Distance Education

Identify and briefly discuss 5 advantages of distance education
- Self-Motivation. Students will be able to improve their self-motivation skills. They will have to motivate themselves in order to pass the class and do what is required. Thus, students will develop strong self-motivation skills in order to fully succeed in the virtual class.
- Own pace. Students will be able to go at their own pace. This involves students who struggle, needs more time for assignments, or move quickly through work. A distance program will allow the students to be able to decide how fast or slow they go through assignments and work.
- School Alternative. For students that do not enjoy going to school or have troubles with their peers, distance education may be an additional option for them to take classes.
- Use of Technology. Technology is very important in today's world. Distance education programs are purely technology centered classes. Students will be very good at using technology if they take distance education programs.
- Independent Study. Students decide how much they learn and how quickly. They are in charge of their own learning progression.

Identify and briefly discuss 5 disadvantages of distance education
- Self-Motivation. Students that do not have some self-motivation skills may fail at this type of class because they do not know how to convince themselves to do the full work needed.
- Guidance. There may be little guidance from teachers to the students. Students might not feel comfortable asking the teacher for advice or help because of the lack of physical interaction.
- Immediate Feedback. Since the teacher is not always checking their e-mail or class site constantly, it may be hours or days before a student gets a response. In traditional classrooms, the student always knows when the teacher is available and can ask questions while learning a lesson.
- Peer Communication. Students do not receive the interaction with others they need while growing up. This can cause psychological damage or a lack of communication skills. It may also harm them in being able to interview for jobs because they lack such communication skills.
- Unclear Expectations. Sometimes directions may not be entirely clear, or written well enough, for a student. The student may do something they thought the teacher was asking. Then receive a bad grade because of not doing an assignment correctly.

How you would determine the readiness of students to participate in distance education?
Students who want to participate in distance education will need to have a lot of self-motivation and be able to push themselves towards certain goals. Students need to be able to motivate themselves in order to stay on task and get their assignments done. The teacher will not be available to constantly check on the student and verify they are doing their work. For students to show they are ready for distance education they need to already be able to do assignments on time without having to be told constantly. They will need to be able to keep their own schedule and have good time management skills. Parent involvement is also a key thing to student success. If parents are involved they can help their child with their homework and make sure their child is understanding what they are learning.

What would you need to do to be ready to teach in an online environment?
In order to teach in an online environment, I think I would need to have experience in teaching in a traditional school environment. This way I would be aware of how students react to certain information they are being taught and how students learn. An online environment is different from a classroom in the sense that you do not get to see first hand what each individual student's learning styles are. I would need to be able to fit all learning styles into my curriculum. I would also need to have a lot of experience working with online technology in order to relate to my students and write quality online lessons.