Online school. Has it come into it's own?

[sanantone]

I guess the skepticism about online education comes from the well-researched psychological phenomenon called ‘justification of effort.’ People who have put the efforts (physically, mentally & financially) to graduate from a B&M school want to justify their own efforts. If they willingly accept that our online education is probably as good as theirs, then it can feel very unsettling to think that they need not have gone through so much. I guess that is probably also why even the traditional universities are sometimes skeptical of people with online degrees.

That could be it for some people, but I think most of the skepticism is rooted in the history of online education initially being dominated by for-profit schools with predatory marketing practices. They had low graduation rates and high student loan default rates. A lot of their students wrote terribly, and employers noticed.

Now, I see more people accepting of online education because you can earn degrees from traditional universities. There are still some misconceptions, however. There's a belief that there is rampant cheating in online programs. I just present people with research that shows that on-campus students are just as likely to cheat. Online students tend to cheat on unproctored exams; on-campus students tend to pay people to write their papers and do other written assignments. In recent years, many schools have started utilizing online proctoring services at least for final exams. Some online programs rely on papers instead of exams to mitigate cheating. 

You'll always have the old school people who value the socratic method and classroom discussions. To them, discussion boards are not a good alternative.