# University Courses on Internet

With rapid development of internet technology, university courses are proposed to be presented through internet, which is called ¡°virtual courses¡±. We think it is not an appropriate choice to teach university courses through internet.

1. Internet technology is incomplete, therefore has its own limits.

A. Cheap one is not good one.

One of biggest advantage of internet courses proposed by its sponsors is its cheapness. However, in our society all commodities are exchanged by their values. So, the cheap internet courses may not be able to achieve what they are supposed to. First of all, the teaching quality is not guaranteed, therefore the certificates from so-called ¡°virtual university¡± are not publicly admitted. For students who are pursuing opportunity of high education they usually won¡¯t take risk to waste their time and money on these unrecognized institutes. Then we are bold to say that internet courses are not a good choice for students as students¡¯ future would be unclear in near future. Cheap investment sometimes brings zero return.

B. Choices of courses are limited.

Even many people argue that anything is possible with high-tech, still we must point out that internet courses limit the students¡¯ choices of courses due to its technical limitations. For example, chemical lab courses cannot be taught through internet which require student to have physical contacts with the chemicals during experiment. The so-called multimedia in effect is only visual and audio media. And without sense of touching, smelling students will find virtual classes helpless. Similar cases can be found on courses of surgery, physical education etc. The current computer technology greatly limited students¡¯ choices on courses.

C. Incomplete internet technology makes internet courses unreliable.

As internet is a brand new technology with very fast development within very short time, it has many potential problems. Internet courses just tend to be easily blocked by crowded internet traffic, breakdown of network, deliberately sabotages from viruses invented by malicious hackers etc. Thus such courses won¡¯t become popular due to their unstableness.

2. Internet courses deprive the opportunity of face-to-face communication from people

A. Internet courses are against human¡¯s nature.

People feel ease to talk with others when face-to-face. However internet separate people and force the virtual communicating a new rule in our society. The more internet is used as media of communication, the more people tend to isolate themselves from social activity. Suppose one young man spend his university life in cyber-space without personal contacts with his classmates, teachers, what kind of psychological effect would it be on his rest life? He maybe feel more and more lonely ,hopeless and desperately frustrated. University is not only supposed to give out knowledge but also offer chances for young man to be trained to survive in today¡¯s society. But internet courses is definitely lack of this function.

B. Interactivity plays important role in learning process, and internet courses offer least of it.

It is well known that active teaching and learning are two integral part for university courses. Both teachers and students should interact closely. Teacher should observe his teaching effect on students all the time. Students should show his doubts whenever they pop up. All these interactivities require frequent and real time communication between students and teachers, which will be best fulfilled on the spot. And courses through internet won¡¯t give the same easiness due to indirect communication like white board, chatting room etc. What¡¯s more network lag greatly increase difficulty for a real time exchange of information.

C. No team work, no co-operations.

Many courses stress the importance of team work and cooperation, but internet courses don¡¯t supply the equal chances as traditional courses do. Taking computer programming courses as an example, team work and cooperation are regarded as one of most important part of courses as students will need work in teams, do job on cooperation basis in software companies. And it is university to offer a training session for students to get used to this spirit. Internet courses are cyber-courses which encourage people to play by his own. If students are not getting used to the cooperating environment, they must take more time to overcome the problems popped up during his working life in society.

3. False slogans are just good dreams far away from reality.

A. ¡°Any body, any place, any time¡¡±

We can often see and hear similar advertisement of internet technology. However, it turn out that those slogans are really not true. Till now those who are deadly in need of information in poor countries are just unable to access internet. Though internet is developing so fast, still in most of developing countries internet courses are regarded as new toys in rich man¡¯s club. Internet courses are not something that everyone can play in any place at any time.

B. ¡°¡sharing the resources¡save the cost¡¡±

Another internet illusion is that many people can share the limited information resource at same time to save cost. So internet courses are supposed to let thousands of people to share the famous professors, equipments and information resources. However, university is not simply giving lectures through internet ¡°TV¡±. Teachers are supposed to answer questions from students. But how many questions can one teacher reply? It turns out that the number of students that one teacher can handle through internet is almost same as he teaches in a traditional classroom. Otherwise one thousand students send in one question each will simply flood out the questions themselves.