I keep hearing about kids in UF that take on line classes. Kids not in the PACE program. I can not seem to get a straight answer from the school as to why, how many? Seems to many students and not enough space to accommodate. Struggling to send a child across the country to sit in her dorm and do an online class. Any insight?
I know several regular students at UF who have had to take some, and sometimes quite a few, online classes their first two years. My understanding is that course selection is based on your accumulated college credits. If you enter UF with 0 college credits, basically you pick classes last, and by then many classes are full, hence the likely need for at least some online classes. As you accrue credits, you move up the course selection queue, and more classroom classes become available. The popularity of your major also affects the availability of classroom classes in that major. This is why PACE is not that big a deal so long as your major is offered in PACE - you spend 2 or 3 semesters in all online classes, as opposed to 2 or 3 semesters with some online classes. By the way, college online classes are quite common today; it’s not unique to UF. So before you decline UF for another college, make sure that other college has no online classes.
My daughter is finishing up her 3rd year (engineering major) and she’s had two online classes; a technical writing class and a business elective. Her roommate, whose a pre-vet major loves them and has taken 3 or 4 her first year but fewer after that.
It’s really up to the student to determine how many to take:
My understanding is it depends on the major. As @Gator88NE indicated, engineering majors take very few. However, business majors take many many more. Actually, even when my husband was a student in the business school over 20 years ago he took “on-line” classes. At least, for business, this is how it works: Every class is offered live early in the morning. Seats are limited and most students choose not to attend class at 8:30 am. You can then watch a recording of the class at your own convenience. Back in my husband’s time, students had to tune to a specific channel on the tv to see the recording. Nowadays, students often gather in study rooms together to watch. Most of your lower level general business classes are presented this way. Once you are deeper into your major very few classes are recorded. But even those classes offered on-line, usually have a lab component where you meet up once a week in small groups to review the material.
I don’t know if this is the same for on-line classes in other fields.
My son was accepted into the Pace Program. We keep looking at Pace thinking maybe it would only be 3 semesters., however, me son’s high school only offers IB, so the downside is we won’t know how much credit he will receive until we get his exam results in July. This is such a tough decision!