Getting an education online can mean incredible flexibility and accessibility for a variety of students, from working professionals looking for ways to advance their careers or get extra training to full-time students pursuing their first degree to individuals just looking for an opportunity to increase their knowledge about a subject in a not-for-credit program. Before you enroll in an online program, however, it is extremely important to understand what kind of education you’re looking for. Do you want a program that satisfies your employer’s standards for job-related training? Do you want to get an advanced degree so that you can move up in your field? Are you looking to take classes from a fully online university or from a widely recognized school that offers traditional on-campus programs as well as online courses? Or, are you interested in using the Internet as a way to connect you to high quality academic resources for your own personal fulfillment?

Once you start researching online schools and academic programs, you will find that there are two types of online education. The first kind of online education offers for-credit courses and charges tuition, evaluates your work and eventually grants you a diploma or certificate. If you graduate from this type of program from an accredited school, the workforce will welcome your degree and your training, deeming you knowledgeable and a capable professional or scholar in your field. The second kind of online education is referred to as open courseware and does not grant diplomas or even credits. Individuals wanting to brush up on certain skills, learn about a new subject for their own personal fulfillment, use online resources to supplement traditional class work, or prepare for a typical course in a subject of which they lack a general understanding, will benefit from open courseware classes. These classes do not hold any practical merit in the outside world or the workforce, as they do not grant credit or even evaluate your work. Once you have determined your basic educational goals and needs, you can then start to research how you will perform in the different learning environments.

The environment for open courseware study is much different than that of traditional online schools that grant degrees. Anyone can access an open courseware class, curriculum, course materials and course information for free, giving the public a chance to complete a course from a well-known or even Ivy League university free of charge and without having the stress of passing or failing. Popular schools that have opened up classes for free include MIT, Tufts University, UC Berkeley and others. Students can click on the course to access the syllabus for the class, and many times, that syllabus will be the exact same one the professor used for his or her traditional class on campus. Open courseware classes also open up many more learning possibilities for students, as there is no specific degree program to follow, and students can choose to take classes whenever they want and in whatever subject they want. MIT’s open courseware list, for example, features subjects like civil and environmental engineering, health sciences and technology, computer science, anthropology, chemistry, economics, business, women’s studies, history, physics, literature, urban planning, nuclear science and more. There is no academic advisor or administrator who will limit the number and type of classes you take in this format.

Online education programs that are offered through an online university or online portal from a traditional, campus-based university do not offer as much freedom as open courseware, but they do offer students more focus. Self study can be difficult for students who are predisposed to procrastination, laziness, distractions and the inability to decide on classes or even meet deadlines. Depending on what kind of personality and work ethic you have, you may be more likely to finish a program if your degree depends on it and if you’ve invested tuition in the program. Online universities also offer students the ability to interact with professors and other students through live lectures, online chats, live podcasts and of course, e-mail. Many open courseware classes are broadcast over video streams or podcasts through iTunesU, but they offer no mutual interaction between professor and the student who is learning from home. Depending on your educational goals and your particular work ethic, you may find that only one of these methods of online self study works for you.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Online Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.