Traditionally people attend college in beautiful or not so beautiful campuses where you need to be physically present during the scheduled classes. In traditional college students are required to go to classes, participate in discussions, hand in papers, and not get caught falling asleep during lectures.

Online colleges are pretty much the same since students are required to attend online discussions or lectures (though this is usually much less frequent than classes in the traditional colleges), participate in the same discussions or at least in forum discussions, and submit assignments online. The main difference is that students don’t need to be there physically so that they don’t need to pretend to be awake during classes.

Seriously though, the main difference, aside from the requirement to be there physically or the non-requirement for online students, between traditional and online colleges is in the learning style that students will need to use. In traditional colleges students are dependent on their professors to understand the concepts they need to learn. Though some professors might require students to read ahead of their lessons in the end much explaining is still done in the lecture halls. On the other hand online students need to learn an independent style of learning since they need to depend mostly on themselves to be able to understand any of their course materials. Though it is true that online students can ask their professors by chatting with them, sending emails, or even having online group discussions, in the end the bulk of their education depends on them and them alone.

It seems then that studying online is more challenging than simply attending a traditional college. While this may be true for some the advantages that an online education usually offsets this problem. Furthermore by simply knowing this fact you already have an advantage as an online learner since you won’t be taken by surprise and can prepare ahead of time. With a little preparation and the right mindset the independent learning style is actually very effective and a lot more convenient. So unless you have special needs you will surely be able to cope and even flourish with the learning style an online education will demand of you.