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[quote=Anonymous]I'm an instructional designer, so I have my biases. But it seems to me that there really are two issues: 1. For Profit schools vs. Non Profit schools and 2. In Person vs Online classes.

On the first issue, Non Profit schools (traditional public or private colleges) have a very clear mission to their students and to education. For Profit schools (which have names that might sound traditional, like University of Phoenix) might have that mission as well, but they also have to make a profit. Quality education takes a back seat to profit at many of these institutions. There have been some scandals about student loans at these schools.

Many of the For Profit schools run their courses online, so online classes have gotten a bad rep in the general population. However just about every public university and many private universities offer some classes online. And in many of these cases, the education is pretty much the same between the online and in person class. Think about a 200 student Psych 101 lecture course. Is there really any difference between seeing the lecture on a video or seeing it from the back of a crowded room?

Online classes have been really important in some countries where access to education is very limited. Botswana, for example, has no medical school in the entire country. All doctors must be trained outside the country. So the Harvard AIDS Institute set up online classes in HIV education for the medical profession in that country. So that's a great use of online classes.

I'd also expect that adults in the US looking for professional development would also be a good for online classes because they tend to be more self directed and understand how they learn, what they want/need to learn, etc. For the traditional college student, 18-22, who is still figuring out what they want to learn and how they learn, I'd guess that online classes might not be as effective for them.

Anyhoo, this is probably too long winded a response, but oh well. The kids are napping and I don't feel like doing laundry. [/quote]

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