Free Essay On Learning Through Online Writing Classes

The internet has improved communication throughout the world bringing everyone closer together. In other words, the whole world feels like a village because of the connection. This means that we can communicate with people in different continents through the internet. This has been made possible by programs such as facebook, Skype and even twitter. The internet has rooted itself deep within our culture that it pushes our lives. The internet has impacted the everyday patterns of our lives both positively and negatively. This comes to include education, which embodies the communication aspect of the internet to provide educational materials to people all over the globe (Rudes, Portillo, Sloas, & Hutzell, 2014). Online education is proliferating the contemporary world and in some cases people have preferred it over the traditional education approach with a teacher in a classroom. This paper seeks to critically analyze the efficacy of online writing classes.
Kiefer provides a vivid image of the online writing classes in the sense that most of the online students that she has handled previously have lost more than they were to gain. First and foremost, the classroom support software that is available to the information providers (teachers) is not meant for teaching online classes like the PowerPoint. In addition, the time aspect is a big hindrance to the students who believe that the online courses should be for part-time. So the students only work on weekends claiming that is the only time they have time. Furthermore, the students wish to effectively complete the assignments for the online courses in order to go back to their usual lives since most of them are majorly in family life. With this regard, Kiefer declares that the students end up losing more than they were to gain.
On the other hand, students themselves undermine their learning and the fact is that they lose so much. Most of those who partake in online learning are mostly employed with a stable family life. With this regard, most of them seek to further their reading and get an improvement in their lives or an increment in their salaries. As a result, they do not have time to focus on online learning due to their divided attention. This implies that they seek to finish learning in order to return to their normal lives. In addition, some students who might not have families are faced with the plight of school arrangements and so they do not have time for the online courses. As a matter of fact, students end up working on weekends in a bid to catch up with their courses. Due to this lack of commitment and time, the online courses only proof to be disruptive rather than constructive (Van Manen,& Adams, 2009).
In simple terms, I agree with Kiefer’s view in the matter regarding these online courses considering that many of our learning institutions have invested lots of dime on e-learning courses. Many students are losing so much more than they are to gain implying the inefficacy of online courses, especially in the teaching of writing skills. As much as these students seek to improve their skills for whatever reason, maybe for work or school reasons, the poor attributes for the course only limit their potential to learn the skills. Therefore, unlike the traditional approach, the online courses are a poor means for teaching writing skills to students. In response to Kiefer’s point of view on teaching writing skills online, I imply that online courses should exclude writing skills which majorly implies practical skills that would be best learned in the traditional approaches.
Learning over the internet is indeed a good way to teach those groups of people that cannot access the normal classroom and for this matter, education is made possible for all. In addition, the use of the internet and other electronic methods has improved learning a great deal but this applies for other classes that are based in lectures but not for teaching writing skills. As Kiefer puts it, the culture that has been developed around online courses is demeaning to the acquisition of knowledge from them. In this regard, the best position is to eliminate writing from online courses and majorly teach them in the normal classroom scenarios that we are used to. This is for the best considering that leaning writing skills involves that the student is exposed to several skills through practicals.

References

Rudes, D. S., Portillo, S., Sloas, L. B., & Hutzell, K. (2014). Students as Scholars & Writers: Teaching & Assessing Undergraduate Writing in a Capstone Course. Journal Of Criminal Justice Education, 25(1), 54-68. doi:10.1080/10511253.2013.849353
Van Manen, M., & Adams, C. (2009). The Phenomenology of Space in Writing Online. Educational Philosophy & Theory, 41(1), 10-21. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00480.x