The one thing that sometimes bothers me about being an online student is that I don’t really get to interact with the other students in my classes. Sure during discussions and group projects we email, post to message boards, do web meetings, or teleconferences, but when I say interact , I mean socially (non-school related). In one of my classes we had to plan out the logistics of having a party with all of the people in our web-based class. It was very interesting to see what types of issues would be had and what information had to be gathered in order to make a party possible. It was definitely more difficult than if everyone was on campus.
I get all of the graduate student emails and they have pizza and beer night, movie night, etc. It would be fun to do some of those things. I’m sure not every distance learner feels the same way. Most distance learners have full-time jobs and some even have families, so even if they had to go to campus to take classes they probably wouldn’t have time to go to the meet and greet social events.
Another thing is the gym, if I was on campus, I definitely wouldn’t be paying for a gym membership, because I could just use the Stevens facilities. I think that is another perk, because Stevens also has group exercise classes that are given in the evenings. I think the best of both worlds would be to be a distance learner but live close to the Stevens Campus, that way, if you wanted you could go in for the events and free gym membership but you have the flexibility of not “having” to go to campus.
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