For me, the main difference in online learning and face-to-face learning is in the interactions. In many in person classes, you can kind of blend in if you want to. You sit there and take notes and don’t necessarily have to talk and give your opinions or answer questions. Where in online classes, most of the time you have to post to a discussion board and then reply to your classmates. Both of these can be good or bad depending on what type of person and learner you are.
Before I came to college, I had taken two online classes through my community college during my senior year of high school. Just like Long stated, taking the classes online allowed me to have the freedom and convenience of doing my assignments anytime and anywhere (Long, 2004). After taking these classes, I was unsure if I would ever want to take an online course again. I had felt that I had not learned the material at all. I just did the assignments and got through the course and earned the credit. This could have partly been because I was not interested in the classes I was taking but I think the majority of it was because I didn’t really know how to take an online class.
Resources:
Long, H. B. (2004). E-learning: An Introduction. In G. M. Piskurich (Ed.), Getting the most from online learning: A learner’s guide (pp. 7-23). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.