Thesis: This paper aims to analyse the arguments provided by the author in the article; How Technology Can Improve Online Learning by Robert Mendenhall. The article successfully outlines the imperatives and advantages of online teaching as compared to traditional teaching methodology. The arguments presented by the author are logical and devoid of fallacies that makes it immensely effective and rationale article on the topic. The articles basically stems its arguments in the form of comparison between the online and offline methods of teaching and how online teaching can actually make the entire process much more efficient, effective and far reachable to many more number to people. The best aspect of the article is that it emphasized on the output of a particular methodology of education to evaluate the quality of education and disconnected it from the mode or method of imparting the education (Mendenhall, 3).
The article has focused on the output driven approach to carry out his analysis of why people associate quality with method and not with the output produced. The author has written the article supported by the data and statistics rather than writing it on pure opinion and perspective led style. Parameters like number of graduates produced or number of people defaulting on their education loan can be one of the several objective factors that can led researchers to find of the course has been effective or not. Placing excessive emphasis on the mode of imparting the education has no role to play in deciding if the mode is good or bad (Mendenhall, 5). The author has clearly mentioned the facts and numbers in terms of percentages, proportions and absolute numbers so as to draw a clear picture of the education sector and the success factors that can be analysed. …show more content…
Most academicians argue that online education is one the means where in there is no mental connection between the instructor and the scholar and because of this the instructor cannot actually find if the student is attending the class and even if he does, is he attentive enough to actually get what the instructor is teaching. The author puts a very logical argument to refute this point. He says that the teacher cannot actually find if the student is attentive in any of setting and that includes classroom setting also. The instructor can only have a perception of finding out the mental state of the student. Most of instructor do not place high value on this accept of teaching and thus the classes have stopped to have any kind of attendance to find if the students have attended the classes (Mendenhall, 4). This makes sense, as output of the quality of the education does not depend on the variable that are imposed on the students but the variable’s that enhance the quality of lesson and the delivery style of instructor. If the instructor is good enough to be listened to, then it does not matter if the attendance is taken or not. The author thus, lays emphasis on improving the number of online settings and technological platforms to enable more and more online settings in education sector. This will cut on the cost of physical infrastructure for seating, building and other facilities for conducting the classroom classes. Video and audio lessons enabled through online and virtual settings are far more effective in terms of convenience, time
The article has focused on the output driven approach to carry out his analysis of why people associate quality with method and not with the output produced. The author has written the article supported by the data and statistics rather than writing it on pure opinion and perspective led style. Parameters like number of graduates produced or number of people defaulting on their education loan can be one of the several objective factors that can led researchers to find of the course has been effective or not. Placing excessive emphasis on the mode of imparting the education has no role to play in deciding if the mode is good or bad (Mendenhall, 5). The author has clearly mentioned the facts and numbers in terms of percentages, proportions and absolute numbers so as to draw a clear picture of the education sector and the success factors that can be analysed. …show more content…
Most academicians argue that online education is one the means where in there is no mental connection between the instructor and the scholar and because of this the instructor cannot actually find if the student is attending the class and even if he does, is he attentive enough to actually get what the instructor is teaching. The author puts a very logical argument to refute this point. He says that the teacher cannot actually find if the student is attentive in any of setting and that includes classroom setting also. The instructor can only have a perception of finding out the mental state of the student. Most of instructor do not place high value on this accept of teaching and thus the classes have stopped to have any kind of attendance to find if the students have attended the classes (Mendenhall, 4). This makes sense, as output of the quality of the education does not depend on the variable that are imposed on the students but the variable’s that enhance the quality of lesson and the delivery style of instructor. If the instructor is good enough to be listened to, then it does not matter if the attendance is taken or not. The author thus, lays emphasis on improving the number of online settings and technological platforms to enable more and more online settings in education sector. This will cut on the cost of physical infrastructure for seating, building and other facilities for conducting the classroom classes. Video and audio lessons enabled through online and virtual settings are far more effective in terms of convenience, time