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 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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For the first few years of my college career, I was a cocky little sucker who was convinced that tutors were for the less-evolved, slower-thinking students on campus. Since I was “gifted” and had always been told that I was in possession of above average intelligence, I would of course be able to learn all college coursework instantly, perfectly, and with no assistance. I know, what a dumb b**ch.
Because I’ve grown as a person, the irony of this is not lost on me: the “average” and “below average” kids showed higher levels of intelligence, common sense and basic survival skills than I had when they all joined study groups and headed to the tutoring center the first week of school.
It took me a few years, but I finally figured out that (a) I was going to actually have to work to learn all the material (sadly, no instantaneous absorption qualities do I possess), and (b) trying to get through college with no assistance just makes you look like a jackass. A jackass with a really expensive, crappy GPA.
The first trip to the tutoring center or to the prof’s office hours were the hardest. Once I got over the hump, I lived there. Later on, during Degree #2 (please see previous post) I was technically in school full-time, but I was creatively spreading my classes out to mostly evening and online courses so I could be home with my infant daughter (only people who can hire drivers and butlers can afford childcare and tuition simultaneously). Which meant I was usually studying at home, halfway across Seattle, not on campus in the library where I could search out a classmate and ask a question about the homework.
I hated so much that feeling of being totally lost or confused by a physics or chem. or calculus problem that I lost any self-consciousness associated with walking into the tutoring center, raising my hand before I even sat down, and asking for help. At some point, when my daughter was old enough to start preschool and I was on campus during the day like a real college student, I had the math tutoring center hours memorized and would just sit in there doing lab write-ups and math homework, raising my hand whenever I encountered a road block.
So the tutors saved my ass (once I managed to yank my own head out of it) and helped me figure out monumental, James Joyce-ian math and physics problems without ever giving me the answers or spoon-feeding me. I needed to understand how to do the problem, I didn’t want the answer. A tutor worth his or her salt never does the work for you. And if you find one who does, pray they’re tiny enough to fit inside your backpack so’s you can bring them along for exams.
If you haven’t come across the OEDb (Online Education Database) site as of yet, your first perusal should be their awesome article/list: The Self-Directed Student Toolbox: 100 Web Resources for Lifelong Learners. It’s pretty cool considering they had to keep the list at a manageable one hundred. It’s neat and tidy, solid but simple. Plus, you know, lots of info for the learners (life-long, college, or otherwise). It’s a lovely website rabbit hole to fall down and explore for a while.
Here’s the article explaining why the OEDb felt compelled to compile such a helpful list:
According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), at least a quarter of the adult population fails to reach the minimum literacy levels needed to cope adequately with the demands of everyday life and work, let alone structural economic and social change. This information was gathered from a survey conducted in 12 OECD countries, which include the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. On the other hand, many adults are turning away from the television and turning on to lifelong learning through traditional classes, online schools, and travel.
Lifelong learning means that individuals can have access to and are willing to participate in ongoing, not recurrent, education. This “learning to learn” philosophy can begin with toddlers and it can extend throughout a person’s life with branches that can extend into various experiences and careers. Since lifelong learning has become a prerogative for many organizations, it would be impossible to list them all here. Instead, we’ve chosen the best resources for adult learners in ten categories to develop a self-directed toolbox that can lead you, the lifelong learner, to other resources that you may need to meet personal goals.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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