All students who have attended the American K-12 school system have experience with offline classes. The instructor lectures, students take notes, labs are completed and learning occurs. As more colleges offer online classes, some students are left with the question, "How are online classes different than offline classes?" The main differences are the role of the instructor, the traits required of students for success in the online environment as opposed to the traditional classroom, and access to course materials. Unlike classroom lectures, materials in the online classroom are available for repeated viewings, giving online students a distinct advantage.

In online education, the instructor becomes a "guide on the side" rather than a "sage on the stage." Online students are dependent on phone, email, or chat rooms to interact with instructors. Instructors in traditional classrooms use a variety of techniques in the classroom to maintain student attention, and can quickly adapt the teaching methods if it is apparent that students are lost or confused. Online instructors must glean these problems from lack of participation, poor grades, or in the best scenario, student requests for aid.

Online students tend to think the instructor should be available whenever the student is ready to work. In asynchronous online classes, though, instructors and learners are seldom online at the same time, which may cause students to feel overwhelmed or abandoned. To help prevent this very real distress for online students, instructors should develop an acceptable method of communication for students to use in case of need. Some instructors will create virtual office hours set up in the course management software chat room. Others will specify a phone number and a time students are welcome to call for help.

Students in the online classroom must have a base level of computer literacy in order to access the class, download assignments and electronically submit assignments. While students rely on the offline instructor to impart knowledge to them, instructors in the online classroom provide access to content, but the student is responsible to be an active participant by reading content, watching presentations and movies, and listening to audio files available in the online classroom. In short, students must be more self-reliant and self-directed in the online class than in the offline class. Students who prefer to 'wing it' in class will not do well in online classes, since online courses require planning, time-management, self-discipline, and self-motivation. Without these traits, the online student will struggle to succeed.

For information and helps for the online student, visit http://www.studentagain.com or http://non-traditional-student.blogspot.com.