The biggest differences between online universities and traditional universities involve where and how instruction is delivered.
Online universities give students the opportunity to access their courses from virtually anywhere in the world, as long as they have access to the Internet, while a traditional university is limited to one location. Professors at online universities use a variety of multimedia resources to deliver instruction to their students. Using a software program specially designed for online learning, online professors can provide links to study materials, supplement learning using streaming audio/video, host Web conferences with multiple students or communicate via e-mail and chat.
At a traditional university, students typically attend class on campus in a classroom with a professor physically present. While professors often use multimedia resources like PowerPoint and supply online materials using programs like Blackboard, the emphasis is on what goes in the physical classroom. Students can receive lower grades for not attending class at set times each week, and schedules are typically more rigid than online universities, where the emphasis is always on what can be delivered in a format suitable to someone learning from a computer.
Traditional classes do not always work well for working adults with full-time jobs. While traditional universities do offer night classes for students who work during the daytime, they do not offer nearly as many options for night classes as daytime classes. Also, a student may have to attend school part time if only taking night classes, which can reduce their ability to get full financial aid or some grants. Online universities make it their mission to create more and more options for those who need to work full-time and attend school full-time.
Increased flexibility for students with busy schedules is another difference. The classes offered by online universities require that students log in a certain number of times per week, but often those log-ins do not have to be at a specific time. Online professors have the latitude to let students turn in work or take tests over the weekend, rather than during the week. With traditional universities, if you miss a set test day or other due day, you are often out of luck.
At an online university, you may never meet a single professor or fellow student in person, while in-person social interaction is a vital part of the traditional college experience. Students at online universities learn by themselves at home and cannot go up to tap a professor on the shoulder and ask them a question. Students at online universities must have the ability to work independently, even though they are always at liberty to communicate tough questions to professors or fellow students through e-mail or chat.