What do you think about an online degree?
Not from one of those "online" only school. I mean a degree that you get online from a real school. Such as Upper Iowa University and Florida Metropolitan University.
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Not from one of those "online" only school. I mean a degree that you get online from a real school. Such as Upper Iowa University and Florida Metropolitan University.
No tags for this post.
February 22nd, 2010 at 10:53 am
I’ve been taking all of my courses online for my Bachelors in Information Science through the University of North Texas, and plan on continuing into the master’s level program (which is also web-based) in the fall. Online courses are really convenient if you need to structure your school work around your job or family life, or if you don’t live near the university that offers what you need for your degree. I’m really lucky with my degree in that the information and library science department offers all of their regular, on-campus courses online, because there are many departments at the university that offer very little, if anything, online, mainly because many of the professors don’t want to learn how to use the e-class software or are limited in their computer skills.
The belief that online degrees are for the lazy is actually a big misconception, and just the opposite is true. Getting an online degree requires a lot of self-discipline, and in most cases is actually harder than a regular, on-campus degree. The workload is higher and often the content of most online courses is harder and more exhaustive. The lazy people that register for online courses find out really quickly that online courses aren’t for them because they can’t keep up with the workload or the time constraints and fast pace of the courses. They also end up dropping or failing because the e-class software tracks every movement made by each student in the course (course web pages clicked on, how much a student logs into the classroom, etc.), and most professors use this information as well as other methods (class discussion, group projects, etc.) to calculate a class participation grade, so if they’re not participating and logging in as they should be, they end up losing enough points to usually knock them down a letter grade.
But overall, if you’re lucky enough to find a school in your degree field that offers online courses, and you feel that you can dedicate yourself to completing the work, it’s worth trying for a course or two if you need to structure school to fit your schedule.