The Basics of Higher Education and Choosing Online Programs

[sanantone]

What to expect in online courses. First of all, some schools still offer correspondence courses. These have been offered for over a hundred years. They mail the course materials to you, and you mail assignments back for grading. These types of courses are not as common as online courses. There are two types of online courses: asynchronous and synchronous. Most online courses are asynchronous. You can log into your virtual classes at anytime, but you still have to adhere to deadlines for assignment completion. Some schools offer self-paced courses that give you a semester/term to 6 months or a year to complete all of the required assignments. Synchronous courses will require that you log in at specific times to participate in a live chat room or listen to or watch a live lecture. Like I said, these aren’t that common.


Even among asynchronous courses, some instructors will offer an optional chat session or live lecture. Some will upload recorded lectures. I haven’t encountered this much. Normally, presentations and written lectures are uploaded. A thing that I commonly hear from students who have taken online courses is that they require more work. Instead of taking tests due to perceived security issues, tests/quizzes/exams are replaced with papers. In my opinion, it takes a lot more effort to write a paper than to prepare for a multiple choice or essay exam. Also, since you aren’t in a class to participate in discussions, most online courses will require discussion board posts. They will make you write 100-500 word discussion board posts regarding a topic, and you often have to provide citations. These aren’t opinion pieces. They will also make you respond to the postings of 2 or 3 classmates. Compare this to sitting in a classroom of 15 to 500 people. Most of the time, you probably won’t have the chance or even be asked to speak. If you do speak, you might utter a few sentences. You also don’t have to provide a detailed response to something a classmate said.


Many online courses still require tests whether proctored or unproctored. Proctored means that you have to find an approved person to watch you while you take a paper or online exam. You can use someone at a library or a testing center at a local college. I only had one course that required proctored exams. I took them at a local university and paid a testing fee of $20. More and more colleges are using an online proctor called ProctorU. In the comfort of your own home, a ProctorU employee will watch you through a webcam to make sure you aren’t cheating.


Among unproctored exams, I’ve had many that are timed. If I didn’t know the material, I didn’t have time to look up the answer to every single question in the textbook or online. A couple of courses used the Respondus Lockdown browser that prevents you from doing anything else on your computer while taking a test. I admit that this probably doesn’t do much since people these days tend to own mobile devices with internet access.


Another misconception is that cheating is rampant among online students. Out of all the studies I’ve read, the conclusion is either that online students cheat just as much as ground students or that they cheat less. Online students tend to be of the non-traditional college age and older students cheat less than younger students. One study said that people find it easier to cheat off of classmates when they see them face-to-face on a regular basis. Cheating is not only possible on papers (on campus students do attempt to buy papers), but they are possible with tests. Even at the top colleges, take home tests are given. While this is not cheating, some courses at respectable colleges have in-class tests that are open book and/or open note.


A little bit about my personal experience. This is my first year taking college courses on campus. I completed all of my credits for an associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, graduate certificate, and master’s degree online. I first attended a for-profit college when I was very naïve. When I noticed that it was too expensive and that the quality of education was poor, I dropped out. I transferred my credits to a CC in Texas (I live in Texas but I was hours away from this school). I took some online courses from them, but I decided I did not want to study computer science and dropped out again. I also had a lot of family problems that made it difficult to concentrate. After a little break, I enrolled in another for-profit college. I had trouble focusing (I think I have ADD) and dropped out again. After taking a break for several months, I enrolled at my local community college district. I wish I would have done this in the first place because it only cost me about $54 per credit at the time. I took online courses at those colleges too. After doing a bit of research, I found out about three colleges that are great for non-traditional students.


There is something called the residency requirement. This is used in two different ways. One way refers to the amount of time you have to spend on campus when in an online program. Usually in online doctoral programs, you have to spend a couple of weeks on campus each semester or year. The other way refers to how many credits you have to take at a school in order to be awarded a degree. These credits can be taken online or on campus. Most schools require that you complete at least 25% of your degree with them. This is around 30 credits at a school on the semester system and 45