More on Online Degrees

Too often people leap into registering for an online degree without doing all their research, which often leads to wasted time, excessive costs, and disappointments. Will employers recognize my degree locally? Is there anyway to shorten the length of time it will take me to complete an online degree? Will my credits be transferable? Is it really an accredited school or is it a degree mill? Has anyone else taken this online degree before me?

Before you decide on the college where you want to earn your online degree, you may want to consider where you will eventually be working and where your earned degree will have a better name recognition. Publicly funded and state schools, local to the area of your future employment searches are worth investigating, as they can be less expensive in the long run. This will offer the name recognition that your future employers may be looking for.

If you have done your research and have earned a degree from a reputable, accredited online school your online degree will have the same standing as a degree earned from a typical campus-based one. In fact, for colleges that offer both online and campus-based learning, an online degree is exactly the same as one earned on campus. Nowhere on your degree will it be listed that you received your education online.

College Study Tips

You may have gotten by in high school by frantically reviewing your notes at 7:15 a.m. on the morning of an exam, but don’t expect to get away with that in college. So says Sherrie Nist, coauthor of College Rules! How to Study, Survive, and Succeed in College (Ten Speed Press, 2002).

As a college educator at the University of Georgia who helps students with their high school to college transitions, Nist should know. After all, she’s seen A+ high schoolers turn into 2.0 undergrads time and time again. But that won’t be you, right?

Of course not! Especially not when you’ve got Nist’s scoop on successful student strategies.

Take action (with texts and lecture notes)
While you may have depended on rereading chapters and rewriting your notes as your main study plan before, things will be different at the college level. “You may have to read 250 pages a week. You can’t reread that three or four times,” says Nist.

Instead, adjust the way you read and take notes. “Since college is a passive activity (you sit there, listen to lectures, take some notes), anything you can do to make it more active is a benefit.” For example, jot notes in a textbook’s margin to highlight key points, reflect on your reading, and review class notes. “Your high school history teacher may have given you a study guide before a test, and all you had to do was memorize it,” says Nist. “Professors in college assume that you know the content; they expect you to synthesize and analyze issues.”

Time is on your side … or is it?
Think about this: You’re going from 7 to 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, of class in high school, to 15 hours per week in college. So why is it that college students are always saying they don’t have time to get things done? As Nist states, “students may have more time on their hands, but they don’t know how to manage it.”

In other words, just because your entire day isn’t bogged down by class after class, this doesn’t mean your schoolwork day is over. “I encourage students to have a 40-hour mindset. Those are the minimum hours you’ll work per week for a full-time job, so you should be a student for 40 hours a week, as well,” she says. Don’t worry–that includes class time, too!
Article provided by The CollegeBound Network

Tips for Distance Learners

Are you thinking about enrolling in a distance-learning program?  You need to know what is expected of you before you enroll, and what equipment you need before you get started.  Here are some tips for distance learners:

Tools
Before enrolling in a course, make sure you have access to the tools necessary to complete assignments. A word processor can help you to organize your work and communicate your thoughts more clearly. Access to a fax machine, computer with adequate hard disk space and modem for e-mail transmission are “musts” for many classes.

Schedule
Set aside a regularly scheduled time for study. Schedule your studies for a time when you are mentally fresh and able to devote at least one hour to your work. Think of the hour as “reserved time.” If you miss too many study periods, revise your schedule.

Where to Study
You will find it easier to focus in an appropriate environment for study. Find a place that is free from distractions.

Reading Skills
You must comprehend and retain what you read for real learning to take place. At the end of a study session, review everything you have read, making special notes of important points. Reading a computer screen can be hard on your eyes; it may be necessary to download hard copies of reading assignments and communications from your instructor and coworkers.

Communication Skills
Pay careful attention to instructions and be certain that you understand what is being asked. It often helps to develop a brief outline before responding to questions whether they are submitted in writing, via e-mail, orally, or on video/audio tape. Organization, grammar, and the appropriate style are important whichever medium you choose.

If you stay focused on your program and follow a regular study schedule, you should have success with your distance-learning course.

Preparing E-Learners for Online Success

Advances in e-learning technology have, however, created new demands on both learners and instructors.

For instructors and learners alike, the introduction of e-learning technologies in the last decade has renovated the all-too-familiar training experiences that endured in organizations for nearly a half-century. From desktop video and instant messaging to just-in-time training using PDAs and iPods, the technologies that are commonly found in organizations and homes are offering instructors and learners a host of new tools that have the potential to dramatically diversify and improve learning. As a result, learning is finally leaving the training classroom and becoming an indispensable ingredient of living and working in our society.
 
These advances in e-learning technology have, however, created new demands on both learners and instructors. The time-tested learning strategies and study skills that most of us developed through 12 or more years of a traditional classroom education can only assist us to a limited degree when courses are moved to e-learning formats. In response, instructors, instructional designers, and curriculum developers have been building an inventory of contemporary skills and techniques for generating useful learning experiences for today’s high-tech learners. At the same time, learners have been informally developing updated study skills and learning strategies in a relatively ad hoc manner.

E-learner readiness

From the challenges of forming study groups in an online environment to new techniques for taking notes while reading PDF files on a PDA, the study skills required for success in e-learning are often beyond those commonly applied in traditional classroom training by successful learners. Many younger learners are actually more capable with video game technologies than theyre are in utilizing online database search engines or learning from interactive chat room discussions. As a result, the e-learning courses that are being used currently in many organizations can present obstacles to learners who have only developed their study skills in low-tech instructor-led classrooms.

As an example, successful learners in high school and college courses have typically developed effective skills for asking questions of and communicating with the course instructor in a face-to-face course format. Yet, when they are offered online training opportunities there may not be an instructor available for feedback, and even if an instructor is available, they are often not accessible for immediate feedback at the time that the learner is struggling with course materials. Accordingly, the pragmatic study strategies used by successful e-learners veers from previous tactics used in the traditional classroom and includes such techniques as using Internet search engines to identify websites that may provide clarification or sending an instant message to a peer in the course while they await instructor feedback.

Without experience or other guidance, most learners—of all ages—are not adequately prepared to learn effectively from the technology-rich training opportunities offered by organizations. As a result, the training investment in high-tech delivery systems and courseware are not regularly achieving their potential impact on learner performance, say Shilwant and Haggarty in the August 2005 CLO article “Usability Testing for E-Learning.” Preparing learners for success in e-learning has become, therefore, a growing priority for training organizations.

E-learning study skills
 
Two essential skills for success in e-learning are adapting old skills and habits from the traditional classroom for use in e-learning and developing and applying new e-learning skills and habits for e-learning. From building a robust vocabulary of technology-related terms to adequately preparing for a debate in online discussion board and building the skills for e-learning typically takes many of the study habits from the traditional classroom and applies them in new ways using technology. For example, learners can apply the Cornell note-taking system even when they’re reading a PDF file they downloaded from the organization’s training library.

In addition to the adaptation of traditional study skills, some technologies have dramatically changed how a learner interacts with their instructors, peers, and course materials, thus requiring the development of some new study skills (see Figure 1). For instance, learners must invent new tactics for creating effective group dynamics when team projects are required in an online environment, such as leading the group through the well-known forming, norming, storming, and performing stages.

By Ryan Watkins

Tips for Distance Learners

Are you thinking about enrolling in a distance-learning program?  You need to know what is expected of you before you enroll, and what equipment you need before you get started.  Here are some tips for distance learners:

Tools
Before enrolling in a course, make sure you have access to the tools necessary to complete assignments. A word processor can help you to organize your work and communicate your thoughts more clearly. Access to a fax machine, computer with adequate hard disk space and modem for e-mail transmission are “musts” for many classes.

Schedule
Set aside a regularly scheduled time for study. Schedule your studies for a time when you are mentally fresh and able to devote at least one hour to your work. Think of the hour as “reserved time.” If you miss too many study periods, revise your schedule.

Where to Study
You will find it easier to focus in an appropriate environment for study. Find a place that is free from distractions.

Reading Skills
You must comprehend and retain what you read for real learning to take place. At the end of a study session, review everything you have read, making special notes of important points. Reading a computer screen can be hard on your eyes; it may be necessary to download hard copies of reading assignments and communications from your instructor and coworkers.

Communication Skills
Pay careful attention to instructions and be certain that you understand what is being asked. It often helps to develop a brief outline before responding to questions whether they are submitted in writing, via e-mail, orally, or on video/audio tape. Organization, grammar, and the appropriate style are important whichever medium you choose.

If you stay focused on your program and follow a regular study schedule, you should have success with your distance-learning course.

Tips for Distance Learners

Are you thinking about enrolling in a distance-learning program?  You need to know what is expected of you before you enroll, and what equipment you need before you get started.  Here are some tips for distance learners:

Tools
Before enrolling in a course, make sure you have access to the tools necessary to complete assignments. A word processor can help you to organize your work and communicate your thoughts more clearly. Access to a fax machine, computer with adequate hard disk space and modem for e-mail transmission are “musts” for many classes.

Schedule
Set aside a regularly scheduled time for study. Schedule your studies for a time when you are mentally fresh and able to devote at least one hour to your work. Think of the hour as “reserved time.” If you miss too many study periods, revise your schedule.

Where to Study
You will find it easier to focus in an appropriate environment for study. Find a place that is free from distractions.

Reading Skills
You must comprehend and retain what you read for real learning to take place. At the end of a study session, review everything you have read, making special notes of important points. Reading a computer screen can be hard on your eyes; it may be necessary to download hard copies of reading assignments and communications from your instructor and coworkers.

Communication Skills
Pay careful attention to instructions and be certain that you understand what is being asked. It often helps to develop a brief outline before responding to questions whether they are submitted in writing, via e-mail, orally, or on video/audio tape. Organization, grammar, and the appropriate style are important whichever medium you choose.

If you stay focused on your program and follow a regular study schedule, you should have success with your distance-learning course.

Rumors of online education’s plateau greatly exaggerated

Contrary to recent projections that online course enrollment at colleges has leveled off, a new report states online enrollment that there was a large increase in online enrollment, reports The Washington Post.

The Sloan Consortium, a group of colleges pursuing online programs, published a report that estimates 850,000 more students took online courses in the fall of 2005 than the year before, an increase of nearly 40 percent. This statistic flies in the face of evidence that online learning growth has reached its peak.

For the entire post, please click here.

Growth in online learning soars

More students are taking school courses via Internet

Roughly one in six students enrolled in higher education — about 3.2 million people — took at least one online course last fall, a sharp increase defying predictions that online learning growth is leveling off.A report to be released today by The Sloan Consortium, a group of colleges pursuing online programs, estimates that 850,000 more students took online courses in the fall of 2005 than the year before, an increase of nearly 40 percent. Last year, the group had reported slowing growth, prompting speculation the trend had hit a ceiling.

For the entire article, please click here.

Growing Popularity of E-Learning

More students are taking online college courses than ever before, yet the majority of faculty still aren’t warming up to the concept of e-learning, according to a national survey from the country’s largest association of organizations and institutions focused on online education.

Roughly 3.2 million students took at least one online course from a degree-granting institution during the fall 2005 term, the Sloan Consortium said. That’s double the number who reported doing so in 2002, the first year the group collected data, and more than 800,000 above the 2004 total. While the number of online course participants has increased each year, the rate of growth slowed from 2003 to 2004.

The report, a joint partnership between the group and the College Board, defines online courses as those in which 80 percent of the content is delivered via the Internet.

The Sloan Survey of Online Learning, “Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006,” shows that 62 percent of chief academic officers say that the learning outcomes in online education are now “as good as or superior to face-to-face instruction,” and nearly 6 in 10 agree that e-learning is “critical to the long-term strategy of their institution.” Both numbers are up from a year ago.

Researchers at the Sloan Consortium, which is administered through Babson College and Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, received responses from officials at more than 2,200 colleges and universities across the country. (The report makes few references to for-profit colleges, a force in the online market, in part because of a lack of survey responses from those institutions.)

Much of the report is hardly surprising. The bulk of online students are adult or “nontraditional” learners, and more than 70 percent of those surveyed said online education reaches students not served by face-to-face programs.

For the entire article, click here. Care to comment?

Report Shows Online Learning Growing

Students taking online courses account for 17% of the total population of 17 million, the Sloan Consortium says.
The number of higher-education students taking online courses is increasing steadily, with about one in six students logging on to the Internet to get instruction, a report released Thursday showed.

Nearly 3.2 million students took at least one online course in the fall 2005 term, a substantial increase over the 2.3 million reported during the same period a year ago, according to the annual study published by The Sloan Consortium and financed through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Students taking online courses account for 17 percent of the total population of 17 million.

The more than 800,000-student increase in the fall was more than twice the number added in any previous year, the report said. “There has been no leveling of the growth rate of online enrollments; institutions of higher education report record online enrollment growth on both a numeric and a percentage basis.”

The study, which is based on surveys conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group, also found that chief academic officers believe the quality of online education is equal to or superior to face-to-face learning. Fully, 62 percent rated both forms of learning the same, or online better, compared with 57 percent in 2003. The percentage rating online as superior rose to 16.9 percent from 12.1 percent.

Academic leaders saw the same barriers to widespread adoption of online education as in previous years. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents cited a need for more discipline on the part of online students. Other roadblocks included faculty issues that included acceptance of online teaching and the need for greater time and effort to teach online. Academic leaders did not see a lack of demand on the part of students, or acceptance of an online degree by employers as barriers.

The largest institutions, defined as more than 15,000 total enrollments, were the most likely to have online offerings. More than 96 percent offered online courses, and about two-thirds have fully online programs.