Online Courses Change the Face of Education

A few short years ago, when a handful of colleges (some a little suspect) began offering online courses, the whole idea was considered offbeat. Now many mainstream colleges and universities around the U.S. and throughout the world are offering courses online, some leading to a bachelor's or even a master's degree.

Both private and state-run colleges are offering courses through the Internet culminating in degrees ranging from Information Technology to Accounting, Psychology, and Business Management. In addition, private, for-profit businesses offer courses in specialized subjects. Even Donald Trump has gotten into the game; in the summer of 2005 he announced the creation of Trump University, teaching online courses including "How to Buy a House" and various real estate development and management courses, led by instructors with pretty substantial credentials, including a business professor from Dartmouth College.

Why Study Online?

With the constantly shifting work scene, it's becoming essential that workers keep up to date on the demands of their profession, and even expand their knowledge base as a hedge against outsourcing and all the other threats to job security. Online courses are an easy way to keep abreast of information from current computer software and hardware to the latest business practices.

It's impractical for most fulltime workers to take time off from work to attend college, and attending evening classes can really cut into valuable family time. On the contrary, logging onto the Internet in your own living room, at a time chosen by you, can allow you to fit valuable learning into a hectic schedule with minimal disruption. You also have unlimited access to the educational institution of your choice without having to pick up and move – you can live in rural New England and access schools in California, Arizona, or wherever you want.

Studying online is also a good way to prepare for a change in careers; training that you might not be able to find locally is available for you on the Internet. Of course, if you want to prepare for a new career without necessarily informing your boss, it's a lot easier to keep that fact a secret than if you're caught hanging out at the local college three evenings a week.

How to Pick an Online College

Once you've decided on a course of study, there are a few ways to decide which online college or university to choose. One place to start is the university system in your own state; although dealing with your own university doesn't guarantee good online courses, the fact that it is an established, accredited institution suggests that it applies strict standards to its online courses.

Dealing with a nearby college for your online education needs has an additional benefit; you can actually meet with college officials if you want, and do some research on other students in the area who've taken the courses, with the goal of gauging the quality of the course and the student's educational experience. While this can be done online, it's not as easy.

If you want to go farther afield for your online education, you can do a Google search to find colleges and universities in other locations offering courses over the Internet. One website which lists both accredited colleges and universities and training schools is elearners.com. The site offers a wealth of information about a lot of good online programs, but is not comprehensive; for instance, the state of New Hampshire has a university system and other colleges which offer online courses, none of which are listed.

A final thought – make sure that before you sign up for an online course, you know how it operates. Does the course you want take place at certain times of the day, or is it constructed so that you can log in any time of the day or night? A regularly scheduled online course may offer the additional advantage of real time interaction with a professor and other students, but may not fit in with your schedule. So check this before you sign on.

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About Aldene Fredenburg

Aldene Fredenburg is a freelance writer living in southwestern New Hampshire, who has written numerous articles for the Internet and for local and regional publications. She may be reached at amfredenburg@yahoo.com.


And here is another random article you might be interested in...

How To Make Sure Your Email Is Ignored, Hated or Deleted in 2 Seconds

What I am about to say will make some people stand up and shout "hooray!" It will make others blush with embarrassment. Either way, take this advice and make your life a little bit easier.

This is about email etiquette. When you are exchanging emails with friends and family, do whatever you want. But when you are conducting business, either as the customer or as the merchant, you need to observe some common rules.

First, I am constantly amazed, on a daily basis, how many people will send me an email without signing their name! C'mon! If you send me an email without signing your name, my first impression of you is "LAZY BUM." Right or wrong, that's what you project if you don't bother to sign your name. It's a common courtesy to sign your full name.

Here is the rule: If it's worth sending, it's worth signing.

This is just like writing a paper letter to a company. You should tell them who you are. Always sign your first and last name.

I got an email the other day from a customer that had NO name at all, and all it said was...

"i lost my psswrd"

That's it! How lazy is that? That's all it said. No name, no contact information. After spending a few minutes checking my database (grrrrr), the email was not on file. In other words, they were contacting me now with a different email address then they signed up with and they were too lazy to tell me who they were. How can I help this person?

So I had to email the person back and start trying to extract basic information out of them so I could help them. It was like pulling teeth. This is really irritating. And get 10 or 20 of these a day and it becomes a gigantic pain in the you-know-what. You will soon understand this when you get an email from one of your own customers who needs the download link for your ebook again because they lost the link. Hey, we all lose links and info from time to time. However, an email that says "pls send link" with no name or contact details doesn't cut it. You've got to know who they are first in order to help them. So make sure when you contact people in a business setting that you do so properly. You will save them and YOU some valuable time.

Second, do not leave the subject line of your emails blank. Not only does it look like SPAM, and some people won't even bother to read it, but it makes you look LAZY! Put a subject line in your emails.

Third, get rid of that silly background color, flowers, smiley faces, pictures and all that other junk. Many email services block those pictures now anyway, mine does. Oh, and that beautiful email you think you are sending shows up as bunch of ugly boxes with red X's in them. I even get emails where people have brown writing on a black background. What were they thinking? I can't even read the darn things and have to copy and paste it into Microsoft Word to even figure out what their email is saying. Just a white background and black letters is fine, thank you.

In a world where common courtesies seem to be going down the drain, take some pride and be one of the people who project a smart, professional image. Not only will it make you look better, but it will save you time and energy.

Copyright 2006 Jeff Yancey

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About Jeff Yancey

Jeff Yancey is the author of The Pegasus Formula: How To Create A Perpetual Traffic Generator and Get Lots of Real Traffic To Your Website located at http://www.pegasusformula.com.