Online learning is indeed the great equalizer enabling diverse and distant populations to enrich their knowledge through online degree programs. Distance learning is affordable, student-centered and convenient for working adults and for their employers.
The evolving world of higher education is becoming even more effective and accepted by tech-savvy students and their employers. These groups value the ability to allow learning-on-demand which opens new advancement opportunities and mobility to these diverse groups, increasing their success as learners and earners in the ever changing global world.
Ease of Education for Diverse Populations
Our world of growing globalization and facility with different languages and cultures ratifies all the rationale behind distance learning theory. Professors are as diverse as their student populations. Many professors, particularly a growing number with PhDs — in the over 90 percent range at top distance learning institutions — have experienced online learning courses themselves so they know exactly what works and what does not.
Years ago, professors struggled with the technology more, and in many cases, had less time to concentrate on refining teaching techniques and pedagogy focused on online learning to provide students with more customized and personal attention. The precursors to online learning were TV courses in the ‘70s and ‘80s, where two and three hundred students just watched a professor in a sterile room lecture while academic assistants handed out printed material.
Today, the best accredited online schools have increasingly interactive web-based courses with technologies that encourage real-time professor/student interaction.
Course pedagogy is also geared toward the online environment with an eye toward accommodating underserved or diverse student populations. In the past, the student demographic was younger and probably taking a break from the workforce to concentrate on school alone. That luxury is evaporating today, and as a matter of fact, it is widely recognized that online courses are actually more effective learning tools in many circumstances. Shachar and Neumann (2010) estimated and compared the differences between the academic performance of students enrolled in distance education courses relative to those enrolled in traditional settings throughout twenty years of research covering 125 different studies. In 70 percent of the cases, students taking courses by distance education outperformed their student counterparts in the traditionally instructed courses.
