In recent times, online courses have become increasingly popular. In spite of this, some individuals opine that such programs fall below traditional classroom teaching in colleges or universities in terms of relevance, and I strongly agree with them. By analyzing that it is difficult to achieve convincing proficiency in practical-based courses in distance education and the fact that regular access to internet services could be challenging in such a form of learning, my position will be validated.
First and foremost, hands-on skills are rarely honed online. To expatiate, courses like Chemistry, Physics, Nursing Science, and so on require physical presence in the laboratories and hospitals to carry out experiments and practice examinations on patients. This is done day in and day out until satisfactory proficiency is gained and the requisite certifications are handed out to graduates. While it can be argued that some adaptations can be made to e-learning to at least, replicate training students to gain similar skills, there is no gainsaying the fact that the absence of direct contact between the students and their research laboratories would render such efforts futile. Based on this, distance learning students would regularly come off worse no matter the effort they put in and will always be considered inferior to conventional education undergraduates despite the proliferation of online institutions today.
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Furthermore, the efficiency of distance education is determined by internet access. Where this facility is poor or outrightly unavailable, the validity of the training would be questionable. This means that such institutions would simply be churning out half-baked graduates, the rapidly increasing number of such institutions notwithstanding. The traditional education system does not suffer from this because it needs little to no internet access. The students would, therefore routinely receive exceptional training irrespective of where their schools are domiciled. It is hence, unsurprising that several companies today would rather recruit employees with in-person academic certificates than those that graduated from online institutions for the aforementioned reason.
In conclusion, despite gaining more popularity in recent times, I am convinced that distance educational programs will continue to face the ignominy of inferiority to face-to-face learning because of the typical hands-off approach to training and the challenges of internet access needed to ensure optimum learning.