Saturday, January 09, 2010

The growth of online education opportunities

My bunch who has been in college and is still in college took a mix of online courses and in person more traditional setting's curricula. This next semester one of mine will be taking all of her courses online. While for her degree it may not be possible for her to avoid the traditional educational setting completely, there are universities that specialize in helping students obtain an online degree.

One of the surprises for me, was that universities like Western Governors Online University offer an online teaching degree. It's an accredited program and does contain the required student teaching component, that is not done online that is done in a traditional classroom setting. Online courses are not for everyone, you have to be able to manage and budget your time, but the trade off of being able to study and do your work at your own schedule and at your own pace, is one of the many reasons more and more are not heading off to the college campus but to their computers...

2 comments:

Revvy Rev said...

I wonder if there is any data or studies done indicating how the online universities are perceived by prospective employers as compared to traditional colleges and universities?

Unknown said...

I've found that it varies, in this case since I was surprised a teacher's degree was offered, I checked the requirements of Ohio and it does meet the degree requirements. It's like any situation, you have to do your homework. There are some online colleges that are not as reputable as others.

The main difference I've seen with my children taking online classes at both UT and Owens is they have to be much more responsible for their time management and the assignments and classes don't cancel as often. One of my one daughter's traditional classes canceled several times last semester.