Comparison of Online and Face-to-Face Instruction

Similarities

Online and hybrid courses have many same administrative functions as those teaching in the face-to-face classroom, such as developing curriculum, choosing textbooks, verifying course rosters, adding and dropping students, entering grades at the prescribed times, and creating and uploading syllabi.
Both online learning and traditional learning require a great amount of work.
Giving and receiving constructive feedback is important in both environments.
Assignments are a huge part of the learning experience.
Both require assessments.
The challenges and rewards are the same in each environment.
Both require that students manage their time wisely.
"While some studies show online students slightly outperforming their traditional classroom counterparts, most indicate that there is little difference in overall performance between the two formats, according to the American Sociology Association" (Morgan 2016).

Online teaching will take a lot of work to get the course set-up before the first day of class.
Online learning requires more self-direction and discipline in order to get coursework completed on time.
Online feedback can be slower than that of face-to-face feedback found in the traditional classroom.
As an online instructor, you will need to facilitate and help build your online community of students through ice-breaker activities, threaded discussions, group work, peer review, etc.
As an online instructor, you will need to create intentional activities and spaces for three types of interaction: instructor-to-student, student-to-instructor, and student-to-student.
In an online course, you may have no idea what different types of learning abilities that students have and it is therefore critical to employ accessibility and universal design strategies throughout the curriculum.
It can be more difficult to identify and support students with either instructional or technical difficulties in the course.