Essay Sample: SOME NOTES ON COMPARE/CONTRAST

The English Professor who teaches in a standard, physical location classroom has a lot of responsibility to herself, the institution, the students, and the nation. This is also true for the English Professor who teaches in an online environment. The two professionals are instrumental in the learning process as the transference of knowledge is facilitated by them. They vigilantly oversee this process and offer well-needed guidance and support when necessary. We salute them with the highest honors. For purposes of this essay, the online professor and the traditional professor will be compared and contrasted in terms of income, expense, flexibility, feedback, physical efforts, and technical issues.

How much physical effort is exerted in the teaching experience can vary per individual. However, it is safe to say that the professor who has to go to the physical classroom several days each week will have to make more of a physical effort in the entire process. Getting to the classroom entails getting dressed appropriately and making her way there. Once at the institution, she must make an appearance and a presentation in the classroom. Her voice will be heard throughout the classes as she instructs, comments, and corrects. She will write on the board and she might write on students’ individual papers. Then, at the end of each teaching day, she must make her way back to her home. In contrast, the online professor will have less physical activity to do as she does her teaching through the computer at home.

Technical functions are the next sphere that we must examine. This depends on the individual, but generally speaking, the online professor will be required to engage in more technical operations as she must do her teaching online – electronic mailing, uploading, and so on. In the classroom, the traditional professor might not be required to utilize technology as much as she can use the board, pen, and paper.

Feedback will be less on the part of the online professor. The reality is that there is not a real-time conversation that occurs between this professor and her students. In actuality, there is hardly any discussion at all if the students are not very participative outside of the turning in of the lesson. In the physical classroom, there is likely to be more feedback from the students as there are real-time conversations that occur and there is continuous dialogue between the students and between the students and the professor.

Income may vary based on the institution of education. There are colleges and there are universities and they use different salary or pay scales. These are based on the market and other factors, such as grants, tuition, and institutional expenses. Some institutions are privately run while others are public. Therefore, the incomes of the two different professors might be equivalent or they may be vastly different.

The expenses of the two professors can also be very similar or they can be very different, but this might not have much to do with the environments in which they teach. The level of their expenses will be more dependent upon their individual choices and lifestyles. The professor who teaches online is likely to have less job-related expenses since there is no need to commute to the institution every week or every day. The other, traditional, professor may have higher expenses because of having to commute from home to the institution daily or weekly.

The flexibility of the online professor is unparalleled. She can remain in her home while she competently teaches her classes and she can arrange her daily and weekly schedule with more flexibility than the traditional professor. Having set days and times that she must be in the classroom, the traditional professor must arrange the rest of her schedule with this in mind.

The two English Professors may have variances in their expenses, flexibility, and technical functions, but they may have similar experiences with their incomes and the effectiveness of the lesson or the comments. Even though there may be less expense teaching online, some English Professors may still prefer to be in the traditional classroom. At the same time, some English Professors may prefer to teach online even though a teaching post may pay a higher salary in the physical classroom. The key is to be satisfied with the job itself and then the variations of the working conditions might not be as relevant after a while. Most English Professors seem to be quite happy with their jobs so hopefully the one who wants to be in the classroom will get her desire and the one who wishes to teach online will also get her desire.