In 2007, Salman Khan, a bangladeshi American, founded the Khan Academy, using video technology to revolutionize traditional education and provide free, high-quality education to the world. Online education has become highly popular. Nowadays, each country is affected by the epidemic, also earth-shaking changes have taken place in education industry, all face to face education into online courses, that is to the student and the teacher is a great challenge and opportunity.

Student：For students, to break the traditional education space and time limitations, in short, students need not like the past, according to the weekly schedule to go to school, learners can at any time, any place to study, in addition to this, learners can also according to their own requirements to determine the progress of learning, so that learning has more flexibility. As an international student, English is not my first language. Whenever the professor imparts some professional terms or speaks fast in class, I cannot accept or understand them immediately, but the short time in class cannot allow me to review them. In this case, the online course shows its advantages. I can browse the videos published by the professor for unlimited times, pause the parts I don’t understand, and look up the materials. I also have enough time to take notes and record the parts I tend to forget or have questions about. For learners, online courses give us more freedom to learn. On the contrary, they also test our independent learning ability.

Ease of use：The openness of the Internet determines that online education allows learners to learn anytime, anywhere. As long as students have mobile phones or computers, they can study anytime and anywhere, and they can keep track of their own progress, not missing any details. This meets the demand of users in the Internet era for time fragmentation. We do not need to set aside specific time to study during the very busy final exam period. In other words, we can study while waiting for the bus, which greatly improves the utilization rate of educational resources.

Costs：In terms of cost, today’s society is an open Internet society, as long as there is a mobile phone or a computer can achieve the freedom of learning. For those educational resources on the Internet, such as MOOC, is a free online learning resource, students do not need to spend a lot of time or money to borrow or buy books from the library. Students can choose the learning content they are interested in according to their preferences and advantages, which provides sufficient development space for the development of their personality and realizes the student-centered learning mode.

Teaching functions：First of all, online courses have liberalized student learning, while at the same time making use of Internet communication technology to expand the range of students. Secondly, the optimization of educational resources, online courses through the network, across the space and time constraints of the effective integration of various educational resources, so that education can go beyond the campus to a broader form of development. Online courses can bring the best teachers, the best courses to all over the Internet. Last but not least, the realization of personalized service. The flexibility of online courses and the availability of alternative resources provide ample room for students to develop their personal interests. Between the teacher and the student, between the student and student, may carry on the omni-directional communication through the network。

Interaction：Online courses are full of interactivity.  Bates (2019) wrote about “The Internet is an extremely powerful medium because through a combination of tools and media it can encompass all the characteristics and dimensions of educational media”. Through the interaction between learners and media, learners can have a better and deeper understanding of knowledge through some excellent media, such as video, text, audio, pictures, etc. This method of all-round stimulation of learners’ senses also greatly improves the efficiency of learning. The second kind of interaction is the interaction between the students and the teachers. Through the network, the teachers can impart their own ideas and the objectives of the course to the students. If the students do not understand something, the students can leave a message in the comment section or directly communicate with the teachers to solve the problem. The last point is the interaction between students and students, it is obvious that the network of openness and freedom line allows air to her comments on our online course, can also learn from others to better ways to make up for their deficiencies, which communicate through the network at the time, also for those in real life are not good at expression provides a good platform for the students to show themselves.

Networking: The foundation of online courses is the Internet. “Contemporary social technologies are used by hundreds of millions of users, available for free, and are engaging and fun to use, making them appropriate to be harnessed for teaching and learning and in particular to enhance social interactions” (Brown, 2010, Hamid et al., 2014, Hemmi et al., 2009, Seaman and Tinti-Kane, 2013, Selwyn, 2012). We are born in an era of openness of the Internet, which is a gift and provides us with convenience as well as many opportunities.

Security and privacy: Everything has two sides, while the Internet provides us convenience, it may also be a dangerous place. The comments we post online are the key to divulging our personal privacy, so this mode of independent learning is also a test of our cognitive level and self-control. I hope we can cherish the excellent conditions the world offers us and do something more meaningful.

 

References

Bates, T. (2019). Understanding technology in education. Retrieved from

https://via.hypothes.is/https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadi gitalagev2/part/chapter-8-understanding-technology/

 

Brown.S（2010）From VLEs to learning webs: The implications of Web 2.0 for learning and teaching. Interactive Learning Environments, 18 (1) (2010), pp. 1-10.