Please review my IELTS essay

Some universities offer online courses as an alternative to classes delivered on campus. Do you think this is a positive or negative development?

(I believe this development is not completely positive, so does my approach to this task work? Please check my essay)

Technology has permeated virtually all aspects of modern life. And some universities run web-based courses as an alternative to conventional ones. Personally, while this development confers financial advantages on both students and teachers who live far from their institutions, it also reduces the teaching quality as well as the learning outcome.

On the one hand, the availability of Internet-based courses as a substitute for traditional classes can help students and teachers whose residences are far from universities. To be specific, they can cut their daily expenses by a substantial margin when opting for online classes. Due to not living in the vicinity of universities, students and teachers may have to incur considerable commuting costs as expenses for bare necessities such as food. Nonetheless, this situation can completely reverse if they elect to study and teach from home.

On the other hand, this development can result in a fall in the teaching quality and in students' academic performance. First, unlike classes delivered on campus, their online counterparts can be intermittent, which is often ascribable to the weak Internet connection, seriously interrupting the lessons. Second, teachers may have a hard job supervising their students in 'virtual' classes. Indeed, it would be well-nigh impossible for teachers to know whether their students attend their classes fully or not as the distance between teachers and students are enormous. And were students to 'truant' without the awareness of their teachers, the learning outcome of such students would be negatively affected.

In conclusion, I would reaffirm that while online classes can be financially beneficial for all those concerned, such classes can exert negative impacts on the teaching quality and the academic performance of students.