Distance Education

Today, technology touched and prospered every aspect of life. It has also entered in the filed of Education. As human life became so speedy and the concept "time is money" born, he innovated new form of education called Distance Education to save time, travel and money with the help of various mediums of effective communication.

The definition lies in the name itself "Distance Education". It keeps the distance and space between the learner and teacher. In this modern form of the education, a learner controls the process of learning more than his distance instructor. It allows you the freedom of learning. It bends according to learner's suitable time. In any educational system communication between the teacher and student is essential. Earlier form of the distance education was print media, through postal mails. Innovation of satellite based systems like Radio, Television sets and Internet brought the effectiveness and popularity in Distance Education. Today without involving this technology distance education is not possible.

Advantages
Saves the Time: Distance education provides you the freedom to study in any convenient location or place, as physical presence does not matter here like traditional classroom. You save your time as well as money on travel. It is a gift for physically disabled and long-term hospitalized people.

Course Selection: Student can apply for multiple courses at the same time from various distance education institutes. It involves theory-based courses from business to philosophy.

Age no bar: Anybody from any age group can apply for online courses. Willpower of learner does matter here than his age. This is this is useful for housewives, job-retired, physically disabled and adult learners.

Convenient for part/full-time jobholders: People engaged in part-time or full-time job could complete the course as per convenient time. It can help you to continue with the job and improve your academics side by side.

Elimination of anxiety: As a learner can learn from his convenient location hence there is no classroom anxiety especially at the time of presentation and asking doubts and also it prevents homesickness in student.

No need of Educational Visa: One always has to go through complicated process when it comes to go foreign country and get Visa. Distance education has eliminated the requirement of Visa and such type of formalities, as your nationality does not matter.

Disadvantages
One-way communication: Two ways or face-to-face communication always proved its importance in traditional classrooms. In most cases, it is based upon one-way communication system. Learner always needs self-motivation before going through it.

Basic system requirement: It works upon systems like Television broadcasting, Radio or Internet. Both, the learner and the instructor needs well configured high-end mediums of communication. These mediums can get influenced when there is power failure, failure in Internet server or any hardware failure.

Absence of live academic environment: Distance education system is ideally designed for distance learner. Due to the space between instructor and other 'course' mates, feeling of isolation is there.

Lack of instant feedback: Due to the absence of face-to-face communication, student does not get immediate feedback for his assignments and fieldwork studies.

Limited Scope in employment: Many employers are biased about the degrees acquired through distance learning. Most of them prefer university degrees achieved by attending regular college and school.

Not suitable for practical/research-oriented courses: Distance education system does not provide you clinical research and laboratory practical. Hence is it not useful in the fields like chemistry, medical, physical geography etc.

You can see here, Distance Education saves your time and money. It enables you to get degree as per your convenience and cut off many hidden expenses, which are relevant in traditional education system. On the other hand, student also has to make compromises with the "live academic environment" as well as the scope for the degrees. After choosing right university and course, one can easily go ahead with distance education without completing number of complicated formalities and documentation.