Online education has gained too much popularity in some recent years. This is the mod of education in which there is no need to attend classes and lectures regularly. Some of those degrees are best for those which have full time job and can not attend classes. Not only that they are cheap in cost but equal to the formal education.

Heard about school of the air?
It turned out well found kids.
On line has taken much of that need away.
I think the brilliance of on line learning is there to be seen.

shaggtz seems you did not attract much attention.
Well such is the nature of on line life.
But it was a thread worth looking at.
Yesterday was the 20th birthday of the INTERNET.
Just think, about those first PCs.
Mine came after a 486 but those first ones,
We should be stunned by the massive change the net made to us all.
And wounder what this fast change bringing thing will do in 20 more years.

Yes, i support online education. It gives much greater opportunity and should reduce education costs (per student).

I did my masters by a combination of distance and online education. It was an interesting experience, and it highlighted just how swiftly the tertiary education sector had changed since I undertook my undergraduate studies only a few years earlier. It appears that I went to uni in the dying days of the microfiche, the paper copies of journals, the hard copy books, the in-person lectures and tutorials, the face-to-face discussions ... the dying days of an old way of education.

I have to admit that I found it disconcerting at first. I had enjoyed the experience of being an on-campus uni student, even if I had to support myself with night jobs that prevented me from fully embracing the social side of things. I think I discovered as much about life from waiting out the hours between lectures in the refectories with mature-aged classmates as I did from the lectures themselves. Ideas were born and died, dreams were built and squashed ... they were good times.

Cut to postgraduate studies off-campus, and lectures took the form of CDs mailed to me (in the earlier days) and podcasts automatically downloaded towards the end. Tutorials were online forums much like this one, though perhaps a little more guided by specific questions. It seemed more sterile, which was a little disappointing at first.

That's reality, however. I was successful in my studies and managed to fit them in around full-time work rather than part-time work. I played lectures in the car on the way to work, on my iPod as I went for an evening bike ride ... it was more efficient, if less colourful. There is a loss when the face-to-face interaction is taken away, but it certainly makes it more accessible to more people.

shaggyz wrote 30 April 2013 5:00:30 PM:

>Online education has gained too much popularity ...

On-line education gets discussed, but I expect it would make up only a small proportion of tertiary education in Australia.

More popular is "blended mode" and I expect that higher education will move to a blend with 25% in the classroom and 75% online.

Students may still have to take part in an on-line live forum at a particular time ("synchronous" e-learning). The asynchronous approach, where students choose their own study time, is effective provided the students also have deadlines to meet.

I talked about this at the 7th International Conference on Computer Science & Education in Melbourne last year: http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/green_computing_professional/

At this year's conference in Sri Lanka recently, I discussed the philosophy of putting deadlines on the students work: http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/moocs_with_books/

> Some of those degrees are best for those which have full time job and can not attend classes. ...

Trying to do a university degree and a full time job at the same time is difficult. I recently did a certificate in higher education (half by pure on-line learning and half blended). Even at one quarter a full time load, it was difficult to find the time to do the 8 to 12 hours a week a university course requires.

I have difficulty convincing some of my students that they can't just dash of a quick answer to their weekly questions a few minutes before the deadline. But giving students zero for poor, or late, work sends a powerful message.

> Not only that they are cheap in cost but equal to the formal education.

The on-line courses I teach are not cheap. The Australian National University charges the same price for the on-line courses I run as for classroom courses. These courses have to meet the same standards.

There are now some free open courses (so called "MOOCs"), of which I am little skeptical. I gave a talk on these recently in Singapore and will be repeating it in Canberra at CSIRO 8 July and Australian Computer Society 12: November: http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/moocs_with_books/#books