Why Would Someone Drop Out of Online Courses?
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Thousands upon thousands of students sign up for online classes every semester, and that is because of their flexibility and accessibility. Many of the students who sign up for online classes would not be able to attend college were it not for the online platform. This is why the medium is so well appreciated. With just a computer and a solid internet connection, anyone can receive a quality education.
With that said, why is it that so many students drop out of online courses? In fact, the number of students who drop out of online courses is staggeringly high, considering how flexible and accessible they are. The main reason so many people experience difficulty and end up dropping their classes is that they didn’t realize what they were getting into. There is a recurring myth that online classes are very simple just because they are not traditional. The fact is, the professors who teach online classes are just as demanding as professors who teach traditional classes. The class material is involved and engaging, and students have to be diligent to keep up with the ongoing assignments and tests to receive a full grade. The advantages of online education, of course, are many, and students who stick out the full semester and do well reap the benefits. They are able to advance more easily in their careers than students who drop out, and they feel more confident about their futures.
In this blog, we’ll explain the top four reasons students drop out of online courses so that you don’t go through the same trouble.
1. Online Courses Can Be Challenging
We got into this briefly in the introduction, but we’ll follow up on this one here. Online classes are meant to give people anywhere and everywhere access to a quality education. The key phrase here is ‘quality education.’ Of course, there are some schools or platforms that host classes that are simple and don’t challenge the students, but most ambitious students tend to enroll in online classes at accredited universities and colleges. At these institutions, online classes are offered as equal counterparts to their traditional classroom based courses. They are not lesser in quality, and the professors who teach these classes are not any easier on students than regular professors.
Online courses involve weekly homework assignments, discussion boards, quizzes, on top of tests and essays across the semester. Online students have to remain concentrated for an extended period of time if they wish to do well and receive a quality transcript. Unfortunately, many online students have other responsibilities that take away their attention and leave them reeling. A number of studies available for viewing online illustrate just how many online students are busy working part-time or full-time jobs at the same time they are enrolled in classes. If these online students are so busy with work or family commitments, how can they all expect to do their classes to the best of their ability? The fact is they can’t. And this is every semester there are a great number of students who drop out of their online courses.
2. Inability to Study Effectively
For a number of reasons, online students have trouble studying effectively. Their difficulty studying may have something to due with the fact they enrolled for a class online rather than in school, but it’s not just that. The fact is, not everyone has the time to spend hours and hours preparing for quizzes and tests and writing papers. Online students have their schedules clogged with work and family and many other responsibilities, and it’s difficult for them to get organized. Of course, the schedules for online classes are generally more flexible than regular classes, and this is one of the advantages of online education, but even so, there are thousands of students who have a hard time organizing their days in such a way that they can write quality papers and participate in quality discussions with their peers.
Many students who have this problem tend to pay someone for online class help. This is a perfectly viable option for many. Online tutors can complete individual assignments like homework or discussions, or they can complete full classes, including taking tests and writing papers. For students with difficult schedules and who have a hard time paying attention after having spent their attention elsewhere throughout the day, this is the perfect solution. Of course, there are other solutions, such as attending a study group, reaching out to the professor, or spending more time reading.
3. Difficulty Writing & Reading
While the number of students who drop out of their online courses due to poor reading and writing habits is unknown, we tend to think it is a big reason. We don’t mean that students are illiterate; we mean that they have a hard time keeping up with ongoing reading assignments which are of a complex level, and they have a hard time writing according to academic guidelines, which are often rigorous and require a strong vocabulary. Maybe unsurprisingly, writing skills are one thing not a lot of professors are forgiving of. They want to know their students have paid ample attention to the material enough to articulate the significance of a number of concepts.
Additionally, many online students are foreign students who are studying abroad, and they don’t have proper English language skills such that they can write a great paper or read one hundred pages within a few days. For these students, there is sometimes limited support, because online colleges don’t have the same resources as traditional colleges if it is not a hybrid institution.
4. Afraid to Ask for Help
Sometimes people are too proud to ask for help, and sometimes they don’t know where to go to get the help they need. This is true for everyone, but for online students especially. With online classes entailing a learning experience that is mostly secluded, it makes sense that a number of students who drop out of their online classes do so because they’re confused with the material and don’t know who to go to for assistance. These students might have had experience in the past at on-campus universities where they could go to the professor directly or go to a writing lab if they needed assistance with their grammar and vocabulary. In online classes, however, there are not as many resources. One can always reach out to fellow students, but often, no one responds. This is just a sad truth about online classes. One can also reach out to the professor, but assistance that comes in the form of an email is not always strong enough to make a difference in one’s learning experience.
The best thing students can do is ask themselves, “Can I pay someone to take my online class?” The answer, they’ll find, is yes, they can. Online class help websites like ours offer tutors who are experts in more than one hundred subjects, and they can complete every single assignment an online class contains. Whether that is homework, quiz, test, discussion, essay, midterm or final, lab or group project, we can do it all, and we can do it for a price that no one else in the industry can match. That’s because we’re innovators and we enjoy what we do. Our goal is to make sure fewer students drop out of online courses because there are so many advantages of online education that one can benefit from if they just give themselves the shot.