Writing task 2 Is offering online courses a positive or negative development?

Some universities now offer their courses in the Internet so that people can study online. Is this a positive or negative development?

study from your home online

It is true that online courses are becoming a common feature of university education system. Even though there are some disadvantages of Internet-based learning, I believe that benefits of it far outweigh its drawbacks.

Three cons of online education should be mentioned. The main problem is lack of direct interaction between students and teachers which is a crucial learning process. For example, students can ask teachers questions after class, but it seems not possible if online platform replaces classroom. Another concern is that it is difficult to ensure students attendance. Due to omission of rigorous attendance counting and punishment, playing truant is easy to do with no cost. The last negative possibility is the effectiveness of online courses is still questionable as there is insufficient scientific evidence to prove it.

Despite the drawbacks mentioned above, offering online education is still a reasonable decision owing to several factors. Learning online is a more convenient way to study because students can choose the best time to learn and have a flexible timetable which favours students to learn something other than university courses. In addition, geographical location is no more a limitation because online courses are available as long as Internet service is available. For instance, students in Africa do not have to travel thousands of milometres to Finland to attend lessons there. It also helps facilitate the free flow of knowledge because Internet is a convenient "place" to connect people around the world and their possessed wisdom and experiences.

In conclusion, while I recognise the aforementioned disadvantages of online learning, I consider it to be a positive development overall. (267 words)

Peter, once again you have proven that you are not even taking the time to fully understand what the prompt is asking you to discuss and in what manner. I do not know how many times I have to repeat this to you but, you really need to have some sort of idea as to how the essay is to be discussed. I am worried that you do not have ample English knowledge with which to properly understand the given topics and instructions for discussion because you have not shown any improvement in that problem areas over the number of practice tests that you have done. You need to take the understanding of the prompt seriously or risk definite failure in the actual test.

In this instance, you understood the topic, but then decided to discuss the drawbacks of online courses. Why are you discussing drawbacks when the prompt is asking you to consider if this is a positive or negative development? The drawbacks type of discussion is for a different prompt requirement. In this instance, you are supposed to discuss why you believe that online learning is a negative development, not a drawback. You were to choose either the positive or negative side and then discuss only that in the essay. You went into a whole other direction with the discussion which will definitely get you a failing score of 3 had this been an actual test.

Hi, I found your essay quite clear but you should stress on the advantage part if you claim it is a positive trend. Hope it will help ^^