There are few things that really, really bother me — like trips to the dining hall where no food is lying out fresh and ready for me to devour or waiting at a bus stop longer than I am actually on the bus itself — and Internet classes.
Online learning is a guaranteed way to waste a majority of a day.
Even with a long list of things that could be more productive, Internet classes take precedence because they count for credits and GPAs.
At first you think they are avoidable, but many classes are only offered online or may be full in classrooms, leaving students with no other option.
However, they may ultimately be a grand waste of time.
College is all about self-guidance, but that term has morphed into self-education. With laptops at our disposal at all hours, online classes seem like the easy way out to what could potentially be a challenging schedule. Hours in front of a computer viewing lectures is no match for a live lecture hall with an engaging professor and students surrounding you also eager to learn.
Without the time restraints on a class, having no set hour that students have to learn, work is put off until multiple lectures and assignments have slipped by without notice.
No professor is watching the clock; ultimately, in online classes, it is a personal decision to even bother with the lectures and additional coursework.
In classrooms, there are no mute buttons that can simply be pushed when a lecture seems too dull to possibly listen to. But there is less motivation to study in online courses and become engaged in a subject.
College classes are meant to be challenging and intriguing. Online classes take away the thirst for knowledge that degree-seeking students need in order to excel, and they instead provide hours for students to question what better things they could be doing.
In my mind, to-do lists never work. I need a calendar filled with every location and time that I need to be somewhere. Online courses do not allow for this and offer too much flexibility. On to-do lists, they slowly slide to the bottom as the day wears on.
After work for other classes has been completed each day, it’s nearly time to hit the lights, and not a moment’s thought is given to the online class that technically isn’t “due.”
In my own experience, online classes go by a weekly basis with assignments opening in the beginning of the week and closing towards the end. This doesn’t seem to be a problem until the week is nearly over, and I have little to show for it.
Beyond time management, online courses offer a number of other obstacles; online classes are often lonely.
Without knowing who else may be taking it, there is no one to turn to with additional questions. Professors of these courses are very limited in helping students and may even urge students not to contact them unless necessary.
Some of the best learning is done through questioning, and eliminating this could potentially damage someone’s ability to succeed in a class.
There simply are not enough hours in the day to spend them glued to a computer screen, even if it is in an academic pursuit.
Abby Wolz is a health science freshman at UF. Her column appears on Thursdays. You can contact her at opinions@alligator.org.
