The College Lifestyle From The Comforts Of Home

The college experience, while typically imagined as an in-classroom activity, can be experienced in different ways.

Not every course taught at Green River College is classroom-based. Many courses ranging from English, Sociology, and even Physical Education have alternative options where students could choose whether they would like to partake in the class digitally from inside the comfort of their homes.

“I…love the idea of online classes,” said Abdi Ibrahim, a first-year student attending Green River College. “It fits well with my flexibility [around] events within my life.”

One of the biggest reasons why most students partake in online courses is primarily due to the time management privileges that come with them. Most instructors teaching online courses at Green River value the idea of meeting deadlines for a number of tasks assigned. Face-to-face courses, on the other hand, students are expected to show up at fixed times for a specific number of days in the school week.

Students partaking in online courses across Green River primarily use the Canvas website as their main source of communication with classmates and instructors. It is also on Canvas where students are able to view the course syllabus, assignments, and contact information relating to the classroom.

“Throughout my experiences of taking online classes at other colleges, instructors would highly encourage their students online to visit their real-life office hours for further enhancement pertaining their educational experiences,” continued Ibrahim. “There will be the rare instance where the instructor cannot be reached out on campus, but that is where email comes into play. Communication is pivotal between a student and instructor.”

It is, indeed, possible for students to complete their entire associate’s degree strictly online, with the recurrence of a few in-person classes here and there. As of the 2016-17 school year, approximately 27.1% of Green River’s 13,512 enrolled students took part in Hybrid classes, a combination of course instruction both on campus and digitally.

During that same year, nearly 7.2 percent of Green River’s student body took part in strictly online courses. Of the 13,512 Green River students during the same academic school year, 56.8 percent decided to partake in face-to-face sessions.

“It [is] possible to complete your degree without taking another class on campus,” claims E-Learning, found at Green River’s website. “Hybrid classes combines online instruction with required classroom time, eliminating the need to come to campus every day.”

As convenient as they may seem, online courses can also impede the pivotal face-to-face experience deemed necessary for academic success. This belief, at least, is according to Mohamed Abdullahi, a second-year student at GRC.

“Online classes, in my honest opinion, are harder than a real-life class,” said Abdullahi. “I did not have the face-to-face interaction with my instructor. To make matters worse, my instructor was not available to my convenience, so whenever I had an inquiry pertaining the class, it could not be answered in a timely manner.”

Despite some of the drawbacks pertaining the nature of online instruction, some students ultimately have no choice but to sign up for these digital courses due to other recurrences pertaining time management within their personal lives. Other students might choose to take online classes due to their own personal preference.

If someone plans on taking online courses at Green River College, it would be important to check out Green River’s official E-Learning website for more information on the wide variety of digital courses. The link to more information is https://www.greenriver.edu/students/academics/e-learning/.