Friday, February 9, 2007

Online Education, is it legal?

I recently was in a class with quite a few people who did not have the ability to spell. Even I have a few typographical errors from time to time, however, I was amazed to discover that the grade these people received for the term were the same as mine. This brings up an interesting concept on who holds these online universities accountable in the grading system.
It is also quite easy to cheat by having someone else do your work online which I have often wondered if this might be happening on test. When ones message board post do not show they understand the material and then get a perfect score on each and every test. Now there are a few online Colleges' which take academic honesty and integrity very serious and I have been lucky enough to find one of those recently and have transferred, yet I still hear from some of my old friends who are continuing to get perfect scores and I must questioned the grading system in the online environment.
In a traditional campus setting, excellent grades are not as easy to achieve and maintain, writing and reading comprehension is a must, and students must demonstrate an understanding of the course material. In the online environment, instructors are encouraged to give students high scores and the students actually fill out surveys on each instructor and often a good instructor can lose their position for low scores which is often motivated by a student getting a poor score.
Before you sign up for an online course program, research diligently and do not always believe message boards that state this school is the best or college search programs which get paid to advertise the school. You can receive a quality education in the online environment but you must find a quality school which often the biggest is not the best, instead it is the one that has the most gimmick's and advertises the most.