If you ever wanted to learn how to rear calves, don’t stock up on rubber gloves just yet.

Nowadays, you can learn pretty much anything without leaving the living room, and you wouldn’t be alone in taking a course outside the physical classroom.

Distance education is a burgeoning field, with seemingly unlimited options available.

However, before rushing out to get your MBA online, it’s worth thinking about whether online learning works for you.

Despite the fact that distance education may be flexible time-wise, the course fees (often as much as regular courses) are certainly not. 

Asking around about people’s experience with online courses, I’ve encountered a variety of responses.

While some have found the freedom invaluable, others confide conspiratorial messages about how much money universities make off of the dropout rates.

To be fair, there’s no one specific brand of distance learning. There are pre-recorded classes, hybrid courses where students meet occasionally in person or online and there are courses where students never have to be connected simultaneously.

There’s no doubt that online courses do fill an invaluable niche by allowing those who do not have access to a campus due to time or geographic constraints to complete a degree, diploma or certificate program.

Of course, they also allow the opportunity to perfect one’s written expression, practice self-discipline and time management, have direct professor interaction and collaborate with students from around the world.

But, all told, online learning leaves a lot to be desired.

One notable downside is something I call the “Tamagotchi effect.” An online course with forums that are open 24/7 and graded participation results in exorbitant amounts of time spent “checking in.”

This inevitably results in a disproportionate occupation of mental space, something in precious short supply during the academic year. 

Perhaps online courses are merely representative of larger trends of living at a distance. Banking, shopping, socializing, working and now learning can all be done from behind a computer screen.

Gone are many face-to-face interactions, group work opportunities and short conversations during class break.

“ Perhaps the largest difficulty with this distance is that it creates an emotional barrier between a students and the course

You may say I am romanticizing the classroom experience, where many rush in and out without a word.

In my experience, however, learning often takes place within the context of a community, something much more easily created in person, regardless of whether or not the opportunity is utilized. 

Perhaps the largest obstacle of distance learning is the emotional barrier it creates between the student and the course.

The combination of necessary participation with a lack of personal investment or accountability can create a tendency towards unthinking interactions, written without emotion or depth of thought.

In light of this distanced communication, I find it hard to imagine that online courses can provide the same opportunities as a physical classroom in the forms of references and networking.

However, these courses do have the potential to provide education to anyone with the technological and financial resources. Even with simple Internet access, one can access free lectures streamed from websites like AcademicEarth.org. 

For anyone already physically at a university, however, the value is less clear.

In the end, universities and colleges are here to help students learn. Finding how this works is part of a process of experimentation.

So, if you do find yourself taking an online class without learning from it, drop it.

The caveat is that you’ve got two weeks before the course refund period is up to figure out if it’s working for you.

Too slow and you’ll give more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.

Ezra Bridgman is an in-the-flesh student at the University of Winnipeg.

Published in Volume 65, Number 24 of The Uniter (March 24, 2011)