Table of ContentsPhilosophicalSocialEconomicPolicyDemographicDiversityOnline education has changed the way students learn and the way teachers educate those students. Online education has made it possible for students who cannot attend a traditional class to graduate. Personally, I would not have been able to work towards my graduate degree without the ability to take online courses. However, online education has been met with backlash and some bias. The purpose of this article is to explore the question of whether or not online education is worth the time and effort of colleges, educators, and students. Article reviews will also discuss the effectiveness of online programs and whether they can replace traditional classrooms for students who cannot attend classes on campus. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Philosophical Milana, Webb, Holford, Waller, and Jarvis (2018) wanted to find a connection between adult education, lifelong learning, and online education. They proposed connectivist learning theory, which is a combination of chaos, network, complexity and self-organization. The goal of connectivist learning is to teach students how to learn, how to learn from different opinions and sources, and create their own connections between opinions and sources. Connectivist learning can be connected to adult education through three learning metaphors: knowledge acquisition, participation, and creation. Acquisition is acquiring knowledge for the purpose of sharing knowledge, participation is learning about changes in the community in order to make changes, and knowledge creation is creating new knowledge and improving old knowledge . Knowledge creation is considered the most important of the three workplace metaphors. Students must be able to learn and contribute to advancing their workplace in terms of products and production. Online education has helped students become more productive by becoming a tool to improve their understanding and view of the world. Students now have the ability to access the Internet anywhere and find information that they would not have been able to find through traditional search methods. An example of this is the Galileo system used by the university. As an online student, Galileo has managed to allow me to access journals, articles, and books from the library without ever having to leave the house. Teachers can also assign readings from online sources without having to waste money on hard copies or worry that the library won't have enough copies of a reading for their class. Technology has moved from a supporting role in education to the forefront of how students are taught today. SocialWang (2017) uses the term “distributed education” to collectively describe online learning under all its different names. “Distributed education is the delivery of postsecondary education degrees, programs and courses that are independent of time and location, and which provide online course content to remote, traveling and residential students” (Wang , 2017, p. Students began seeking a flexible learning environment with a focus on skills that will have a direct impactabout their current and future careers. To increase their skills in the job market, adult learners are returning to the classroom. However, these adult learners want courses directly linked to application in the job market. The rising generation of adult learners depends on and uses technology every day. The availability of social media, email, online document sharing, phone apps, etc. has made education more easily accessible to students no matter where they are in the world. The rise of technology will change the way students learn and the way schools recruit their students. Students can work on a group project online without having to be in the same room. Teachers can use programs like Blackboard to provide weekly lessons and answer questions during class, comparable to a traditional classroom. Classes can also be recorded and downloaded for students who have been unable to be online due to their circumstances. The success of online courses depends on both students and educators. Educators must be willing to learn how to teach an online course and put in the effort required to make the course worthwhile for students. Goodfellow and Lamy (2009) set out to prove that being physically present in a traditional classroom can be just as effective as an online classroom. An effective classroom, "enables dynamic interaction between instructors, learners, and tasks, and provides opportunities for learners to create their own understanding through interaction with others, emphasizing the importance of community, culture and context in the construction of knowledge” Goodfellow and Lamy (2009). It has been argued that without physically being in a classroom and interacting with other students, a learning culture will not develop to ensure classroom success. However, the authors counter that an online course will create a virtual learning culture. Computer communication can be as effective as a face-to-face conversation. The authors created a course to examine students in an online environment and how they communicate and interact with other members of the class. Students from all over the world participated in the online course. Students were presented with topics that they had to answer every week for twelve weeks. Students were given reading assignments, videos, and conversation starters to begin their messages. They had to post a substantial message in response to the topic and respond to at least one classmate to receive their participation grade. Topics primarily focus on individual, national and cultural identities. The first message was an introductory message asking who they were and where they were from. The educator found two consistencies in the first message: students wanted to prove that they belonged in the class and how new they were to online classes. As the posts progressed, students began to make suggestions for their culture that they wanted to apply after learning about the cultures and behaviors of their classmates. They were able to freely express their opinions and take risks in their publications. They developed trust and understanding through their posts and the responses of their peers. Students, by the end of the course, had started using the word we instead of I in their messages. They were able to form an online community in twelve weeks through messages fromdiscussion. EconomicMarlanda and English (2013) traced in detail the evolution of online education from distance learning in the form of paper correspondence. Early examples of distance learning were when teachers were able to send students guided readings and take-home tests to complete. Education has evolved from paper correspondence to the use of radio, television, audio cassettes, fax machines, etc. to online courses and degrees available today. However, the topic of cheating and lack of hands-on practice has brought online education into question. Marlanda and English (2013) also caution to use caution when selecting an online program or school. The creation of all online schools has also created diploma mills. Diploma mills issue dubious credits not recognized by other universities. Diploma mills may also issue fraudulent diplomas, which can cause unsuspecting students to face legal action for falsifying records. The text gives the example of a politician who obtained several diplomas from the same diploma mill and who was investigated for falsifying records. Online education also attempts to deliver life experiences in the form of credits. Employers have started looking for these credits and can bring someone passed over for a job. Overall, online education has caused students to choose online courses over traditional classrooms. In recent studies, online education has seen a higher enrollment growth rate than traditional courses. As more universities create online degree programs, this number will continue to increase. Politics “What sets worlds in motion is the interaction of differences, their attractions and their repulsions… By suppressing differences and particularities… progress is weakened. » Octavio Paz (Mexican poet, writer and diplomat; 1914-1998). Zaidi, Verstegen, Naqvi, Morahan, and Dornan (2016) used the perfect quote to describe today's world. Today's world is rife with cultural biases and negative stereotypes. The authors share the fear that educators and students who make such assumptions will harm their classmates. Online education relies heavily on discussions and the student's ability to write down what they have learned and their opinions effectively. However, the way a person is raised culturally can influence the way they write and their opinions. Educators and classmates of these students must be able to move beyond their assumptions to understand the opinions of those who are culturally different. After a study by the FAIMER Institute (Foundation for the Advancement of Internal Medical Education & Research) on how to improve cross-cultural education, they discovered four topics that students and educators tended to avoid in messages online discussion: politics, gender, religion. , and cultural. All four topics received responses from people with similar opinions and life experiences. However, the topics were never related to healthcare education, which also made it difficult for other students and educators to respond. The lack of response has partly contributed to cultural hegemony, that is, the domination of a culturally diverse society by a class that controls the culture of that society. Zaidi, Verstegen, Naqvi, Morahan and Dornan (2016) suggest that we must abandon the need to maintain the cultural and political freedom of messages of.