Do You Think Advantages Of Online Learning Outweigh The Disadvantages? Band 7.5 IELTS Essay Sample
Universities and colleges are now offering qualifications through distance learning from the internet rather than teachers in the classroom. Do you think the advantages of this develop outweigh the disadvantages?
Here is a band 7.5 essay on this topic. It is an edited version of an essay submitted by one of our students. If you need help with IELTS writing, you can get your IELTS writing samples corrected by me.
Band 7.5 IELTS essay sample
It is true that people are able to gain qualifications provided by universities and colleges via distance learning. Some people argue that people can benefit from this development and meet their learning needs. However, I believe that distance learning has more drawbacks than merits due to its lack of efficiency.
There is a commonly held view that distance learning can be beneficial for some people especially those in rural areas. This is because there are few universities or colleges in these areas due to the small population. If students can gain qualifications through distance learning, they can develop their skills, improving their employability. Another advantage of distance learning is that interested people can obtain knowledge in a variety of fields. For instance, if an Asian student wants to study how Western countries develop solar power, he/ she can easily enrol in the relevant course at an open university.
However, my strongly held opinion is that distance learning can certainly decrease the effectiveness of student learning. It is evident that students are likely to get distracted while doing a distance learning program as they might use their laptops to browse other websites which are not relevant to course contents. For example, it is widely known that learners cannot concentrate on online learning because they tend to get distracted by social media. In addition, learners cannot receive instant and constructive feedback from teachers, making the process of learning less efficient. If students are not able to focus on their learning, it is highly impossible for them to meet the requirements of qualifications.
In conclusion, although distance learning certainly enables students to acquire some academic qualifications, it is not an efficient way of learning and hence I think its disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
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Recently, there has been considered that tertiary education now offers certificates and qualifications via online learning rather than teachers in the classroom. I hold a belief that distance learning plays an important role for learners because of time saving, convenience and flexibility. This essay will elaborate how beneficial distance learning is for the learners.
To commence with, it is undeniable that learning with teachers in the classroom is quite helpful since they have been well-trained with skills and knowledge in academic institutions, and their duties are to impart such skills and knowledge to young generation. For instance, lecturers my incorporate their work experience into business-related subjects, such as marketing or accounting units, and tell their life stories which are likely to help students understand business subjects via real life stories. Hence, once students learned and passed such units, they would achieve the qualifications.
However, it should not be forgotten that online learning is popularly used by a number of universities and colleges all over the world because of time saving, convenience and flexibility. As an illustration, Swinburne University has presently offered many online learning language certificates or qualifications such as TESOL, TEFL or IELTS, which enable for students to pursue their teaching qualification or certificate in both convenient and flexible way. The reason for this is that students are able to choose anytime when they feel comfortable and want to learn the course on the Internet, which is not only convenient to save transportation time, but also effective for saving transport cost – since the students can enrol online course, pay money and immediately start learning without moving from one place to another. What is more, distance learning is flexible for students while learning face to face with teachers in the classroom with fixed timetable might be disadvantageous for students who work part time jobs. Online learning, for instance, is beneficial for students doing part time jobs because they can be flexible to select the study schedule without hesitation and have time to complete assignments or online tests, whereas learning with teachers has drawbacks of having a fixed timetable and a commitment to class attendance.
In conclusion, although learning with teachers is helpful to gain skills and knowledge from reality, it is more beneficial to learn online due to its time saving, convenience and its flexibility.
This seems band 6.5 to me.