by Jennifer Arthur

Created on: May 09, 2009   Last Updated: May 16, 2009

Firstly l have done both, study in class and online (distance learning), while working.

There is no way you receive the same standard of education or interaction from online college degree programs. The level of education in a class room situation is far more trusting to be true and accurate. The teacher can assess students' levels of ability.

From there the teacher knows if the student is using their own mind for the class, or someone else's.

If you are working online , the teacher has no idea who you are or what you are capable of producing. In a lot of the online college degrees you have multi-able choice answers. I know people have cheated totally and had someone else complete their studies . Who knows, how can the school know?

Also l have found myself and through talking to others that when it comes to workplace experience, students can be left to struggle to find the placement for these hours that are required as practical hours in the workplace.

Unless you are lucky enough to know someone that can assist you with these workplace hours, it can be a battle to achieve this as employers have their own issues with workplace safety, etc.

Myself l would not employ a person if an online degree was all they had to provide, it would give me no faith in their ability or what they had to offer. Even for people who are employed full time there are courses day, evening and night to cover most workplace requirements within the field of work they wish to follow.

I do feel that there are many places conducting courses which are not up to standard. If l can give you this real life example. A young girl follows the system, registered with centrelink, and also a private employment agency. This young girl was accepted with a training provider. She was to study for her Cert111 Aged Care. This provider's program had a 5 week in class and 2 weeks' workplace hours. Then candidates may be accepted for traineeships.

This young girl was not the only person connected with the training provider. In the class was a middle aged women who was awaiting a shoulder operation, two young girls full of makeup and left because they did not want to touch people, one female who had a serious drug problem, and one other female on the run from a drug affected boyfriend.

So this cut the class to half - the only reason these people were there was because they did not want to lose ther payments.

Even the level of this learning process is so low. Before this class could gain their traineeships the training provider went bankrupt.

So all the people left missed out and were told they would have to start again. Moving to a new training provider was not easy as what they had been studying was all out of date. Even the first aid certificate had to be repeated.

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