In today’s Daily, the University of Washington’s campus paper, there’s an opinion piece that makes some persuasive arguments for increasing the online-ness of UW’s two online learning options, the College of Engineering’s EDGE Program and UW Online Learning. While the EDGE Program—which was kicking online education ass before online education was cool (since 1984, thank you very much)—has a solid list of online graduate degrees in engineering, UW Online Learning offers a few Master’s degrees and certificate programs, and nowhere at UW is an online undergraduate degree to be found.

The UW is ahead of the curve in the area of digital education. The College of Engineering’s EDGE program offers more than 50 online courses and 10 degrees, and numerous courses and certificates can be obtained via UW Online Learning.

However, UW distance-learning programs fall short of a comprehensive approach to online education. There are numerous core classes missing from the list of course offerings, and only graduate degrees are available online. There are rules limiting the number of online courses that can apply to an undergraduate degree and the amount of courses that can be taken during a quarter.

While the Daily’s columnist, Mr. Noon, is arguing for an increase in online learning options at UW, he’s fair in pointing out that not every course is conducive to an online platform. I, myself, have never been able to figure out how some of the messier science-lab courses could be done away from campus. I’m as adventurous and curious as the next science-geek gal, but I’d prefer it if cadavers and chemistry experiments stayed on campus.

There’s also the question of the technological upgrade UW would have to invest in should online education be expanded. College students tend to be among the more spoiled and savvy tech-users, and they won’t stick around for long at a school that has less than badass technology. And have we forgotten that this is the age of instantaneous information? One whiff of a school’s sub-par technology, and it will be shouted virally from the Twitter rooftops. Keep up, people.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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I’m addicted (addicted, I tell you!) to learning. I love school; I can’t get enough of it. My retirement plan (if buying a tropical island doesn’t work out due to melting glaciers and disappearing archipelagos) is to start right back up with my college education again. I don’t require more degrees; it’s not a matter of whoever-dies-with-the-most-letters-after-their-name-wins, but the process of absorbing knowledge makes me happy, and isn’t that what all retirees are striving for?

Since the economy blows and, thanks to all the advancements in the medical field, I will be living a really long-ass life, I will probably never be able to afford to retire as extravagantly as I may have once hoped. My grandmother, who is a doctor and was raised a Catholic, possesses an incredibly intelligent, humorous, and awfully acerbic wit. She has always maintained that we can all blame overpopulation on doctors and the Pope. Seeing as how she’s still alive (modern medicine and a bunch of doctors saved her ass) and has still not been struck down by lightning (if she was wrong about the Pope, wouldn’t someone have done something about it by now?), I’m going to have to agree with her.

Fortunately for me, I have found a way to continue my knowledge-absorbing dreams for free. UniversitiesandColleges.org has a compiled the be-all end-all of free higher education courses: The Master List of Free Online College Courses. I’m not a Catholic, but I can still hear the angels singing (maybe they’re Ivory Tower angels).

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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For college students interested in pursuing nursing degrees, their timing couldn’t be better. The shortage of nurses is starting to reach acute proportions, and the people in charge are starting to freak out. To make matters worse, last year 50,000 applicants couldn’t get into nursing programs because there wasn’t enough room.

In an effort to educate more students in the ways of the nurse, new, online versions of the accelerated BSN programs are being launched:

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the nursing shortage has severe national implications, with approximately 1 million unfilled nursing positions projected by 2020. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), has reported that nursing schools must increase the number of graduates by 90 percent in order to combat this shortage.

This fall, Marian College students will begin classes in an online accelerated BSN program that blends the convenience of online learning with on-site clinical education at St.Vincent Indianapolis Hospital. Individuals who currently hold a baccalaureate degree in a non-nursing field will be eligible for the program. Marian College has offered a more traditional, classroom-based accelerated BSN program for several years, and this program will continue to be offered on the Marian College campus.

Resources:

American Association of Colleges of Nursing
American Nurses Association
National League for Nursing
Bureau of Labor Statistics: LPN and LVN
Bureau of Labor Statistics: RN
Nursing School Education Resource Center

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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CertificationMap.com was just launched as a resource for educator-hopefuls. The site is simple and clean of line (I dislike chaotic websites) and conveys the pertinent information in a zippy manner. If I were planning on pursuing a career as a teacher in the State of Washington, for instance, I would click on the Washington blob on the map (I live here, so I totally know what my state looks like) and would be shown a list of all that would be required of me education-, certification-, and red-tape-wise.

It’s a useful list to be sure. However, I can almost guarantee that I, personally, will never be implementing it as a checklist because I will sell snow cones in extremely cold underworldy sorts of places before I would be patient enough to become an educator of humans who haven’t yet reached their full adult status.

I have gallons of respect for the people who can withstand the insanity, the mayhem and the politics such that they can relay information and knowledge to our children. I can handle lots of things, but I have a strict four-kid limit (and two of them have to be my own). I can’t see ever getting a classroom population like that, so no teaching career for me.

Seriously, I don’t know how teachers do it. I dislike pandemonium, interruptions, and people telling me what to do. I would last maybe three hours before I’d launch myself out the first available window. Some people are really good at dealing with multiple crises while imparting knowledge, and always with an audience watching. Those people should teach.

More Helpful Resources:

BLS Guide: Teacher
Traditional Education Degree Programs
Online and Hybrid Education Degree Programs
U.S. Dept. of Education: Become a Teacher
Teachers Support Network: Tools and Advice
Teacher Certification Map Press Release

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Jane Hart over at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies has compiled some great lists for e-learning tools. The lists are geared more toward educators, but I think a decent majority of the items are relevant for students as well, especially grad students who spend their days walking that line between penniless student and underpaid educator.

There’s the Top 25 Free Tools List, which is awesome for its no-charge-ness:

1. Firefox plus extensions—web browser
2. delicious—social bookmarking tool
3. Google Reader—rss reader
4. Gmail–webmail
5. Skype—instant messenger
6. Google Calendar—online calendar
7. Google Docs—online office suite
8. Slideshare—presentation sharing tool
9. flickr—image hosting and sharing tool
10. Voicethread—collaborative slideshow tool
11. Wordpress—blogging tool
12. Audacity—audio/podcasting tool
13. YouTube—video hosting and sharing tool
14. Jing—screencasting tool
15. PBwiki—wiki tool
16. PollDaddy—polling tool
17. Nvu—web authoring tool
18. Yugma—web meeting tool
19. Ustream—live broadcasting tool
20. Ning—(private) social networking tool
21. Freemind—mind mapping tool
22. Moodle—course management system
23. eXe—course authoring tool
24. iGoogle—personal start page tool
25. twitter—microblogging tool

And there’s the slide show below of the Top 100 Tools For Learning 2008:

Posted by Alexa Harrington

There is nothing ignoble or invalid about taking online courses or pursuing an online degree for purely time- and money-saving reasons. However, I would say that slightly more admirable are the motivations of the veterans taking online courses while their bodies and minds do some necessary mending.

It seems like it would be great fun attending classes and jumping right into the whole college campus scenario when your previously perfect body is newly broken and just won’t work the way you want it to and your mind is dealing with a sucky case of PTSD, but it’s probably nowhere near as good a time as it sounds. There are a plethora of solid arguments for online education; this is one of the better ones.

As far as online education advice goes: Again I say, if the student is self-motivated and is fine with not being involved with some or all of the college campus experience, then online classes and/or an online degree can be an excellent option. Taking everything online is possible for some degrees; taking some combination of on-campus and online coursework works, too. That’s kind of the best of both worlds.

Anyone cogitating on the online degree possibilities should always, always, always check up on the accreditation status of the college or university in question, especially if it’s a fully online school.

You’re usually safe signing up for online courses at a well-established brick-and-mortar school, but if there’s even a whisper of doubt, I promise it will be worth the five minutes it will take you to check. You can verify your prospective school’s accreditation status with the U.S. Dept. of Education’s database of accredited postsecondary institutions and programs, or with the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

If you require more information and advice, these guys have a lot of information about online education, as well as a long damn list of accredited schools (all the schools listed on their site are accredited, which makes it easy).

Posted by Alexa Harrington

photo credit: Steve Sokolic, Associated Press

Online learning is already a pretty flexible education option, but now students in Louisiana have an even bendier education alternative via mobile devices. This is a prime example of necessity being the mother of invention: The state of Louisiana has a workforce shortage of 90,000 and the job openings require some education and training. Unfortunately, the potential workers who could go to school and absorb the necessary knowledge are all already working in less-skilled, lower-paying jobs and have little or no extra time for on-site or even online courses.

The Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS) has partnered with Pearson Custom Solutions to create a customized online learning program for use on mobile devices, i.e., the AT&T Blackberry Curve. Courses will be facilitated by the Pearson company eCollege. The hope is that the combination of print, digital and online coursework will make education a viable option for Louisianians.

“We believe the ability to do some of their course work through the cell phone will be a major draw for individuals,” said Dr. May. “Presently, of the 4.2 million individuals that make up our state’s population, 25% have Internet access while 68% have cell phones. That means there are a large number of individuals to whom we can offer an opportunity to take courses, earn a degree, and have better quality of life in a more convenient way. We are very pleased to be able to offer this opportunity to our citizens. ”

While I think it’s a little creepy that the courses designed for mobile devices require the student to use a specific brand of cell phone, I still applaud the fact that the program as a whole isn’t a frivolous use of technology.

Further Reading:

Groundbreaking Mobile Learning Program Will Train For Louisiana’s 90,000 Job Vacancies

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Online colleges have increased in popularity and ease of use over the past decade. A lot of that probably has to do with the convenience factor of online courses—no travel time, no sitting in class, no moving to another city, etc. In addition, the fact that the technology has improved on both ends—the school/instructor end and the student end—makes the whole concept more feasible for anyone who might be considering online education as an option. There are pros and cons to an online education, but for an increasing number of students, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

As far as online course options go, there are two: you can take online courses from a fully online college, which would enable you to earn an entire degree online; or you can take online courses from a traditional brick-and-mortar college that offers online courses in addition to their regular in-classroom courses.

Online college resources:

All Online Schools

Online MBA Programs
The Open University (in the UK, but a good resource nonetheless)

Taking online courses from a known brick-and-mortar college makes the question of accreditation a little less sketchy. Because anyone can pretty much do and say whatever they want online, if you’re looking into a fully online education at a fully online college, you owe it to yourself to check their accreditation status. Fake diplomas from diploma mills don’t tend to look stellar on the résumé.

Here are some good accreditation resources:

Council for Higher Education Accreditation
U.S. Dept. of Education

Posted by Alexa Harrington

According to this article in the CS Monitor, more and more parents are keeping their kids home and sending them to virtual schools in which the teachers and coursework are accessed online. Any extra supplies are sent by mail to the students’ homes. One mom describes the idea of sending her kid to a virtual school as “the 21st-century, middle-class version of the private tutor.”

Kids who attend virtual schools can spend the extra time on the subjects they have a harder time grasping, and can more speedily attack the subjects they’re comfortable with. In an actual classroom, the teacher has the difficult job of having to walk that middle road: teaching at the average students’ learning pace. The unavoidable results of this are that the kids who are having a tough time get left behind, which affects them academically as well as socially and emotionally, and the kids who understand the information immediately can end up feeling bored and unchallenged.

The idea of sending kids to virtual school is gaining popularity:

Enrollment in online classes last year reached the 1 million mark, growing 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning. That’s just the start, says a new paper by the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Its authors predict that by 2019 half of courses in Grades 9 to 12 will be delivered online.

But, as with every new notion, the implementing of it often involves some working out of the inevitable kinkage. Monitoring learning hours accurately, issues with funding, and having better “official oversight” in place is still being worked out. I think it’s worth the effort to have it be a workable option for kids who either don’t have access to adequate schools, or who don’t fit into their available school for whatever reason.

I’m fortunate enough to live in a city with a decent public school system, and (so far) I have the time and energy to be there when my daughter is doing her homework and to spend time helping her with her extra reading every day. Which is all by way of saying I feel confident that between her day at a good public school and being home in the evenings with her not-utterly-exhausted parents, my kid is going to be covered on all educational fronts.

However, if Seattle schools sucked or if my daughter had issues that I didn’t feel the public education system was handling effectively, I would be stoked of I had solid online options available.

Further Reading:

NPR: Public Schools Expand Curriculum Online

Resources:

North American Council for Online Learning
Virtual School Clearinghouse
University of California College Prep
K12

Posted by Alexa Harrington

College enrollment has maintained a generally upward trend for the past several decades. (Being educated has turned out to have been an excellent idea.) In keeping with the increased enrollment trend, the number of adults pursuing education has been on the rise. According to the N.C.E.S., the adult education numbers for Fall 2007 were 6,956,000 adults aged 25 and over enrolled in college (compared to 10,825,000 18 to 24-year-olds enrolled).

I can’t see that the numbers of adults seeking higher education will diminish any time soon, as we have the Baby Boomers beginning to hit retirement age. As far as generations go, the Boomers are a highly educated group. A lot of them are looking at retirement as the perfect excuse to go back to school.

Being severely technical about it, traditional college students are ages 18 to 24, and nontraditionals are age 25 and up. The ‘traditional’ window is only six years (so you’d better get on with it), and yet those students are the norm and have a smoother college career than most nontraditional students. That may have something to do with the fact that attending college is their main focus. Also, everyone expects them to be there and doing nothing beyond going to school, which simplifies things a bit.

The nontraditionals, however, have a slightly more complicated and less normal postsecondary education process. Things are getting easier as time goes on and the powers that be realize that there’s a decently-sized chunk of the college student population that has different needs, issues, and requirements like childcare, funding, and access to evening, weekend and online courses. Going to school as an eighteen-year-old is different than being a college student with a whole separate non-college life that you can’t disengage from.

Younger students can immerse themselves completely in the college life. Adult nontraditional students can end up having a little bit of a schizophrenic superhero alter ego thing going on. I was a lucky little girl and got to experience college as a traditional and as a nontraditional student. The younger version had a lot more fun and a lot less stress and a somewhat less mature work ethic. The older version had no fun, stupid amounts of stress and had a work ethic capable of turning a lump of coal into a diamond in about two weeks.

I have such fond memories of my first degree—everything is college-campus gorgeous and is rosy-golden and halcyon-hued. My second degree has not one happy moment and is steeped in so much reality it reeks. As such, I would highly recommend not having a newborn in tow when heading back to school. Most adult students head back into the fray when their progeny are at a more independent age and I’m certain this yields better results.

There are more and more adult education-seekers out there these days, which will help their situation considerably. Evening, weekend and online courses are widely available and are usually the best option for adult students who have a career or a family to consider. Not going the traditional daytime college-campus route means missing out on the full college experience, but decreasing the daily commute time or being able to continue working is the most feasible plan for some. Another perk, of course, is that all the other nontraditionals with whom you can commiserate with are more likely to be taking the online, weekend and evening courses.

Adult Education Resources:

AdultStudent.com

Top Ten Adult Student Books

Fun With Statistics:

N.C.E.S.: Participation in Adult Learning

U.S. Census Bureau: 2006 School Enrollment

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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