Most of you might be in a dilemma while having to make a choice between online high school courses and traditional high school courses. If a traditional high school environment seems to not work for you, it might be easy to make this crucial choice though! At the time of choosing between online and traditional education, you need to consider a bunch of factors like learning styles, the technology required, settings, tuition, pacing, etc.
Here are some common differences between online courses and traditional high school classes:
Learning style and methods of communication
In general, online learning calls for independent learning. In order to succeed in an online high school course, online students are required to be self-directed. They need to have a personalized schedule to do the learning in a systematic manner.
Now, online high schools impart education in various formats to facilitate every type of learner. If you are a visual learner, you can go for visual content to gain knowledge and learn. If you are an auditory learner, you can learn through recorded audio lectures.
Now, it is a huge misconception that online high school courses are isolating. Most of the present-day accredited online high schools make sure to adopt an active learning environment. This learning environment incorporates various activities to help children learn through collaborative projects. These lead to effective peer-to-peer communication as well as student-instructor communication. Thus, students who learn well in a team perform well in these collaborative activities.
Some of the communication options in online courses are inclusive of email, message boards, instant messaging, video conferencing, chat rooms, etc.
However, most of the traditional courses cater to students with collaborative learning styles. These are most beneficial to auditory plus kinesthetic learners. In a similar manner, traditional learning environments provide opportunities for direct interaction inside as well as outside the classroom.
Setting of classroom
In a conventional school course, students are required to attend physical classes at a fixed time. Most of the students attend lecture-discussion sessions, study groups with peers where these groups are independent, etc. The instruction is often teacher-led. Highly qualified instructors provide lectures on his/her subjective areas. There are certain online courses that follow the same model. Most of the synchronous online class sessions are question-and-answer sessions that take place in instructor office hours. However, most of the online courses tend to enable high school students to avail flexibility. Students can choose the appropriate time and place to learn. This provides a lot of convenience to them. Usually, the style of instruction in online high school programs is user-led. On the basis of the online high school course, students might experience different levels of control over the pace of learning.
Technological issues
In order to perform well in online high school courses, students need to have basic computer knowledge. In a similar manner, teachers need to understand various ways to incorporate these resources into lessons. Teachers need to provide quality instruction as to how students can make use of these resources. Most of the online high school course use media such as pages, webinars, webcasts, search engines, social media and software programs.
When a student is taking traditional high school classes, he/she still tends to make use of various basic technology skills for using programs for document creation, conducting Internet-based research, and making use of various technology resources. There are a bunch of similarities as well as differences between online and face-to-face academic programs. The choice between an online high school and a traditional high school can be made on the basis of various personal preferences plus learning styles.
Tuition
There are certain schools that do charge online students the same price as traditional school students. Still, there are many that have different tuition plus fees for their distance learning programs. Most of the times, schools tend to structure their tuition on the basis of credits or charge a flat fee. Here, the fee is inclusive of every requisite expense for the semester. There are certain schools that drop some fees that are not applicable to online students or additional fees that assist them in maintaining the technological infrastructure of the online school.
Pacing
When it comes to a conventional classroom setting, students need to follow their very own learning pace. They cannot choose their own learning pace. They need to stick to a generalized learning pace just like the others! When it comes to online high school courses, there are no location constraints. Thus, most online courses tend to offer more flexibility. Most online schools provide you with the ability to follow a self-generated pace. While following a comfortable learning pace, students tend to learn more effectively and retain the study material on their own time. Also, they are able to use various useful resources that are provided by online high school. Even when an online high school student has a busy or unconventional lifestyle, he/she is able to juggle his/her life schedules with his/her course preparation.
When it comes to flexible online schooling options, online students finish their degrees quicker as compared to their conventional school counterparts.
Feedback
This is one other major difference between a traditional high school and an online high school. When it comes to online high school courses, most of the instructors offer a greater level of feedback on various assignments, activity performances, and papers. In a traditional course, the professor might provide a few comments. Also, they tend to offer the entire class with generic feedback. In an online high school environment, teachers are able to provide prompt and genuine feedback to each and every student. Thus, one-on-one attention is a major highlight in this flexible online learning environment.
In an online high school, the feedback can be in the form of an extensive written critique, a video clip, etc. The level of feedback for conventional and online courses is somewhat similar.
In order to choose between an online high school and a traditional high school, you would have to factor in all of these points first.
