issue worth discussion and action, there will very rarely be consensus.
I came into the class knowing absolutely nothing about online schooling in our country today, outside of the direct exposure to my own online classes. If someone had offered me $1000 to name one program in the country, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Now, I have a solid foundation from which I can speak without ignorance. I’ve even considered whether it would be something that I would want to try in the future (online teaching, that is…)
I think, like any school, there will always be questions about a program’s effectiveness. How is it managed? How do we know if the teachers are doing a good job? How do we measure a student’s success? A student’s social engagement? Which facet of one’s education do we emphasize for the best results? Bottom line? There are just as many questions about the effectiveness of online education as there are regarding face-to-face education across the country. I think choices and options, however, are always an advantage, and if the ultimate question is, “How do we best educate our population?”, we should be doing everything we can to entertain all possibilities or eventualities.
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