A discussion on E-learning offered in Malaysian universities: Pros and Cons from the students perspective

This week I would like to share about e-learning or sometimes we call it distance learning. E-learning is a modern process of education whereby the learning process is supported by computer technologies. In other words, it means that, instead of attending traditional instructor-led classes, students can complete his/her courses by studying online. From the students' perspective, e-learning bring the advantages as follow:

a) Convenience and flexibility
E-learning which available 24x7 allows the students to study anytime, anywhere as long as they have access to a computer and Internet connection. Besides, they even can pause the learning session at their convenience.

b)Lower cost
E-learning can helps to reduce the cost of study as the students are not required to travel to campus everyday and this tends to save the travel cost and travel time as well. Additionally,just as what we know, almost every computer available in the today's market are equipped with free browser software. This indirectly help to reduce the setup cost of e-learners.

c) Improve interaction
Based on empirical studies, we observed that students are more actively interact with instructors or other students via e-learning. This is because of students can email to others students easily, pose comments on message boards or use videoconference to communicate with them lively.

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages as well, such as:

a)Lack of face-to-face communication with teachers
E-learnig which promotes home-study has reduced the oppurtunity of students to face-to-face communicate with their teachers. Furthemore, when they face any problems, they might not get instant reply from their teachers as well as their teachers might not available anytime. Thus, this tends the result that students sometimes may get confuse with their study.

b) Technological problem

Computer and Internet connection are two critical components for distance learning. If a student does not possess these two components, he/she is not able to experience this modern process of learning. In spite of this, if a student has an old model of computer or low Internet connection, he will face the trouble too. This is because low Internet connection or old computer will make the students unable to donwload new version of reading material or make the assessing of reading material frustrating.