Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Online Courses


Steven Leckart shows his excitements about the online Artificial Intelligence course offered by Stanford in his article on Wired. The class was taken by Professor Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University, one of the leading people in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Many students do not get the chance to be admitted in a university. Even if some of them get the chance, may be the quality of the offered courses are not up to the mark. Online courses now make it possible for everyone all over the world to register for courses offered by the best universities, mostly for free. In my opinion the first major advantage of online courses is that the high quality courses are now accessible by anyone anywhere, and free. It is very convenient for someone who misses the chance of pursuing higher education due to the financial weakness. One can now register for a course of his/her choice. For most of the courses, the class hours are flexible. This flexible timing is very helpful for those who work. Also the online assessment quizzes help the student to evaluate himself.   

Lack of interaction between the instruction and the student is one of the main limitations of the online courses. Sometimes students need to submit his/her questions online and then need to wait for the instructor to respond to the questions. Also the chances of class discussions are very limited here. Although there are some scopes of improvements, online courses offered by the Universities are a good opportunity for peoples who want to learn.    

No comments:

Post a Comment