The Pros and Cons of the Virtual
Classroom

10 min readApr 15, 2021

Attending a physical campus has advantages and disadvantages. The same is true for attending a virtual classroom. Among the many benefits of online education, you’ll find virtual learning allows you to enjoy a more flexible schedule, can reduce the cost of your degree, and can allow you to more easily develop your career alongside furthering your education.

Yet, staying on task and being self-motivated can be challenging in its own way; which is part of the reason why online learning isn’t right for everyone. By understanding more about the advantages and disadvantages of virtual learning, you can get a better idea of whether it might be suitable for you and your educational and career goals

ADVANTAGES:

1. Flexibility as a Benefit of Online Schools

Among the many advantages of online education, you’ll find virtual classrooms are great for people who are advancing their education while working. In a traditional classroom, lectures will be scheduled at a specific time of day and your schedule will be formed around the availability of classes. If you’re currently employed and courses aren’t available after your working hours, it can be difficult to juggle a course load in addition to your work duties.

When attending a virtual campus, online learning allows for far more autonomy in deciding your own schedule. That means you can study whenever it’s convenient for you. Live with some noisy roommates? Having more control over your schedule also means you can avoid distractions easier.

Because your schedule isn’t dictated by classes, you can spend more time doing the things you want. That might mean focusing on your career or spending time with your family. All you need is a digital device and an internet connection, and you have access to the necessary tools to further your education and earn your degree.

2. Cost Advantages of Online Learning

Education can be expensive, but virtual learning can provide a number of ways for students to save. Not having to commute to campus can help you save on transportation costs. It also means saving time because you don’t need to travel to-and-from campus.

Every year, the average student spends more than a thousand dollars on textbooks and course materials. Virtual coursework often takes advantage of virtual resources, which translates into less money spent on textbooks.

Tuition costs can also vary between online and on-campus programs. For instance, at Drexel University, students enrolled in online programs in the School of Education receive a 25% discount off the price of regular tuition. Most online programs offered by the school are also financial aid eligible.

Between all these sources of savings, cost-cutting can be an enormous advantage of virtual learning. Plus, in the event of inclement weather, you don’t have to worry about being able to make it to class, or about your classes being unexpectedly canceled. However, if there is a power outage and you’re unable to access the internet as a result of weather conditions, there may be difficulties with missing a scheduled online class, but it may be easier to make it up.

3. Advantages of Virtual Learning with Course Variety

Among the many educational benefits of virtual learning, some are easier to identify. Online courses allow you to earn essentially the same range of different degrees that can be earned from a traditional educational environment. That includes learning certificates and professional certifications to master’s degrees or doctoral degrees.

Integrating coursework with technology provides a number of advantages. Rather than waiting days or weeks after exams, you can often get immediate feedback. Where traditional lecturing leaves you at the mercy of your best note-taking skills, video presentations can be watched and revisited as necessary.

Students who find their focus suffers from classroom activity may benefit from online classes. Students who aren’t as assertive may have better opportunities to participate in class discussions when communicating online. Working from your own choice of environment, with self-paced learning, the result can be a more personalized learning experience.

4. Career Advancement Opportunity Benefits of Virtual Learning

Just like courses taken in a traditional classroom setting, virtual learning can provide you with a number of career advancement opportunities. But online students have better opportunities to collaborate with international classmates, and often have more individual contact with other students. Students may also receive more one-on-one time with their professor with virtual learning, which is beneficial for both learning and networking.

Because you’re the master of your own schedule, students of virtual learning are better prepared to continue working while pursuing academic credentials. And for students who aren’t employed, academic work can serve to explain any discontinuity or gaps in a resume. In either case, the advantages of virtual learning can be clearly seen on a resume.

SUMMARY OF VIRTUAL LEARNING BENEFITS

There are many advantages to virtual learning that can help you sharpen your skills and grow in your career. Courses taught online provide students the flexibility to learn on their own schedule, instead of mandatory class time. Online courses, including those taught at Drexel, cost less than traditional on-campus courses, making them more affordable. Virtual courses give students more selection in their courses. In a face-to-face setting, courses taught at the same time for students to choose between courses they like. Lastly, virtual learning gives students access to classmates all around the world, providing networking opportunities you can’t get through an on-campus program.

DISADVANTAGES :

We already analyzed the numerous benefits of E-Learning in our previous article. Now, it’s time to cover the opposite side of the coin. There are some major drawbacks to E-Learning, and these problems often get pushed aside in online discussions. After all, who would want to put the brakes on educational innovation?

These are the disadvantages of E-Learning:

Online student feedback is limited

In traditional classrooms, teachers can give students immediate face-to-face feedback. Students who are experiencing problems in the curriculum can resolve them quickly and directly either during the lecture or during the dedicated office hours. Personalized feedback has a positive impact on students, as it makes learning processes easier, richer, and more significant, all the while raising the motivation levels of the students.

E-Learning, on the other hand, still tends to struggle with student feedback. Students completing regular assessments become dissatisfied when they experience a lack of personalized feedback. The traditional methods of providing student feedback don’t always work in an E-Learning environment, and because of this, online education providers are forced to look towards alternative methods for providing feedback. Providing student feedback in an online setting is still a relatively unresearched topic area, and it might take a while for any specific strategies to become fully research-based and proven to be effective.

E-Learning can cause social Isolation

The E-Learning methods currently practiced in education tend to make participating students undergo contemplation, remoteness and a lack of interaction. As a result, many of the students and teachers who inevitably spend much of their time online can start experiencing signs of social isolation, due to the lack of human communication in their lives. Social isolation coupled with a lack of communication often leads to several mental health issues such as heightened stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts.

E-Learning requires strong self-motivation and time management skills

Lack of self-motivation among students continues to be one of the primary reasons why students fail to complete online courses. In traditional classrooms, there are numerous factors that constantly push students towards their learning goals. Face-to-face communication with professors, peer-to-peer activities, and strict schedules all work in unison to keep the students from falling off track during their studies.

In the setting of an online learning environment, however, there are fewer external factors that push the students to perform well. In many cases, the students are left to fend for themselves during their learning activities, without anyone constantly urging them on towards their learning goals. Students taking E-Learning courses will find that they are often required to learn difficult materials in a comfortable home setting without any of the added pressure normally associated with traditional colleges. As a result, keeping up with regular deadlines during online studies can become difficult for those students who lack strong self-motivation and time management skills.

Lack of communicational skill development in online students

E-Learning methods are proven to be highly effective at improving the academic knowledge of the students. However, developing the communicational skills of the students is an area often neglected during online lessons. Due to the lack of face-to-face communication between peers, students, and teachers in an online setting, the students might find that they are unable to work effectively in a team setting. Neglecting the communicational skills of the students will inevitably lead to many graduates who excel in theoretical knowledge, but who fail to pass their knowledge on to others.

Cheating prevention during online assessments is complicated

Unfortunately, one of the biggest disadvantages of E-Learning continues to be cheating through various methods. Compared to on-campus students, online students can cheat on assessments more easily as they take assessments in their own environment and while using their personal computers. The students cannot be directly observed during assessments without a video feed, making cheat detection during online assessments more complicated than traditional testing procedures. Additionally, without a proper identity verification system in place, students taking online assessments might be able to let a third party take the assessment instead of themselves, resulting in a wholly fraudulent test result.

Online instructors tend to focus on theory rather than practice

Although this drawback of E-Learning is starting to be addressed and fixed by some of the more innovative online learning platforms, the problem has yet to disappear completely. The problem is that a large portion of E-Learning training providers chooses to focus largely (in many cases entirely) on developing theoretical knowledge, rather than practical skills. The reason for this is evident — theoretical lectures are considerably easier to implement in an online learning environment than practical lectures. After all, without face-to-face communication and physical classrooms to use as a workshop, implementing practical projects in an online course requires significantly more prior planning than theoretical training.

E-Learning lacks face-to-face communication

The lack of face-to-face communication ties together with many of the previously mentioned disadvantages of online learning. A lack of any kind of face-to-face communication with the instructor inhibits student feedback, causes social isolation, and could cause students to feel a lack of pressure. A lack of pressure is a disadvantage in the sense that it causes students to abandon their studies more easily. Constant nudging by professors may be undesirable for many, but it’s an effective method for improving student retention.

E-Learning is limited to certain disciplines

All educational disciplines are not created equal, and not all study fields can be effectively used in e-learning. For now, at least. E-Learning tends to be more suitable for social science and humanities, rather than scientific fields such as medical science and engineering which require a certain degree of hands-on practical experience. No amounts of online lectures can substitute an autopsy for medical students or real-life industrial training for a budding engineer. While this could change in the future, we are currently not yet a point where we can fully teach all professions solely through E-Learning.

Lack of accreditation & quality assurance in online education

If E-Learning is to be considered as effective and authentic as traditional learning, it must be ensured that all online schools are qualified and accredited. Unfortunately, at the current point in time, there are still a vast number of online learning platforms which are unaccredited and where all the materials are quality checked by no one besides the instructors themselves. As such, poor quality assurance and a lack of accredited online learning providers continue to weaken the legitimacy of online education.

Every delivery method has its strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to match the delivery method to the learning objectives and try to minimize the weaknesses. Many of the weaknesses are the flip side of the strengths. Online education is a response to the need for more accessibility to campus courses. While it does make courses available to a wide variety of people living in very diverse places, there is still an accessibility issue. Students must have access to a computer and an internet provider. They also need to be computer literate enough to navigate the internet, read and send an email, and create and attach documents. And because of the asynchronous nature of the class, it takes an independent, self-directed learner to be successful — one who will do the work without seeing the instructor in class every week. Internet-based learning is great for delivering content for independent learning and for group work, such as discussions, debates, cases, and sharing and critiquing of papers. However, it is not too good for feeling the sponginess of a lung or the hardness of a lesion in the lung. It also can’t help you smell the breath of a patient with ketosis or identify a bacterial culture by its sweet smell (yet!). And you don’t get to hear and see the great lecturers teach. (Nor do you have to sit through a lecture on something you’ve been doing for the last five years.

Online education is not for everyone. If for you, the advantages and strengths outweigh the disadvantages and weaknesses then it is probably right for you.

The Pros and Cons of the Virtual Classroom