Open education involves thousands training courses on various topics, including language acquisition and improvement of computer skills. Internet offers schools allowing training on full college program, but do not providing educational loan.
Prices
Cost of online training is 3-5 times lower than that of traditional one. If at some point you realize studying at this course should be better postponed for a while, you can use money back program. Different courses mean different conditions. Some courses do not provide such procedure, while others return a large portion of paid amount (retaining, say, 25% for administrative costs), provided that you have asked about it not later than four days after classes began, or did not download educational materials. When choosing virtual program and specific course, one should carefully examine conditions for its payment and possibility of paid funds return.
Contras
In 1999, an article entitled “Who is killing higher education?” (Talbott, “Who’s Killing Higher Education?” EduCom Review) was published. The author argues “new information technologies predict the end of higher education in its existing form”. Quality of education largely depends on teacher’s personality, who plays a very important role (in addition to ensuring formal training process) in shaping students’ outlook and character.
The article describes grim prospect of a new generation consciousness general “mechanization”, which will inevitably lead to loss of human values and spiritual society impoverishment.
Undoubtedly, new information technologies significantly change forms of interaction between students and teachers, also impacting learning content. In this case, we still observe not destruction of good old education traditions, but rather birth of a new paradigm and new quality of higher education.
Summing up, we should note the spread of virtual forms of education represents a natural stage in education system evolution: from classical university to virtual, i.e., from board with chalk to computer training programs, from usual library to electronic, from small study groups to virtual classroom of any scale, etc. Current education processes are not antagonistic, and therefore virtual and traditional forms of learning should not be seen as mutually exclusive. Today good education means synthesis of various forms of obtaining knowledge and modern technology, optimal combination only a student can determine.
A question about the degree a student receives upon graduation is very important. It depends on training center or program course. In some cases, you become an owner of a private educational center course certificate, in others – you obtain a so-called education credit recognized by colleges and universities with traditional form of training.
Not every teacher is good for teaching virtual courses, so not every student is able to extract use from them. The degree of one’s readiness for this form of employment can be estimated via proposed web questionnaires.