In high school, I took a correspondence course. At the time this was a fairly normal thing to do. Today, the idea of mailing tests and essays back and forth between teacher and student is tantamount to writing checks for groceries–it’s time consuming, archaic, and totally out-moded. Since then, online education has gone from something of a joke to the respected medium it is today. What’s changed?

New Tech. for Online Learning

The Internet has gotten faster. Broadband Internet access is far more common than it once was. Desktop computers are more affordable than they’ve ever been on one side of the spectrum and more powerful than ever before on the other. Laptops have gotten smaller, cheaper, nicer-looking, and more portable than ever. Digital cameras are everywhere. In short, the tools of the trade have changed. Today, professors can stream live lectures or post recorded ones. Advancements in discussion boards, chat rooms, video conferencing, messaging, and social media programs have made taken online learning to a new level, bringing students and faculty together in ways that rival face-to-face meet-ups for efficacy.

Diverse Clients Call for Diverse Methods

One new online school is offering a monthly flat rate for all the classes you can take. This kind of knowledge buffet is just one of the innovative techniques being used in online education today. For example, many people think that they’ll flounder in the work-at-your-own-pace format of many online schools, saying the all-too-common “I work better with a deadline.” If you’re one of those people, you can easily find an online program with more strict deadlines than you can shake a stick at. If you aren’t looking to apply your education to a career (at least not a strict one) and are looking more for education for education’s sake, you can enroll in an unaccredited online degree program, which can be less expensive and more flexible.

New Research Puts Hybrid Education On Top

A recent study put out by the U.S. Department of Education showed that online learning trumps the traditional classroom setting for efficacy, with a mix of the two educational settings delivering just the right kind of mental one-two punch that our contemporary brains are looking for (i.e., hybrid learning won out). We should take a moment to put this in context to calm all of the teachers up in arms about this study. Today’s students (the traditional, under-30 variety) have grown up, at least to some degree, with computers. Is it any wonder that a mixed-media approach is successful? If we change the debate just slightly and replace computers with books, would anyone argue that mixing reading with lectures produces more understanding? I’m going for a big “no” on that one.

The fact of the matter is that online education is getting more popular. Acceptance of online degrees is gaining. States are even beginning to boast about the ranking of their online educational opportunities. Even if you aren’t a big proponent of online education, you can agree that more opportunities that people have to learn, the better. Just because it doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. In America today, we need more college graduates, and anything that can help us get those graduates and start working towards a brighter, more economically stable and greener tomorrow has my vote.