What Are The Best Online Colleges For You to attend in 2010 and Beyond? |
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| By Alex De Mostafa |
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| Many people are either attending or thinking about attending
an online college. They are very flexible and available
pretty much anywhere that one can go on the web. We are
going to look at online colleges and make some suggestions
for how to find one the best online colleges for you. Online education is a form of distance education, which has been around for a long time. Correspondence courses were an early form of distance education. The student would receive course materials in the mail, do the assignments and mail them to the instructor, and receive feedback and subsequent assignments in the mail. It is possible to have online education that works much like this, just using email instead of paper mail. This can certainly reduce the turnaround time. However, placing courses on the web opens up many possibilities for improvement. Course materials may be presented on the web rather than on paper. Not everyone likes to do large amounts of reading on a PC, but there is a clear convenience advantage to this. Many web based courses include a facility for class discussion, generally involving both the instructor and the students. Some online colleges make this class discussion a key part of the course. Clearly this can enable the kind of interaction and discussion that was previously limited to classroom courses. A key question to ask when evaluating online colleges is whether the school has a program that fits what you are looking for. If you want to study physics but they only offer business and criminal justice, that probably would not be a good fit. Another question is the level of accreditation that the school has. This is a little complex because different parts of the country have different accreditation agencies, and not all accreditations are equal. For example, for schools on the west coast of the United States, WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) is the highest level of accreditation. If you attend a school on the west coast that does not have WASC accreditation, there is a risk that you might not be able to transfer your credits elsewhere. How about the quality of the school? This is very important, but also very hard to answer. It is hard to nail down what quality even means in this case. Is it about the presentation of the course material? This is important in that it influences how much you learn. Is it about the reputation of the school? The reputation can be important as a good reputation may be helpful to the school's graduates when they are searching for jobs. One can do informal quality research by searching the school on the web and looking at comments about it. More formal quantitative ratings are also available on some sites. One must be cautious about using these as precision in ratings does not necessarily mean that their relevance is high. Finding the best online colleges is not a simple thing. Also note that there is not a universal solution. Everyone has their own unique situation, which must be carefully considered when making a college selection. |
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| Article Source: http://interpret.zar.vg | ||||
| About The Author The best online colleges offer a full range of courses and classes. You can study at the best colleges online without leaving your current job. |
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