Earning a Degree Through Distance Education Essay

We now live in a world where mobility is vital to our everyday existence. A world where access to everything must be instantaneous and adjustable in order to suit the ever accelerating pace of today’s lifestyle. Everything today is taken for granted due to the ease by which everything can be had due to the advent of internet technology and its accompanying changes in work and education criteria. Gone are the days when we had to wake up at six in the morning in order to make it to school on time. No more long commutes nor cold winter days on the bus just to complete the school attendance and get that much coveted grade. For those of us who have not the luxury to attend a traditional educational institution, distance education is a godsend. In order to prove this point, I would like to present myself as a prime example of a skeptic who came to reap the benefits of distance education learning. Although not everybody is cut out to attend and eventually earn a college degree or its equivalent through distance education, most people who are considering going back to school believe just as I do, that it holds more benefits for us as students than those who have to attend a regular college. To begin with, distance education is beneficial to those who wish to complete their high school or college degree but do not have the time to take off from their daily tasks in life in order to commute to the school and attend to the regular student activities. What they do have time for is just to attend the classes at a venue that does not require so much time and effort to get to. Then possibly, they can squeeze in some study and homework time between their other duties at home or at the office. As a part time teacher and mother to three boisterous children, I can attest to the fact that if it were not for distance learning education, I would have given up on trying to attain an associate degree in Early Childhood Education even before I started the course. As a wife and mother, my priority will always be my family. But that is not to say that I should stop dreaming about advancing myself and getting further in my chosen career which is education. The only way I can do that is if I will be able to attend classes that have a flexible class schedule in order to accommodate the needs of my family. I found the solution in the distance learning classes. It was really very easy for e to get started in the classes because I had an open schedule and attended the classed online whenever I have the time to do so. I can attend classes while at home or on the road using my laptop and wi-fi internet connections. Due to the ease by which I can attend my classes, I never have a reason to miss a day of school. There is no such thing as my child being sick or my car breaking down so I could not come to class. Distance learning education also allows the student to learn more than just from lectures and classroom interaction. As a distance education learning student, I also learn from the school of real life and its accompanying experiences. I am not limited merely to what is taught to me because the only limitation available are the limits that I place upon myself. As a part time teacher, I have to admit that I had my doubts about distance learning education. I first thought of it as a lazy persons way of attending school. I thought that people who attended distance education classes were slackers without any dreams for their future. But, after giving the classes a fair chance, I realized that it was just like attending regular school, and sometimes, proves to even be more grueling if not for the fact that I am allowed to learn at my own pace and capability. The only competition I had was myself. As a mother, I benefit a lot from this system because it enables me to plan my classes around the activities of my children and make sure that I will always be available when they need me. It is no joke taking care of three children, one of whom is in her pre-adolescent stage and is in constant need of a mother’s guidance in her life. Distance education allows me to be a constant presence in my children’s lives and also allows us to bond together even while I attend classes because it becomes a fun activity for the family. While I attend my distance education classes, my children are sitting alongside me reading their lessons and working on their own assignments. Distance education has helped me improve my personal relationship with my children because they do not see mommy as simply an authority figure anymore whom they have to follow without question. They now see me as an equal who also makes mistakes and also has similar problems in school as they do. It gives us a common point for discussion as we compare our test results and talk about my classmates who they get to see over the webcam while I am in class. More importantly, distance education helps me save money on baby sitting payment for my nineteen month old son. Actually, distance learning education has helped my family save thousands of dollars a year that would have been spent on my daily commute to the university. These days, I can be home in a reasonable amount of time to spend with my husband and children before I attend the classes I signed up for after they have gone to bed. The detractors of distance education say that the quality of education suffers because of the questionable quality of education and interactivity between students and lecturers. My answer to this is simple, regular schools have to deal with the same problems on a daily basis. Nobody every questions the quality of their education or their lecturers. Just as I mentioned above, I too was a skeptic until I had tried and tested the system. Now, I definitely prefer the ease and simplicity of distance learning education for a college degree over attending the regular schools. Each of us have our own idea of what kind of educational institution will suit our individual needs and personalities, the choice of distance learning over traditional learning is something that falls under a personal preference. I have made my preference clear. Distance learning education has more advantages over traditional learning institutions in more ways than one simply because our lifestyles now have highly different requirements than the past decades. Thanks to the mobility offered by laptops, even the educational landscape will continue to change and evolve with the needs of the times. Something it did not have a need to do, nor have the capability to perform in the past. It is therefore my belief that earning a degree via distance learning education will soon become an acceptable and popular norm that shall be the wave of the future.