Online Education Term Paper

Introduction
The efficiency and quality of higher education is the concerning point for the educational institutions and their stakeholders as they expect that the learning outcomes will help students to be prepared for the labor market challenges. The contemporary educational system is undertaking multiple standards and norms to deliver the appropriate level of preparation for students. Moreover, the developed curriculum and frequent adjustment to the educational programs should guarantee that universities and colleges deliver skills and expertise aligned with the modern labor market trends and expectations. Nonetheless, the provision of the current learning outcomes requires the use of appropriate learning tools and approaches, which support students’ performance, learning engagement, and fair appraisal of students’ progress. In this case, the evaluation of the progressive methods and learning tools should take place to understand how educational institutions support their mission and objectives in specialist and professional preparation.

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The progressive methods and learning techniques undertake the use of advanced technologies and methodologies aimed to improve and increase students’ awareness about filed challenges and labor market expectations. Alongside the traditional model, progressive education uses online tools, web platforms, interactive media, and social media to prepare and educate students. The significant number of changes were done to integrate the multimedia and online platforms to the convenient learning materials so that they will create synergy and increase the efficiency of the educational programs and their outcomes.

Even though the online and web tools are already present within the educational system, their use does not provide full-scale preparation of students, desirable quality of education, and expected to learn outcomes. Moreover, industries report that the educational institutions more and more often disjoint their curriculum from the field requirements, delivering specialist and professionals, who cannot solve problems, innovate, or provide the creative idea of the business operation. Such dramatical disorder questions, whether the used online and web tools are effective within the educational system, or there should be changes and improvements to increase efficiency and quality of the learning techniques and outcomes.

Current Issues
The current issue with online and web tools for education is that they are focused on the conventional model of education, where performance is measured by the quantity of conducted work, quality of the writing assignments, and ability to transform theoretical concepts into semi-practical outcomes. Besides, the use of multimedia and social media as progressive educational tools indicate that students indeed increase their teamwork skills, communication, and personal traits; however, such interactions do not contribute to the professional skills development and higher learning outcomes’ quality achievement. The issue is that there are no effective methods to align social media to the learning process so that these platforms are used for more in-depth and effective communication. The use of multimedia, like graphs, visuals, images, video, and sound pieces supports flexibility of the learning process; however, again, they do not encourage students to explore their profession issues, challenges, and expectations. In this case, it can be stated that the traditional model technique contributes to the student’s theoretical background and knowledge; however, the practical skills fall out of the scope of such a model.

Nonetheless, one of the progressive model’s methods simulations, which aim to place students into the semi-real business or field situations and practice learned theories and their implementation. Such methodology shows better outcomes; however, it lacks validity and coherency as most simulations build to present the possible real situation or problem. As a result, students become more aware of the practical aspect of their career choice and learn how to deal with issues and critical moments during the simulation. Nonetheless, such educational tools do not reveal all insights about possible situations within the workplace. In this instance, it can be admitted that the current issue within the educational system and its use of the online and web tools is that all already existing models only shows how the possible problems and challenges may look like, while the labor market and industries expect that graduates will be aware and prepared for the different, real-life situations, as well as, will have skills, knowledge, and competence to solve them.

Evaluation
The challenges in the assessment of the online tools within higher education are hidden in the complexity of variables which should be counted to recognize benefits or harm from the online and web tools use. Moreover, online tools can vary in their purposes and nature as all of them serve a specific role within the learning process. However, it can be admitted that the use of online tools has increased in recent years as most universities and colleges offer their students to join cloud platforms, specific software and application, and create the environment for the remote education. In such a situation, it can be stated that the online tools encompass all activities which educational institutions maintain using computer appliances, the Internet, and particular software.

As a result, it can be admitted that the assessment of each component of such educational model and activities should be divided into several segments to align together several online tools, which aim to support one joint objective. In this case, it is suggested that the efficiency of online tools should review through the lens of learning materials availability and quality, communication and information flow between students, instructors, and other involved stakeholders, methods and techniques to deliver learning process, and students’ performance and progress assessment.

The use of online tools to deliver educational materials and related information is based on the availability of online libraries, databases, forums, and platforms to review and obtain lectures, additional materials, assignments, and tasks. The availability of these online tools supports the flexibility of the learning process as students are more required to not everything they hear or see. Moreover, access to scholar sources, books, and articles help students to increase their information searching skills, information evaluation, and critique. While students are required to search for materials by themselves, the issue is that the sources can be outdated, as well as, video lectures, learning materials, and additional sources can be disjoint from the job market requirements. In this case, the problem is that the currency of information and its validity do not support online tools. So that student supposed to look for needed information on the external platforms. Such problem negatively affects the student’s performance, and overall education program outcomes as the absence of reliable information sources may encourage students to use suspicious or not credible media sources to acquire information.

The use of online tools for communication and information flow between educational institutions stakeholders supports the integrity and consistency of the educational process. The use of institutional emails, forums, chats, and social media to interact with each other shows the positive effect on students performance. Besides, the use of specific communication platforms allows students to understand how business tools, project management software, and HRM applications work and contribute to the performance increase. The use of carer related communication online tools may boost students practical skills and knowledge as they will be a native user of such appliances and could easily integrate it into their prospective workplace. What are more some studies, indicate that students who use Twitter or Facebook to communicate with other students or prepare the team project have a higher performance rate and better soft skills than those who prefer emails. In this case, it can be admitted that the use of familiar and convenient way of communication supports the development of positive professional traits among students, which trigger changes in performance, progress rates, and overall learning engagement.

The use of online tools as the method to deliver the learning process and outcomes have a controversial effect on the student’s performance and education quality. It can be admitted that the use of multimedia and online platforms to deliver theory and some material explanations allow students to plan better their time and obtain flexibility in education. The presence of video lecture, online resources, and interactive media to learn may support students as they can easily review the material, note some insights, and use such tools to prepare their assignments. Nonetheless, the video lectures also trigger issue with attendance and performance as they create the possibility to delay education and learning process, as materials and lectures are always available online. In this case, the use of online tools should be balanced, where primary and critical information is delivered through the webinars, live videos, and chats; however, additional materials are available as online materials on the university or cloud sources.

On the contrary, simulations and online projects contribute to the students’ integrity and process management as they place specific tasks and deadlines on the students’ work. In this case, simulations or online projects have fixed deadlines for each part and task so that students are obliged to conduct the work on time, or he or she will fail it. As a result, these online tools contribute to the efficiency of the education and students’ performance; however, educational institutions should accurately integrate them due to the complexity and possible irrelevancy of such models for specific educational programs.

Conclusion
From this perspective, it can be stated that the use of the online tools within education has a bilateral effect on the efficiency and quality of the education. The use of online and web applications to deliver learning materials, outcomes, and theoretical knowledge support the flexibility of the learning process. The use of simulations and online appraisals supports the students’ engagement; however, the time constraints may place inconveniences on the students’ workload. While there are advantages of the online tools use, it can be admitted that there some negative effects from such technological solutions.

The use of online libraries is the appropriate way to support students with necessary sources; however, the currency and relevancy of the library should be strictly controlled by the universities and colleges due to the high risks that students will use not credible external sources and develop faulty representation about concepts, theories, and problems. Moreover, the use of video lectures may encourage students to be more attentive and accurate with the learning process; however, the fully available lectures online may support absenteeism and low engagement with the learning process. As a result, educational universities should be aware of risks, and adverse outcomes of the online tools’ use to mitigate them and deliver sound balanced educational programs and learning outcomes.

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