A recent submission to my elearning course.
Virtual students need to spend a great deal more time in an online learning environment then in a classroom course for many reasons. One of these is to keep up with the amount of reading and writing to discussion boards regarding class material.
“Online courses are often more time-consuming than their face-to-face counterparts, because you are expected to do so much more writing, and because it’s very difficult to succeed in an online courses as a non-participant” (Learn NC for High School, University of North Carolina, 2007).[i]
It is true that online learning environments are becoming more and more less structured as they are becoming more self-lead then instructor-lead and certainly more collaborative amongst students. However, I find this relies solely on the instructor and their teaching/facilitating methods. I have participated in online courses where I was expected to read/post to a certain number of messages each week, have certain articles read, have assignments submitted by certain dates. There was very little flexibility to the course and many students enjoy that and need that, especially when first transitioning from CBT to WBT. Other instructors have giving much more group work than weekly discussions and this has lead to more collaborative learning.
Therefore I would have to disagree with Palolff and Pratt and the concept that online classes are less structured environments. This may be come the case in the near future, but I do not believe we are at that point universally.
[i] Learn NC for High School: Is online learning right for me? Retrieved June 18, 2007 from University of North Carolina website: http://www.learnnc.org/students/9-12/support/isonlineright