IndexPhilosophicalSocialEconomicPoliticalDemographicDiversityOnline education has changed the way students learn and the way teachers educate students. Online education has paved the way for students who can't take a traditional class to be able to earn their degree. I personally would not have been able to work towards my degree without the option of online classes. However, online education has been met with negative reactions and some prejudice. The purpose of this article is to explore the question of whether or not online education is worth the time and effort of universities, teachers, and students. The article reviews will also discuss the effectiveness of online programs and whether they can replace traditional classrooms for students who cannot attend classes on campus. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original philosophical essayMilana, Webb, Holford, Waller, and Jarvis (2018) wanted to find a connection between adult education, lifelong learning, and online education. They proposed connectivist learning theory, which is a combination of chaos, network, complexity and self-organization. The goal of connectivist learning is to teach students how to learn, how to learn from different opinions and sources, and make their own connections between opinions and sources. Connectivist learning can be linked to adult education through three learning metaphors: acquisition, participation and creation of knowledge. Acquisition means acquiring knowledge with the intention of sharing knowledge, participation means taking note of changes in the community in order to make changes, and knowledge creation means creating new and improving old knowledge. Knowledge creation is believed to be the most important of the three metaphors regarding the workplace. Students must be able to learn and contribute to advancing their workplace in terms of products and production. Online education has helped students become more productive by becoming a tool to increase their understanding and worldview. Students now have the ability to access the Internet anywhere and can find information they would not have been able to find with traditional search methods. An example of this is the Galileo system used by the university. As an online student, Galileo was able to access journals, articles, and books in the library without ever having to leave home. Teachers can also assign readings from online sources without having to waste money on hard copies or worry that the library won't have enough copies of a reading for their class. Technology has moved from a supporting role in education to a leading role in how students are taught today. SocialWang (2017) uses the term distributed education to collectively describe online learning with all its different names. “Distributed education is the delivery of postsecondary education degrees, programs, and courses that are independent of time and place and deliver online course content to remote students, commuters, and residents alike” (Wang, 2017 , p. 184). Students have begun to seek a flexible learning environment with a focus on skills that will directly impact their current and future careers. To increase their skills for the world of work, adult students are returning to the classroom. However, these adult students desire to have lessons directly related to application in the workforce. The new generation of studentsadults rely on technology and use it daily. The availability of social media, email, online document sharing, phone apps, etc. it has made education more easily available to students wherever they are in the world. The rise of technology will change how students learn and how schools recruit their students. Students can work on a group project online without having to be in the same room. Teachers can use programs like Blackboard to hold weekly lessons and answer questions during lessons comparable to those of a traditional classroom. Lessons can also be recorded and uploaded for students who were unable to be online due to their circumstances. The success of online courses depends on both students and educators. Educators must be willing to learn how to teach an online course and commit to making the class worth the students' time. Goodfellow and Lamy (2009) set out to demonstrate that being physically present in a traditional classroom can be just as effective as an online lesson. An effective classroom, “Enables dynamic interaction between instructors, students, and tasks and offers students the opportunity to create their own understanding through interaction with others, highlighting the importance of community, culture, and context in building of knowledge” Goodfellow and Lamy (2009). It has been argued that without physically being in the classroom and interacting with other students, a learning culture will not develop to ensure classroom success. However, the authors counter that an online class will create a culture of virtual learning. Computer-based communication can be as effective as a face-to-face conversation. The authors created a course to examine students in an online environment and how they communicate and interact with other class members. Students from all over the world participated in the online lesson. Students were presented with topics to respond to on a weekly basis for twelve weeks. Students were given reading assignments, videos, and conversation starters to begin their posts. They had to publish a substantive post in response to the topic and had to respond to at least one classmate to receive a participation grade. Topics focus primarily on individual, national and cultural identities. The first post was an introductory post asking who they were and where they were from. The educator found two consistencies in the first post: students wanted to demonstrate that they belonged in the classroom and how new they were to online classrooms. As the posts progressed, students began to make suggestions for their own cultures that they wanted to apply after learning from their classmates' cultures and behaviors. They were able to freely express their opinions and take risks in their positions. They developed trust and understanding through their posts and their colleagues' responses. The students, by the end of the lesson, had started using the word we instead of I during their posts. They managed to form an online community in twelve weeks through discussion posts. EconomicMarlanda and English (2013) provided a detailed history of how online education evolved from distance learning in the form of paper correspondence. The first examples of distance learning were when teachers could send students guided readings and tests at home to complete. Education has evolved from paper correspondence to the use of radio, television, audio cassettes, faxes, etc. up to courses and diplomasonline available today. However, the issue of cheating and lack of hands-on practice have called online education into question. Marlanda and English (2013) also warn to be careful when selecting an online program or school. The creation of all online schools has also created diploma mills. Diploma factories issue credits that are questionable and not recognized by other universities. Diploma factories can also issue fraudulent diplomas, which can lead unsuspecting students to face legal action for falsifying documents. The text gives the example of a politician who obtained several diplomas from the same diploma factory and led to him being investigated for document falsification. Online education also seeks to release life experience as credits. Employers have started looking for these credits and can trick someone into having passed for a job. Overall, online education has caused students to choose online classes over traditional classrooms. In recent studies, online education has had a higher enrollment growth rate than traditional classroom education. As more universities create online degree programs, these numbers will continue to increase. Political "What sets worlds in motion is the interaction of differences, their attractions and repulsions... By suppressing differences and peculiarities... progress weakens." Octavio Paz (Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat; 1914–1998). Zaidi, Verstegen, Naqvi, Morahan, and Dornan (2016) used the perfect quote to describe today's world. Today's world is plagued by cultural assumptions and negative stereotypes. The authors share concerns that educators and students who hold these assumptions hurt their classmates. Online education relies heavily on discussions and students' ability to effectively write down what they have learned and their opinions. However, the way a person is raised culturally can influence the way they write and their opinions. Educators and classmates of these students must be able to look beyond their own assumptions to understand the views of those who are culturally different. After a study conducted by the FAIMER Institute (Foundation for the Advancement of Internal Medical Education & Research) on how to improve intercultural education, they identified four topics that students and educators tended to avoid in online discussion posts: politics, gender, religion and cultural. The four topics were answered by people with similar views and life experiences. However, the topics were never related to health education, which made it difficult for other students and educators to respond. The lack of response has partly contributed to cultural hegemony, which is the domination of a culturally diverse society by a class that controls the culture in that society. Zaidi, Verstegen, Naqvi, Morahan, and Dornan (2016) suggest that the need to keep discussion posts culturally and politically free must be abandoned. The need to keep them free can stifle a student's opinion and does not help to expose others in the class to circumstances alien to their normal cultural and political background. The more aware a person is of the world around them, the less prejudice they will have towards those who are different. DemographicKidd (2010) sets out to define the definition of an adult learner and the impact of online education on them. Adult students are not considered traditional college students due to their different life circumstances. Traditional college students have less to balance than a college student.