Slashdot Mirror
Your Online Education Experience?
pspahn writes "I am currently enrolled at a very well-known online school. I was hesitant when I enrolled; now more than a year has gone by, and I am regretting my decision. The main problem is that I am not learning anything. I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1. Similarly, there are other classes on my list that will teach me very little I don't already know, yet will cost me money all the same. Now, I do have a great desire to learn and to further myself academically, but I just don't see much value in continuing to take classes I could have aced in ninth grade. It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer and our online discussions are reminiscent of an AOL chat room. While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies. I am interested specifically in Information Security programs. What online education programs have Slashdot readers been happy with and considered successful?"
You will experience the same problems with other types of educations. You only study to get the paper, if you want to learn stuffs do it by yourself.
There is education and then there is training figure out which one you want and get it. Most everything these days is geared towards training.
College isn't about learning, it's about how long you can put up with all the crap you have to do and deal with the people around you.
Most any respected University will let you test out of courses, though their guidelines for doing so may differ from one to another.. In my experience, you speak to your admissions person, who talks to your instructor, who lays out what they want from you in order to test out.
You still pay for some (or sometimes, all) of the class, of course; they're not just going to hand credits to the first knowledgeable person that asks politely and can demonstrate what they know, that would make far too much sense for higher academia. But at least you get your credits and don't waste your time.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
I took two undergrad classes online, Intro to Political Science (my major) and Business Writing. All course materials were posted on Blackboard, and I do not recall any classroom time. My grades in those classes were atrocious, partially because the distraction of the Internet while trying to do the coursework was too much as a 20-something year old student. Obviously, YMMV, but I don't think you can beat having an actual live instructor teach you the material (even something as dull as a writing course).
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies.
When you deal with people in nearly any industry it will often be far more intimate than online discussions. I would suggest taking courses in person so at least you learn skills in an environment that will apply in your future career. Think about it: most customers would rather discuss their web designs (which you'll be making) in person rather than someone at the end of a phone line, chat room, or email thread. Taking offline courses helps you in so many ways. You'll discuss ideas with classmates, learn how to debate about best practices with others, and learn to learn through many different methods.
If you're paying to get a diploma, then it's going to be boring... even more if you're focusing on the skills you already have, and only need to get the diploma for, say, a work promotion.. That's going to be the same wherever you go, online or brick-and-mortar colleges.. But, if you're goal is to learn more about your field, then you're certainly paying for the wrong thing, and you should look for some training instead of learning..
The main problem is that I am not learning anything. I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1. Similarly, there are other classes on my list that will teach me very little I don't already know, yet will cost me money all the same. Now, I do have a great desire to learn and to further myself academically, but I just don't see much value in continuing to take classes I could have aced in ninth grade. It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer
Hey, welcome to college! Going to an online school might have lowered the standards a bit, but it's all part of the same experience.
:) OR conversely, tough it out and do well, then get into a decent master program, and use your performance there to get into a top-quality Ph.D program
The truth is that academically most of college in just highschool part 2. For anyone who is getting a degree in a field that is already their passion & hobby (e.g. someone who has invested 10000+ hours of personal time into programming and then goes for a computer science degree), it's only in the final 1 or 2 years that the coursework is even worthwhile. The rest of the time is spent underachieving because the content is so rudimentary that you can't even stay focused. You think the colleges want you to just buy the quality courses at the end? Hell no, they want you for 2-4 years of tuition!... errr I mean "broadening experience!"
Furthermore there are always a few assholes in the class who think they know more than the professor, and take every opportunity to bicker with them about each point. You may know a lot about the current subject, but most of the professors are teaching way below their knowledge level anyways... So that's a check on "incompetent classmates" too (not even mentioning the ridiculous amounts of cheating that goes on to pass tests that have no practical value except testing your ability to remember things)
So yeah... welcome to college. If you want a real higher-learning environment, go for a masters and then a Ph.D with a quality advisor. First though, you need to get to that point... and a lot of us call it quits after a bachelors anyways ("it's good enough, and I can't bear another semester")
Academically and averaged out over the entire experience, college (bachelors level) is a waste of time. A lot of people don't even work in the field they got their degree in -- I learned hardly any practical knowledge in college courses that relates to my current job... Of course, it's not all bad -- you do learn how to learn (supposedly), and you learn rigor (lab reports, etc), and you do get a bit of exposure to other interesting fields. Furthermore, if you're not an hermit, you can have a great time with social life. Well maybe that last bit isn't quite applicable to you.
Summary: tough it out and get a degree, then forget the experience and get a well-paying job. You can be bitter all you want afterwards, but at least you'll have a good salary
I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1
The same applies for real courses too. I did Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Maths at High School, and then when I went to Uni I did Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Maths - all over again. Pretty much the exact same thing as I did in High School. If I then went to do another science degree, I would get recognised prior learning. It basically comes down to the Institution has to cater for the fact that not everyone has done the subjects being taught. And in your case, you have experience - but that's not recognised (generally) as "prior learning".
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Online schools operate on a loophole that allows them to collect a ton of money that is disproportionately applied to the students. The current administration is finally starting to close the loophole but prior to that these online schools have proliferated. They exist to collect this money; educating you is the fake front to this shady business.
DeVry, Unitek, Sequoia Institute, University of Phoenix, etc, are all scams. You learn nearly nothing, it costs a lot, there is NO JOB PLACEMENT no matter what they say and you have to bear the stigma/burden of going to an online school. We've had several online schools in California abruptly cancel all classes, fire everyone, and abandon the building(s) in question with no recourse for the students, even those about to 'graduate'.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Here's my educational boilerplate info:
- Go to community college. You can take all your GE, many of your lower division and some of your upper division courses there for cheap.
- Transfer to a university. You'll only have to take the courses you couldn't take in community college, and you won't be there very long.
- At both points try to take as many tests as you can to 'test-out' of lower classes you don't need.
- Sign up for all the grants and scholarships you can find. Most of that money is never disbursed.
Yeah, it's slow, but it's affordable even for the poorest of us.
I doubt you'll find a school, e
To an extent, this is just how college is. How long have you been at it? I had a similar situation in a brick-n-mortar college; I re-took classes I'd gotten 4s and 5s from AP tests. Yeah, I was bored. But that stopped by the second year. Might be a question of whether your program is the right one.
if you already know enough to get certifications in the things you want to do, do that, and get a degree in something that would differentiate you from the hordes. I can't say more without knowing what you want to do, but as an analogy, I always recommend that CS grads get a second minor (math is usually the first) in a science, whether it be biology, chemistry, physics, or something similar. Why? Because you know another field that frequently intersects with CS, making someone much more marketable. I'm not saying that particular program is or isn't right for you, but the general principle still holds, I think.
In any event, good luck however you choose to proceed.
Take a look at the Department of Informatics at Fort Hays State University - you can take all of the courses (at both undergrad and graduate level) online to complete a degree. It is not one of those curriculum sets you can just ace - it is a challenging set of courses which encompass internetworking, web development, media studies, and information assurance. You can pick your specific concentration, but you will still get to see a little bit of everything. This is one of the best programs in the country for updated networking and web curriculum. It is both a Cisco Networking Academy and an NSA Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance. You can work toward you CCNA/CCNP/CISSP if that is the direction you'd like to take, or you can work toward an advanced degree in web development. I know these classes are quality because I have taken them - the internetworking series of classes were the most difficult classes I have ever taken. I loved the challenge and the connections you gain with classmates from around the world are invaluable. http://www.fhsu.edu/informatics/ Thanks for posting and good luck!
As he said, "I didn't go to college to learn how to program!" angrily because the Information Systems major included C#, Java, and web programming. He decided to go to ITT Tech, which is currently losing a lawsuit because their students are unhirable. Stick it out. You'll be missing these days when you get into the upper 300 and 400 level classes. Think of them as easy A's or GPA padding for later, much harder courses. I know how annoying it is to show up for the stupid Economics classes that you can get a B just showing up for the tests, but that'll help offset the future "Oh Crap! I didn't know I was doing that bad!" class.
CS 110 - the "a printer is a type of peripheral" class - was the class that led to the most drop outs. 403, the CCNA equivalent where we're in the lab an extra two to three hours of the class, was a nightmare but we lost no one after that.
For profit educational institutions are never worth the money. EVER. You may get in cheap, you may even get out cheap. See if any employer will take your degree from Bob's University.
I doubt you'll find a school either online or B&M that will fit your needs unelss you go into a very specialized program at a school like CalTech, CMU, or MIT.
The reason for that is college is not, by and large, about learning how to do what you want to do. It's about learning how to do what you HAVE to do, in order to do what you want to do.
Working in teams, doing BS work that you don't like (TPS reports anyone?) working through bureaucracy etc... once you demonstrate these skills any idiot can be taught web design at a basic enough level... everything beyond that is experience anyway.
You have a choice to make.
In one respect, the Emperor has no clothes. College is a just a bunch of hoops to jump through to get a piece of paper that supposedly (but doesn't) mean that you have skills. What it actually means is that you spent a lot of money (and made the loan servicer and your college a lot of money) and you jumped through a bunch of hoops. The skills you could gain can be gained through checking books out from the library, camping at the bookstore, and googling everything. RTFM and JFGI (google the acronyms if you don't know what they stand for).
The upside to college is that there are some skills that are more difficult to learn on your own. Also, there are a lot of entrenched managers from older generations that won't look at your resume if you don't have that stupid piece of paper. So it can get you places and a modicum of respect, but you have to smile and say you learned a lot and deny that the emperor is buck naked.
On the other hand, you can just be self-taught. Web design can be learned through reading design blogs, reading web design books from the library, and a lot of experimentation and experience actually designing websites. Web design is a demonstrable skill that doesn't necessarily require a piece of paper on the wall. There will be some closed doors because of the lack of the piece of paper, though.
If you decide to go to college for web design, stay away from rip off online colleges that are just diploma mills. Four year colleges are expensive and unnecessary for a web design degree. Find a nice, cheap community college with a distance learning program and web design major available.
Build your resume with as much experience as possible and build an online portfolio of your designs. This will get you a lot farther than a piece of paper in many cases. A lot of clients are just looking for people who know how to design and they don't care where you picked it up. Show them what you can do.
I had an excellent experience with Walden University. I was able to attend virtual lectures from distinguished professors from Duke to Carnegie-Mellon. The work was at an appropriate level, and I feel like I learned a great deal. Your mileage may vary in different areas (I got my MA in Comp Sci).
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
US high schools make a significant effort to insure that every student has the opportunity to learn the skills the college, but most colleges are not going to make an effort to hold a students hand once in college, especially if the student is paying, especially if the student is paying with student loans. After all, there is another freshmen class next year, and they have the money from last years freshman class whether they earned it or not.
The second issue is much more interesting. The students at a college provide as much value as the professors. I did not go to any kind of high level college, but I met some good people who really enhanced my experience. People who could hold a conversation, work a problem, accept that ideas different from their own might still be valid. If one does not have such people in their college life, this beyond anything else is a sign that one might be in the wrong place, or perhaps that one is not effort in the most efficient directions.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
They are a cash cow. Little to no resources are put into them, and students gain (at most) some busy work to do while reading the book on their own. I have taken online courses at three universities. Each one of them charged more per credit hour (~50% more) while I felt like I learned much less from the course. I'm sure there are good programs out there somewhere, but none in the institutions where I have had experience. In order to do well in online courses, you need to be a self-starter. MUCH moreso than in a typical classroom environment. My advice, if it applies to your courses, is to use the heck out of MIT's OCW program. Those lectures have gotten me through many online courses where the professors had (for the most part) not even read the current text we were assigned to use. I have donated several times to MIT because of OCW, it is fantastic.
Although I prefer the classroom courses, SANS security course are very practical. They will help you both with your job and in getting a job. http://www.sans.org/vlive/
Why do I keep seeing people complaining that they didn't learn any on the job skills in university? Computer Science is not just programming. If you want to learn to just program, teach yourself or go to ITT tech (a vocational school) for a programming certificate.
My high school teachers said that college is not so much about learning how to do something, but learning how to think. In the technology field, the specifics are going to change constantly, but you need to know the theories and principles behind the specifics so you can adapt as the world changes. I got a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science in 98, and while not every class I took is necessarily directly useful to me now, they did expose me to a pretty wide range of different kinds of problems and concepts that give me an additional ability to design and organize well when programming that I don't always see in my peers who didn't go through a computer science program.
I think our education system in US has gotten really out of whack, although in many ways its nothing new. Education is about being a better person, not just a better worker. You should look for that sort of approach in a school, online or not, in order to get your money's worth and have something that will actually better your life, and not just be a piece of paper that shows you jumped through the right hoops.
Why did you even join up with this place that is making you take so many classes you don't need? Didn't you look at the requirements and the sample course lists, etc, before joining? There are tons of choices out there. People take months to pick a real life college usually, with several visits, looking at course catalogs, talking to students, etc. You should place the same care into an online education if it is going to be the same sort of multi-year commitment.
You know, the kind that advertise. It's a racket; they'll take your money, or financial aid money from the government, and give you a "degree". They don't want to let you skip "learning" what you already know because they want your cash. You need a legitimate institution, a community college or a state university.
If you are this angry now, wait until that online degree is laughed at by some Ivy league douche (that actually gave you a job), who knows nothing but got there exactly because she had the opportunity to go to school and never really took advantage of the learning aspect, but DOES have that piece of paper from enduring trite classroom BS. You will call her boss, and hate that too.
I just finished my Masters degree with Walden University in "Information Systems Management".
So..my couple of cents:
What I didn't know when I signed up was that I would be in the first class through the program. A lot of the classes were very badly layed out, as in what we would be doing one week would not match up at all with what we'd done the prior weeks or would be doing in the next weeks. It was very obvious the courses had been built by a bunch of outsourced educators in possibly another country, right down to the spelling errors or idiosyncracies in the language in the project descriptions. If we had problems with any of the assignments, or were unsure of the wording, we'd bring it up with the professor and it would be fixed quickly. I think they all understood that some bugs were still being worked out, and I received a nice discount ($600 a semester) for being a guinea pig.
I do feel like I got a decent education for what I paid for and it being an online school. We never learned anything specific about any one product, ie IBM cognos, or MySQL or anything like that, but we learned in general what products like these were capable of, how to shop around for them, etc. Same sort of thing I learned in undergrad, we never got any certifications but I could easily pick up a CCNA, A+, etc because I've had all the ground work laid out for me and understand computers, networking and programing very well.
I was kept fairly busy with the assignments, in an average week I would work on 2 papers, usually 4-8 pages in length, and a group project usually around 6-8 pages, as well as group discussions, reading discussions and some classes required we keep a blog of what we were doing. We had quite a bit of group work, which was some what challenging. Its kind of funny, I had no idea what my group members looked like until in the last class we all found each other on facebook. Nothing like what I expected. I was also the only male, and am fairly young (24) while everyone else was in atleast their mid-30's it seemed.
I did have one really bad professor. I emailed him prior to the class starting and explained I would be on my honeymoon the first 2 weeks of class. I asked if he would rather send me the material early and I turn it in before I leave, or if it was ok if I did it when I got back. He said when I got back was fine. Well, I turned everything in the week I returned, only to get really bad grades for it being "late". I email him and am told "well I had to give you a bad grade for it being late, its only fair to everyone else.", and of course he stuck to his guns when I brought up the email where he said it was ok to turn everything in after I returned from vacation. He graded erratically throughout the class, never offering explanations for grades he gave. The class was badly laid out, and expected us to have a deep knowledge of Java in order to get an Apache Ant (I believe, its been a year and half) project built from the ground up, which I did not, and Java was not on the requirements for the entrance into the degree nor did I expect it, the degree was "how to be a programmers boss" not "how to be a programmer". The professor refused to help fix any of these problems, and I had to get in touch with the dean, who took care of everything for me and apologized for the problems we'd been having. After I got in touch with the dean, examples were added to the assignments involving Ant, so that instead of creating a project from a ground up, we had something to work with in order to get what we needed done.
All and all, it was a pretty good experience.
I find most Universities have zillions of strange and rather capricious policies that vary from department to department that somehow add up to the overall culture of the place.
The Uni that I went to would allow you to get up to two credits in European languages after a talk with the appropriate profs but wouldn't in Asian languages. This plus attendance policies resulted in there being a effective 1 to 1 ratio of teachers to students making for great conversational courses for only the Asian languages. The Euro language courses were much more rigid textbook courses.
Long story short the various departments varied widely in structure and thus culture. But if you have computer structured system it will probably dictate the culture for the entire online university. Thus if you see one cockroach...
At the insistence of my employer, I enrolled in online classes at University of Phoenix about 8 years ago. I was aiming for their MBA program. At the time, the classes were 5 weeks long, with a decent amount of weekly work and plenty of reading. Everything was online, including the mandatory newsgroup-style discussions.
After about three classes, it became clear to me that I wasn't learning much at all. I was also able to get by barely doing any of the reading, and just turning in a few well-written essays and keeping my virtual attendance up. In other words, I wasn't forced to think to earn my grades. There were no tests in any of the classes I had. For all they know, I could have been paying someone to take the class for me.
The instructors were nothing more than babysitting facilitators. They'd answer a question if you had one, and they'd grade your paper, but they were not instructing. They doled out assignments from plans that other people had written. Not once did they engage in a discussion or challenge you to think.
It wasn't until my fourth class when I realized the mistake I had made. The instructor was on vacation. Yes, vacation. For the five week class, he was literally gone and unavailable for the middle three weeks with the exception of one day (in 21) when he checked his email (to tell us he was on vacation). Yet the class continued on.
When the class ended, I complained about the level of "instruction" I was being given. They ignored me for weeks, and it wasn't until I encouraged about a dozen of the other students in the same class to stand up and say something. Finally, they wrote back and told me that I would be refunded for the class if I was willing to lose the grade that I had been given. Gee, thanks. And, only those students who asked were given that choice.
That was my last class, and I'm glad. A few weeks later I spoke candidly to the HR director and he told me he was glad I stopped taking them. He told me that when people come in with degrees from University of Phoenix he just tosses them to the bottom of the pile. He recognizes them as a diploma mill, and a BA from there is less valuable than a GED.
I've spoken with others who have attended University of Phoenix online and they all have similar stories.
University of Phoenix has employees whose job is to recruit students, and they earn commission for enrolling you. Their focus appears to be to get students through financial aid so that they have no problem getting their money. Once you're enrolled, and paid for, you're just a student ID.
Sadly I paid that "school" about $6000 of my own cash before realizing any of this, but hopefully others can learn from my mistake.
Have they improved since my experience? I sure hope so.
-David
It has been quite a few years since I was in college but for my generation there was no such thing as being allowed to skip a course simply because one already knew the material. I am aware that things have changed quite a bit and perhaps some very liberal colleges allow skipping of courses for qualified students but when that is allowed accreditation becomes shaky.
I can recall asking to be allowed to take a final exam on the first day of a course and it was forbidden. But I did have certain professors who simply allowed me to go to the library and do as I wished and they simply asked whether I wanted an A or a B for each semester. They were cheating in allowing me that privilege.
I suspect that with your online courses you could move ahead at your own pace. If so simply cram and run the gauntlet and get the credits quickly. I suspect that it boils down to spending money for something that you dislike.
Also, in the past collaboration between students was actually frowned upon. One did one's work privately and submitted it for grading. The social part of college distilled down to catching girls for most of us.
If you decide to go for a conventional form of education make certain that you are not fooled. Not only must the school be accredited but the department must be fully accredited and often the department is not. That devalues your degree severely. Then make certain that the accrediting body is the exact one that accredits the big state universities in your region. Do not fall for the rotten, private college, nonsense accreditation bodies.
If your professors couldn't do as well as teach, it is your fault you went to a crappy school.
Many community colleges are offering online courses. So does that mean they are pretty worthless for learning or a very good value for your money?
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
What online education programs have Slashdot readers been happy with and considered successful?
I got my law degree through "IANAL but..." offered through Slashdot. Next week I'm going for my economics degree.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Ensuring that your degree does not differentiate between taking online courses and brick and mortar courses is good advice.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
For pre-U education to brush up your knowledge, there's Khan Academy to teach you everything from primary school to even college.
For formal university level education, you can get many of them free directly from university. MIT Open Courseware is one of the well known examples. You can find a list of them at Open Culture. Google Code University is a less known but great site that helps you start and search on your online education journey.
There are also video lecture collection sites that contain lecture recordings from various universities, such as Academic Earth and Video Lectures.
You may also interested in less formal technology videos such as BestTechVideos and Google Tech Talks.
You can download a lot of ebooks from the web. Here is an example list you can found on Delicious.
In case if you are only interested in web design, IMHO the best way to learn design and multimedia is go to a real college. But anyway, there are tons of resources for web design too. Delicious is a must have search tool for you to get started.
I'd love to provide more links that I have but I'm short of time. But as always, Google is your best friend!
That's an interesting take. The University of Phoenix is actually accredited, by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, which in turn is recognized by the Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Also, although I can't speak for UoP, the school I'm attending online offers recorded lectures (for aural learning and note-taking), discussion forums where the TA is active, opportunities to ask the professor questions live during class (naturally, this requires being online when the on-site class is being held) and plenty of homework to learn by doing.
I think you're also generally giving for-profit schools short shrift for little good reason; they don't spend (or seek) money based on football teams, or endowments, but are actively trying to sell the quality of pedagogy and student attention. From what little I've seen, they pay more attention to student feedback on teachers, and teachers aren't given free reign to treat students like crap just because they've done important research. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but - like community colleges - they have a place of value and importance in society.
So far I've done the traditional undergraduate degree, community college (actually after I got my Bachelor's), online classes, and yes a ton of learning on my own. They're all opportunities to learn and challenge yourself, with varying degrees and kinds of support infrastructure to encourage and help you. But they are definitely all different, and I think they do serve different purposes and subsets of the population.
--Matthew
You can face the same issues even when attending school in person.
The educational benefit you reap will always rely on how much you want to extract from it. Motivated individuals can get competitive educations from crappy schools from their efforts on their own time. They can do this by just buying the books on their own without a college program. Others need college programs to guide their studies and their education.
The college offers a degree, its reputation, and its network. If these aren't useful to your career, then attending that college may have limited benefit.
Talk to a million people and you will get a million different answers as to how helpful college is but taking to the next level and going the route of teach yourself online courses will really make you wonder if your money is well spent.
... you may not even accomplish developing your own practice to be able to pay back the $200K you spent to have them hand you a piece of paper.. however you should be able to file the bankruptcy papers when you and your family are so far in debt you have lost everything.
... you can do that online anyway but... it can be difficult to really count on anyone you meet online to back you up...
... there are millions of qualified people looking for work.. Hell I am one of them.. or at least I am looking for better work and you have to say is it worth 4 or 6 or 8 years of your life to study something... will it put a roof over your head and food on the table? No matter what philosophical questions you may learn to answer with your degree... food in your kids mouth is always #1 and if you can make more money being a plumber or electrician then
The first thing you have to understand is there are definite reasons that someone perusing a career must attend college. If your career requires a degree such as an Architect, Lawyer or Doctor. There is no question here that these careers require a degree but remember there are different levels of education that will put you in the same place as everyone else.
You can get your law degree from the University of Delaware located next to a mall or drive 25 miles north to the University of Pennsylvania where Donald Trump and a lot of other well known lawyers attended. So what is the difference? Well President Obama attended Harvard and supposedly he did well but he did not submit his GPA or degree to get elected it was his friends he met at college that made him President.
Now you can attend college online at Major Universities you get full credit just like you attended but you must attend the college for a year or so to complete your bachelors. This is not a bad deal and when I attended college I took a few Teach Yourself courses so I could Test Out of Math classes.
But if you attend a degree mill online program believe me every Human Resources Manager knows before you walk in the door that the college you attended provided you an education that is basically useless for the real world.
On the other hand you could attend Harvard and not be the popular one and never make it to be President
There are a lot of choices and there are reasons to make them but you have to understand up front why you are making that decision.
Do you live in the middle of Wyoming with a family that needs you and you can't move or commute to college so Online is your only option? Then look for the best school and like I said LOTS of schools now allow you to take online courses... heck you can take courses at a few colleges to build up your credits for final graduation but you need to know which school you will graduate from and how many credits they will accept... usually the most transfer credits a school will accept is about half or 60% of the credits needed for a bachelors degree and Masters or Professional Degrees they accept less unless there is a hardship case which you have negotiated...
It takes a lot of work to get it done but it can be done... only attend accredited schools online that is the big thing. And the accreditation must come from the same organization that accredits the brick and mortar schools or your credits and degree is worth nothing....
Now with that said
You miss out on making connections when you work beside people day in and day out when you attend online so you will need to work much harder to find people you can count on.
And finally no matter if you are attending online or in class you really need to understand what your degree can offer you. A degree in History, Art heck even computer science today
I studied 2 years at my local community college, and the experience was rather interesting. I attended some classes where the discussion was heavy and student input was valued by the professor. I feel i received the most out of such classes. The curriculum for my major(Networking Technologies) was fairly basic stuff that I had seen previously. If a teacher had simply spewed a lecture or read from a presentation I wouldnt have attended class, Most of my IT courses used a CMS, so i could log in from home to get the lecture or the presentation. Basically, the teacher did not provide anything I couldn't have gotten on my own. Students participating in the discussion was a completely different animal though. It taught me a lot, because it forced different interpretations of the material.
Of course, there were classes that the professor did nothing but spew lecture. Unfortunately thats unavoidable.
I had only taken one online course in my two years at the college, and it was a complete waste of my time. The title of the course was "Interpersonal Communications." It was the only section that the college offered when i needed the course. For anyone outta the loop, interpersonal means person-to-person. I understand that times are changing and tech allows us to communicate around the world as if we are face to face. This course didn't lend itself to that though. The materials should have been taught in a classroom. In addition to that, the assignments were nothing more than "busy work." Anyone remember that from grade school? Your teacher calls in sick, so a substitute gives you work that means absolutely nothing. Yeah, that was this course.
Anyways, the OP asks about taking unnecessary courses. At the community college a program exists just for this purpose. My school called it Credit By Exam(CrEX) For select courses, a student can be given what is, essentially, the course final. If you pass the exam you're given the earned credits and exempt from the course.The test still costs money, but for my school it was about 40% of the tuition for the class, and you save about 15 weeks of invaluable time. You might look into a similar program for your school. It might not apply to all of the courses you are capable of skipping, but it just may get you out of the most basic intro courses. I was able to skip Intro to Information Systems(starts by teach the student how to power on a machine) and Intro to Windows and DOS Concepts(a course that started with basics of windows GUI and ended with writing simple batch files)
Business Week has done a few scathing articles about for-profit colleges in the last year. One showed how they go into homeless shelters and try to get homeless people to sign up for student loan money. One college even went so far as to actually pay the homeless students for attending classes. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177064219731.htm?chan=magazine+channel_features
Another story was about how they have gotten into the practice of buying up super small trade colleges so that they can get the accreditation. One of these for-profit schools bought an aviation school and "expanded" it into mainstream courses http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_11/b4170050344129.htm
A third story was about how these for-profit schools also target the military. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_02/b4162036095366.htm
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Props for mentioning OCW. They have some amazing classes you can take for free online. I'd *pay* to audit some of those classes remotely.
I've taught a few online classes for a state-wide community college. To say I've "taught" them is kind. I was basically a grader. The first day of the semester they blasted the material onto the online Blackboard system and it had all the due dates and assignments. I couldn't change anything on the syllabus because the syllabus was standardized for every section across the state and so were the grading tools. This meant that when they turned in speeches (yes I "taught" public speaking online for one of the classes as strange as that sounds) and the speeches were done on terrible topics I couldn't lower their grade or tell them to redo it. When their voices had no enthusiasm at all I couldn't lower their grade because the state mandated grading tool didn't have anything that covered enthusiasm. This meant that you could take the class, do a speech that wasn't really appropriate, read in a monotone and still get an A as long as you took all the tests, had good eye contact, and met the time length and visual aid requirements.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I started my IT career by dropping out of high school and working for a webdev shop. Best. decision. ever. IT is not an industry a degree program can be built around. It changes too quickly.
i learned all my advanced physics from slashdot
Heck - once you get that nice government job and your salary is determined by factors such as amount of accredited college hours (e.g., teachers): online degrees are ideal for nice jumps in pay raises. Simply submit said degree to Human Resources and BAM! your salary is increased accordingly (and sometimes quite dramatically). None of your peers need to know - not even your boss.
On-line courses compound the cliche of developers being unsocial dweebs. Very few people have the luxury of working in a vacuum; most workplaces demand and need teamwork and cooperation with respect to both clients and colleagues. Part of the learning is the interaction with students and lecturers. Go to a real school and learn...
Seriously, if the school is only online, you might as well print your diploma from the South Harmon Institute of Technology. I did an online certificate program from a university nearby and it was fairly challenging. The other people in the program weren't idiots and I learned from the assignments. The attrition was somewhat high, though. The program consisted of three classes. At the beginning, there were about 25-30 people in the class. At the end, there was around 10. I can't really say much about doing a BS or MS from an online program. I can see doing an MS online, but getting Bachelor's is mostly about the experience.
... it is interesting that some (Walden) get fairly good reviews with some constructive criticism whilst others (Phoenix) get slated.
This really tells you all you need to know. A mode of learning (online/campus) can be good or bad. It is the quality of the programme and institution that is important.
Anyone saying online is useless has either been burned by a bad experience or doesn't know what they are talking about.
Obviously no University is perfect. Both campus-based and online Universities will have Instructors who don't give students what they deserve, but the test of an institution is in how they react when a problem is raised, as the example above shows.
So, for satisfaction in online learning look for;
> Accredited/recognised degree equivalent to campus-based degree
> Small classes taken by Instructors with suitable academic and professional experience
> Support to students (advisors, tutors, online library)
> Well-developed programme (an Institution that is just starting out with online is NOT a good bet, a programme that is going through its first couple of intakes will have kinks that need working out but that's true of on-campus too)
> Lots of interaction with other students (can be asynchronous in DBs)
> Continuous assessment and weekly feedback of grades
> Safeguards against plagiarism
> Dissertation (course work and weekly essays are one thing for a smart person to bang together (on campus or online), a 15,000 word dissertation requires seven months of real work and really tests you).
The big benefit of online is you can carry on with work and family commitments. You study with people who want a degree that allows them to carry on with work and family commitments. So (for example) on a campus-based MBA you can have twenty-year olds in your class. On a good online MBA programme, you will typically have far older, more experienced students, which is great - peer learning is part of the Masters experience. You also tend to have more Instructors who are professionally active as well as just being Academcs, which is a good thing.
Part of the problem with college is that you have to suffer through years of BS in order to study what you are interested in. Francis Bacon got his law degree at 14, and he was by no means an exceptional student.
We are retarding our growth by limiting our rate of education. Please explain to me why a Business major needs 4 years of college to learn how to bullshit their way to the top.
Smart people want an education.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
From personal experience, the thing that I felt really lacking is the social aspect of studying with people. Basically, you are on your own, but it's not just a course or something like that. It's your entire day passing by without contacting fellow students and studying together. I found it very difficult, perhaps some people won't.
You're paying for a piece of paper that says you can complete assigned projects on time and of average (or better) competency. In most cases it doesn't really matter what you know, since you either already know it, or will learn it on the job. Your future employer is simply paying you more since you're already prequalified to be able to handle whatever project(s) they throw at you, and be able to expect you to finish them in a timely manner. If you're still convinced that being smarter than the average bear makes you a unique snowflake, get an appointment with the dean of that department and have him sign off on letting you bypass those courses.
moox. for a new generation.
When I first saw the title, I thought it was talking about one's first porn encounter.
Table-ized A.I.
To become proficient, you have to work real projects and eliminate the fear of the unknown that pervades the IT industry. To be frank, there is enough knowledge out there, in easy to learn formats (head start, wrox, ms press etc) that if you are self motivated you can pretty much master different areas of study. But when you are tasked to design/redesign/extend real systems, the best path is experience coupled with the over-abundant knowledge and resources that are out there ripe for the plucking. An entry level job coupled with a desire to learn will kickstart your career. Moreso, a degree from a reputable University. If you are looking for shortcuts with these flim-flam on-line outfits, then you lack the fundamental desire to learn and succeed.. Take a loan, earn a scholarship, max out your credit card, flip burgers and put yourself through college. It really is the fastest track to gaining credibility and putting yourself ahead.
I had to take several classes where the teacher told me that I could teach this class.
That is the problem when you have been working in the field and are now trying to join a system designed to start from zero AND to make money first.
Awesome world we live in, is it not?
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
While everyone here seems to be quite negative about online learning experiences, I have somewhat positive experiences with the UoL Online Laureate program. I have completed 6 subjects there in pursuit of a Master's degree, and am fairly happy about it.
With 15 years of experience in in the industry, I was cynical about the 'learning' part of it too. It is true that in some of the courses, the fellow students have nothing to offer and the discussions tend to remain shallow, but it depends on the instructor also who acts as the moderator. For example, in one of the modules which was programming oriented, I was sure that I would learn nothing new about programming itself and the moderator wasnt too great either, so it was boring. However in another module about networking which is my strong suite, despite the feeling that the other students are not up to the mark to make the discussions interesting, The moderator is making the discussions interesting by posing wonderful questions and stimulating the conversation.
I have also learnt to moderate my comments and picked up soft skills of presenting an answer without being condescending, which is helping me at my work also. From being known as the blunt guy who cannot control his emotions, I was recently called as a 'voice of reason' in resolving a dispute, which is a huge improvement for me in growing in my career. It is possibly the soft skills that are more importantly learnt for the experienced guys participating in online learning. YMMV, but I am definitely better for joining this trend.
Ashraya
Unless you are going to get a ton of money do not bother with online courses.
Part of this movement is a big scam to get people like yourself in debt that you can't bankrupt yourself out of and can't scale back. CNN reported alot of these phony online courses simply put you debt that you have to pay up to $600 - $2,000 a month and do not get you the dream job to pay for the degree.
I may sound cynical but my wife and I are about to go broke and go hungry because of our $2,300 a month in student loans that we can't get out of unlike other loans. We made more money at minimum wage because 70% of her income did not have to go to her masters degree.
Go to a real university but watch your back as you make sure the degree you obtain gets a job that can pay for it.. Part of the reason for going to college is to gain network connections that can help you land a job out of college. There are a lot of sharks in the university market and it is looking similar to the housing craze of 5 years ago. Online learning tops it as they mostly charge you but offer little benefit in return. The people at HR really do not care if you have an online degree or not. They care about experience. My wife got a real degree too and it only caused us misery. Online programs are costly too and offer an inferior education in return. If you put in the money make sure you get the right results and connections.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm going into the third year of the Open University BSc in Computing. Certainly better than my previous experience in Higher Education at a traditional B&M uni.
It's heavily focused on Java, but some of the more theoretical modules employ their own custom language to focus on the modules fundamentals instead of opening it up to the unnecessary complexity of all of Java. The default pathway in the Computing course is a tad light on theory as opposed to practice, but outside of the compulsory modules you can pick other related ones from the Technology side of the school, so I'll be picking one on Processors that's highly reviewed by past students to round out the course in that respect. The course materials are of high quality thus far, and the tutors have all been excellent so far.
I also appreciate their approach to Tutorials - as it's a distance course, there are several meetings scheduled throughout the module where a tutor and students can meet for several hours to discuss progress so far, and have any questions answered. Often the results of the tutorials are recorded and made available via podcast for those that couldn't make it. But yeah, I'd definitely recommend the OU to others.
The Open University has over 200,000 distance learners world wide. It frequently gets high ratings in student satisfaction surveys - for three years running it was the highest rated UK university by this measure (beating off Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc). In the UK at least courses from the Open University are recognised as equivalent to those from other good universities, it's not a mickey mouse correspondence place like some "distance universities" but rigourously examined and with its own postgrad and PhD programmes. It's not the cheapest but you pay your money and you get what you pay for. This page seems to tell you about some of the courses aimed at US students.
It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer and our online discussions are reminiscent of an AOL chat room. While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment...
aaaaand...you get what you asked for.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
and read the books.
Before ubiquitous computers, there was the University of the State of New York. It had a huge correspondence degree program that was originally built around and catered to the needs of armed forces veterans. There was quality instruction and real learning available. When you got a degree from them, it was a real degree.
Of course, there was an overwhelming emphasis on writing skills since it was a *correspondence* school. Still, it wasn't a diploma mill like most or all of the online colleges I've been able to find out about.
I don't know if the USNY program still exists or has changed names or something, but the last time I tried to Google for info, I got nothing that seemed related to the old correspondence degree program.
Are they still around?
Does *any* HIGH quality distance learning program still exist?
I have found most of the courses pretty enjoyable, and the most recent section on computers is very well set out and a pleasure to do.
I was an online facilitator for UoP from 2001 to 2002. I taught an intro course that went into the SDLC, and had a good time with it. A few of the students were not prepared for the work, but overall there was good participation and good feedback from both students and support faculty. I stopped due to family issues, and when I tried to jump back in a couple of years later, there was no interest in having a former, well rated facilitator on board.
In my last class, I had both a woman who lived in Idaho who was 2-3 hours away from a bricks and mortar school and a Navy seaman stationed in Guam. RIght there is a powerful argument for effective distance learning. Sure, some of us did do the "college experience" and we wouldn't trade what we remember for anything (and trust me, there are some things I really don't remember!). However, schools need to take back the online/distance learning franchise for those people who truly wish to increase their knowledge but cannot make the physical commitment to travel to a set location. Of course, many of these traditional schools like the endowments that help them build the ornate business schools or mall-like student centers because they can use that for advertising and for jacking up tuition.
In any case, someone in Education needs to do this right and not as a ripoff.
I think, therefore I am - Rene Descartes; I yam what I yam, an' that's what I yam - Popeye
I get my degree from Kaplan University in about 2 weeks and while it had it's ups and downs, my experience was mostly positive. Sure there were some idiots in the class and even one student who complained because she "couldn't write her paper in anything but ebonics" but those were the exceptions as opposed to the rules.
I made some friends that I keep in touch with via facebook and twitter who have similar interests and career goals and it's also been a great networking opportunity.
I put in a lot of time, but it was worth it. I graduated with a 3.85gpa and get all my degree honors in Chicago on August 7th.
I've not done any other online school - but because of being a single dad with a full time job and limited ability to be in a "real physical" classroom, it worked out well for me. I was in class for two and a half years and yeah, it was expensive, but I learned a lot and I grew as a developer and learned some a lot of things I would not have known ordinarily.... so I have to say my experience overall was very positive.
Most degrees are very general in what they teach. The foundations of CS/IT are pretty consistent. The API or database of the week may change, but the principals behind them are the same.
Every one of those schools is offering those courses for one thing, and one thing only: Money. That's why you have to stick with their curriculum to gain their degree. How many of them offer a chance to test out of certain classes?
Yup, studying dead and living languages. Their teaching for dead languages is excellent, the tutors are experts (but then, only 300 people a year study ancient Greek at the OU, so it is not surprising that they can easily find enough experts to tutor the course). Their teaching for living languages is relatively unexciting - as far as I can tell the 'Advanced' level is about equivalent to level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference, and while tutors are native speakers in most cases, they're usually not academics or researchers. That's fairly unusual in my experience, but apparently the rules are somewhat more relaxed regarding who gets to call themselves 'associate lecturer' in languages than they might be in certain more technical areas.
The level of attainment would be more disturbing if I hadn't just read a paper that lamented the fact that education in modern languages across the UK is systematically underperforming, with students achieving a limited vocabulary compared to advanced students from other European university systems. The OU therefore is simply conforming to national standards, but it is unfortunate, meaning presumably that if you want to further your language studies beyond B2 or so, studying in the UK may not be the way to do it.
I've also been a little disappointed with the fact that there is no real opportunity to do any research in modern languages during the degree - there's no obvious 'undergrad dissertation' or research module, and although there is the chance to write an extended-length essay in your modern language of choice, you have to pick one of a small number of topics (~5 choices) on offer. This is presumably to facilitate marking, but it's a real shame since it means that the student cannot focus on their area of choice. I imagine there are ways to get this sort of thing to happen, but another problem with the OU is that the people who answer the telephone are pretty much just a helpdesk, and therefore it's often hard to find a way to get the course you want.
So: at worst, infinitely better than no course at all -- you get a certificate; any practice is better than none, and even the worst courses are an opportunity to improve if you decide to put in the effort; and it's increasingly difficult to find language courses in the UK, so congratulations to them for giving us any chance at all of learning. At best, the OU can be an extraordinarily good experience. Many tutors are experts in the best sense of the term - well-known researchers, authors, full of domain knowledge and only too happy to share as much as possible with you.
Although that might have sounded negative, the experience is, overall, the best thing to have happened to me in years. I'm kicking myself for not having tried it a long time ago.
""I am currently enrolled at a very well-known online school. I was hesitant when I enrolled; now more than a year has gone by, and I am regretting my decision. The main problem is that I am not learning anything. I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1. Similarly, there are other classes on my list that will teach me very little I don't already know, yet will cost me money all the same. Now, I do have a great desire to learn and to further myself academically, but I just don't see much value in continuing to take classes I could have aced in ninth grade. It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer and our online discussions are reminiscent of an AOL chat room. While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies. I am interested specifically in Information Security programs. What online education programs have Slashdot readers been happy with and considered successful?"" I had exactly the same experience. I first enrolled at the University of Phoenix's online program in January of 2008, determined to get my degree while I kept working full time. I kept with it for 2 years until I had achieved an associates degree, (with a 3.97 final GPA) but my experiences with the program caused me to become completely disillusioned with online education. I was faced with a plethora of unqualified teachers. Some didn't know the material; others would suggest corrections to a paper (especially in early communications classes) and then when the final paper was turned in with those "corrections" in place, they would be marked off, and wording very similar to the original content was suggested instead. I had a teacher actually take points off an assignment because she (her words) "didn't agree with the viewpoint from which I wrote." According to her syllabus, assignment wasn't one in which the side of the argument mattered; rather the effectiveness of the persuasive portion of the paper was to be graded. Now she took no points off for my argument, it was well constructed, supported with credibile facts, and she even noted as much! The class participation portion of the classes was a joke too. We were to have a forum discussion on specific topics. That is all fine and good so long as the people with whom you are having the discussion have more than a fifth grade education. How did these people get into college? Their writing is reminiscent of the papers I turned in to my middle school teachers. It was always filled with incomplete sentences, piss poor grammar, and clearly plagiarized materials with no references given. I figured that this would go away once I had gotten through the first couple classes, after all there HAD to be some sort of system in place to filter out those who really shouldn't have college degrees right? Totally wrong...in fact, the overall quality of the education was steadily plodding downwards as I progressed through the courses. Group projects were the last draw for me. Once a student completes an associate’s degree, he or she is transferred into the bachelor's program. In that program, a good portion of a student's grade has to do with group projects. Be prepared to get grouped with people who are absolutely useless. Not only will you be plagued with members who can't write past a 5th grade level, but you will have people who just don't do anything. It was a regular occurrence for me to have to do nearly the entire group project myself, to ensure my GPA didn't suffer. Now not every student in these classes are idiots, there were a few with whom you could have GREAT discussions, and not all of the teachers were useless, but the majority of both groups were. By time I had made the decision to withdraw, I had realized that while online education does have potential, it requires those involved to care about more than getting a paycheck for it to become successful. -Chris
There are decades of education research showing that education is largely a social activity for most students, see the Berkeley’s Professional Development Program by Uri Treisman and Leon Henkin for example. Any online school offers very little interaction, thus disrupting the education process for most students.
You'll learn more if you study with better students and/or better professors, but an online school gets weaker students and faculty, especially for-profit schools.
Also, graduate work requires understanding material that isn't well laid out in the literature, meaning you'll never learn it on your own, only by combining reading and doing with talking to more experienced people. OP doesn't say if he's after grad or undergrad, just saying.
To answer the OPs question, yes you'r online degree program may very well suck ass, especially if it's a for-profit institution. In fact, an online degree from a for-profit school like University of Phoenix will often be viewed as worse than no degree.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Sure, if you've been working in the field chances are you'll already know a good bit of the material in core classes, particularly the lower level courses. On the other hand, having the piece of paper is critical in many situations - so it's important to stick to it. Now, I will add one caveat and note that you get what you pay for - if you selected a college that is not well regarded then shame on you for taking the quick/cheap/easy way out.
I too have worked towards a degree (my masters) using online educational programs, but unlike you there aren't too many places to attain this locally without drudging through extended travel and adverse weather to attend class. I went the route of UMUC (University of Maryland) for my online Masters study because they are well regarded in online studies and have been at the forefront of online education. They are also a well known education institution. I also studied online through Michigan State University for a Graduate Certificate program.
With the wealth of schools offering online classes, you can find a place that will challenge you every bit as hard as a traditional school and will provide a degree that stands up to the riggors. I put in my time, I invested in myself - and I laugh in the faces of anyone that would discard my education for being online as I know I can run rings around them.
-JC
You will experience the same problems with other types of educations. You only study to get the paper, if you want to learn stuffs do it by yourself.
Speak for yourself brother.
It all depends on the value of the paper and the effort you put in. I'm currently doing a MS in Computer and Electrical Engineering with Worcester Polytechnic Institute (a reputable engineering school up in MA), all online, and I'm certainly getting an education. The professors I've had all have years of industrial and DoD experience and the teaching material and lectures do show it. Things we have had to learn included developing testing plans for artillery equipment, cryptography (including an analysis of new commercial ciphers), and case studies with real meat on them. I'm sure I could have picked up the barebones material by self-study, but it does pay to have a good professor that knows his stuff backed with a typical brick-and-mortar university with a strong engineering focus.
I don't know about you, but I'm going to school for the paper on the condition that paper is getting me something. As of right now, it certainly does.
Same when I was doing a MS in Computer Science 10 years ago. I can only think of one class that really didn't have an immediate impact in my work (Semantics of Programming Languages). But every other course (Software Architecture, Networks, Algorithms, Compilers, etc) plus the graduate research I did (performance and security characteristics in distributed systems), in cooperation with a real brick-and-mortar business that was participating in the research (a health care related business to be specific), all that has certainly helped me.
Five of the jobs I've had (including the one I have right now), I got because of the research work I did 10 years ago. I've actually used what I've learned in grad school. I consider myself an intelligent, driven person, but there is no way I could have learned what I learned without having gone to school and be under the teaching of experienced people. If someone can do that all by himself with self-teaching, I tip my hat to him, he's a genius.
I'm not, and neither are most of the people. Many of us need a structured approach to learn something. Better yet if we get someone who knows it well. So you have as the only recourse to work it for the paper. And here is where due diligence pays. If you only go for the paper, then you are simply going to the motions. And it is fine if you know this a priori (say you need a piece of paper to help you get a promotion.)
But if you really think the paper is all there is, that's you. Not the education. You. In education, be it in a classroom or online, you get what you put in... and I'm not taking money. I'm talking intention.
MIT OpenCourseware's content is highly variable. Some (a few?) courses are pretty complete, even with full lecture video or audio, etc.
Others have, maybe, lecture slides (lacking context for the points made) and a syllabus, which often isn't quite enough to work with.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I graduated from Norwich University (http://infoassurance.norwich.edu/) several years ago with a Master's degree in Information Assurance (MSIA). The program was all online with the exception of the last week of classes being held at the university. The school's physical location is in Northfield, Vermont and is both a military and civilian based school. The university is recognized by the NSA and DHS as a National Center for Academic Excellence (http://www.nsa.gov/ia/academic_outreach/nat_cae/institutions.shtml#nh).
The MSIA program was very rigorous and I learned a great deal. The professors are leaders in their field. As for the program, we were required to write a 1000 word essay every week based on our lectures and reading material. We were also required to participate in online discussions and answer questions posed by the professor. Our weekly readings were relevant and current to the IA field. At the end of every seminar/course, we had a paper due that was 5000-10,000 words in length. The paper was based on an actual case study organization that we chose. I believe the program is top-notch and I learned a great deal about Information Assurance. You will definitely spend around 20 hours per week on school related work. For a year and a half, I was glued to my computer and course work. At graduation, we all joked about what we were going to do with the extra time we now had. While the program was all online, I feel a bond with the others in my cohort and the university. I never had this relationship with others in my undergrad classes, which was earned while attending classes in an actual classroom. It is very hard to explain, but it is all worth it in the end.
I believe the MSIA program at Norwich is what has made me quite successful today. I worked at a government agency for several years before landing my current position at a well known university as an information security analyst that is also accredited by the NSA & DHS. Both of these positions recognized my MSIA degree from Norwich as one of the key hiring factors in their decision making process. The University is well respected and I believe I am making a name for myself in the information assurance / security field.
I finished out my Bachelor's (from having an Associate's) completely online at an established, bricks-and-mortar state school (Troy). Now MIT it ain't. But it's regionally-accredited, and the price was right. Overall, it was a good experience, and, for the classes that weren't already old hat for me, I did learn a lot. Some professors were good, others not so much. Some were fantastic.
Yes, I had to take some classes I could probably have taught. But as others have said, that's pretty much how it is everywhere. Remember: Getting your degree is only partially about learning new things. It's also--perhaps mostly--about getting proof that you've learned things. Many classes are more about demonstrating knowledge (by passing) than about gaining knowledge. It's a big, fat certification.
And yes, I had some classmates whose class postings would make me wonder not only how they managed to get admitted to college, but how they even graduated high school in the first place. Some would even copy-and-paste their posts directly from Wikipedia--underlined links and all. Ugh.
But there are goobers in B&M classes too. You just don't normally get to read or hear what they have to say. They have the option of participating very little in class and just turning in their papers directly to the prof. In an online class, there's usually a specific participation requirement in terms of number of posts, etc. You see a lot more of everyone's written work.
When it comes down to it, all education is self-education. No one can educate you--they can only facilitate you doing it to yourself. If you want to stay where you are, then go for it. Trudge along, get the grades, learn what you can from the textbooks and elsewhere, and get your "certification."
JJ
I took two undergrad classes online, Intro to Political Science (my major) and Business Writing. All course materials were posted on Blackboard, and I do not recall any classroom time. My grades in those classes were atrocious, partially because the distraction of the Internet while trying to do the coursework was too much as a 20-something year old student. Obviously, YMMV, but I don't think you can beat having an actual live instructor teach you the material (even something as dull as a writing course).
Depends. I took an intro course on AVR-based embedded systems with UC Berkeley, all online just a few months ago. I had to drop the class since I'm also doing a MS in Computer and Electrical Eng, plus work... and a baby. But the material was good, lectures and discussions were all on a blackboard which we just have to follow while working with the required hardware we bought and had at home for the course. A great deal depends on what we put in, but it also counts the subject and the school.
A good professor will make any class venue (including smoke signals) work. A shitty professor will make your life suck, even if in a typical brick-and-mortar setting.
While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies. I am interested specifically in Information Security programs.
Uh, it is with that nature of the program that you might want direct interaction with people. That is, unless you already have work experience in software/IT and experience in a real-life, brick-and-mortar school settings. I'm back in grad school, and doing it all online. It is good, but I don't think I could get as much juice of it if I didn't already have a learning experience in a real classroom (both grad and undergrad.) I'm a big proponent of quality online education, but I do acknowledge there are limits to what you can do with it.
Once you get past the first 3 or 4 classes, you start to find that the instructors are actually professors again, usually, depends on the course I suppose, and the school. I tried U of Phoenix, and hated the curriculum, so I switched, tried Art institute of Pittsburgh, also, not a fan of the curriculum as much, and finally found myself attending Colorado Technical Institute online division. It's a real school, and they have an online division, and they're accredited. The virtual campus website is terrific, and they offer great labs, and after the first several courses, which are usually for online schools, all introductory anyway, I started to learn something. Can someone teach themselves, sure, but it's easier for me to have a professor I can contact and chat with, over the phone, online, or via email, to get a better understanding of things. I can teach myself Java for example, but logic and set theory are better studied with someone that knows what they're doing and has experience, and can critique your work. Also, Programming concepts and troubleshooting is more of a theory class, but it's not something you learn from a book alone that just teaches you a programming language. So I don't feel the online experience is much different than the standard college I went to for my Associates all those years ago, and going for my Masters now doesn't feel like a joke. When you have to write 3 to 8 page papers for a discreet mathematics class twice a week every week for 5 weeks, and the professor actually reads them and grades them according to what you know and write, I don't see it as a waste of a course. When you are expected to write classes and methods for the sake of other student's critiquing your style of writing code to discuss as well sticking to standards, I don't see that as a waste either. I find that it is just like a normal campus college, only I have the flexibility of attending my class at the hours I choose, so long as I still get my work done on time and correctly. I find less bureaucracy involved online as well than I did with a traditional campus college.
WWJD? (What Would Jonas Do? - Spinward Fringe by Ran
In Tennessee many of the state colleges are under a single authority called the Tennessee Board of Regents. The board a few years back instituted an online program called, quite imaginatively, the Regents Online Degree Program, or RODP.
You will have much LESS of the problems you were mentioning at such a school, since the regents do not wish to water down the name of every member school. Furthermore, if you enroll in any member school, you can take as many online classes as you want, so the thing to do would be to enroll in the physical school, talk in real life to professors to get department approval to skip the low level classes and enter the higher level classes directly. This will NOT save you time, as you will still need the same number of hours to graduate, but it WILL make it so you are learning more while they are siphoning money away from you.
The only problem is that the only Board of Regents school I ever attended, MTSU, has a really crappy CS department. (I literally had a professor tell me my Linux box was not possible in the late 90's)
If you can find a similar situation elsewhere, or if one of the other TBR has a better computer program, it would be a good thing to look into.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
IT is not an industry a degree program can be built around. It changes too quickly.
"Changing too quickly" is only an issue if you assume all degrees are the equivalent of Vo-Tech certificates.
Plenty of... what's the marketing speak for that?... "dynamic" fields can have degrees built around them by focusing on core disciplines rather than specific implementations.
Although, having worked IT, I do find myself wondering what its "core disciplines" might be. TCP/IP networking? That might be an issue, but in the specific case of IT, I guess I agree that IT is more suited for job-training than academic study.
"The University of Phoenix is actually accredited, by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, which in turn is recognized by the Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation."
Big deal. Their incentive is to rope in as many students as possible, in order to get the federal loan money. This year they became the first university to collect $1 billion in Pell Grant money in a single year.
See, once they get the students and their money, it doesn't matter if the students actually graduate. Some students might actually get an adequate education, but they probably won't get their money's worth.
Overall, they're a pernicious influence in society.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
There is a good PBS documentary about this online. It is called "College Inc." Here is the link. http://video.pbs.org/video/1485280975/ Here is a quote from made by Mark DeFusco, University of Phoenix Dir from 1994 thru 2002: "If you take a look at for-profit colleges, the analysts will tell you that anywhere between 20 and 25 percent of the total revenue of a company is in sales and marketing, about a quarter. In most cases, the faculty are in the 10 to 20 percent range." He rationalizes it by saying this: "When I go and buy perfume for my mom, the chemicals in the bottle and the bottle itself amount to about $0.50. The advertising amounts to five or six bucks." This might explain why the quality of teachers might not be that great. And they tend to advertise on high traffic sites like Yahoo Mail or MSN.com to name a couple. You all seen those add that tell moms that "Obama wants you to go back to school." It is very sad how this companies take advantage of the Government, thru student aid, and people in need. They are so quick to sign somebody up for a loan that they won't be able to pay.
http://nyewin.org http://nyexug.com http://nycsqlusergroup.com http://nylug.org
classes in Web Design? That's why God made the O'Reilly menagerie.
Sure, the occasional "Web Design" class is OK, but "Web Design" classes aren't education; they're *training*. Education is things like art and design theory, cultural history, psychology, marketing and communications, software architecture and so forth. Stuff that is not tied to some product release.
If you're paying for *training* and expecting to get an *education*, of course you're dissatisfied.
Now they won't let you place out of "Web Design 1". What does that tell me? You are at an institution that sells education, but provides training. Why? Because an honest training outfit is up front about what they're providing, which is something that will help you in your job for the next two or three years. If you say you don't need "Web Design 1", how can they force you to take it? It's only if "Web Design 1" is part of a required curriculum that you can be forced to take it, and if you've committed to an entire curriculum, why should they let you get out of paying for the classes?
Think about it: if you're going to commit to something as big as swallowing an entire curriculum, that curriculum should be almost entirely of things that don't become obsolete with the next software release or the Next Big Thing. Web Design elective? Great. Lets you know that the stuff you are learning isn't all theory. Web Design as a core requirement? OK, you're getting a degree with an expiration date.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the "well-known online school" is the U of P*x. You should really do you your homework before committing to send bundles of dough to an outfit like that. Yes, they are accredited, but they're also a for-profit outfit. There's nothing wrong with profit, but its run with an eye to quarterly profits, and that means spending as little on you (e.g. advising and departmental meetings to substitute useful stuff for what you already know). U of P*x has got horrible labor relations, and before you stand up and cheer for management, you have to realize this means it is notorious for having a transient faculty. I real educational institution has a stable faculty that does scholarly research.
In any case, U of P*x is so aggressive in marketing, that when I see it on your resume I instantly recognize the name... but it's not the kind of name recognition I have when I see "MIT" or even "Michigan State". I see those names, and I think "educational institution". I see "U of P*x" and I think "spammer".
So go to the real university, even if it means attending classes in meatspace. Or at least choose an on-line presence of a school that has a real campus and real faculty.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I spent a lot of time researching online schools. I decided that Baker (http://www.baker.edu/) was the best option for me. It's the biggest private, nonprofit, school in Michigan and has a Computer Science program that is worth it. The price per credit is only a little higher than going to a brick and mortar school where I live. I got my Associates in Computer Programming back in December and I'm working on my Bachelors now. The learning is more of a self taught environment. You're given the weekly notes from the instructor, the chapters to read, and the assignments for the week. You have to participate on a forum by answering weekly discussion questions and helping each other out. This works best for me since I'm a visual leaner. I read all the material and do the assignments and take the tests. If I didn't do that I wouldn't be able to pass the class. Most of the instructors have years of experience in the real world work force with degrees to backup their knowledge.
In my experience Baker does things right. I have a few friends who took a Computer Science degree at the local college. They learned a few different things but their knowledge of the subject is far less than mine. I attribute it to the fact that most of the homework was group projects and they usually let one person do all the work.
You sound just like my brother.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I've been to a couple of talks by the guys running OCW. Their biggest problem? Copyright, especially for image-based courses. One architecture course had something like 750 images, the vast majority copyrighted. They had to clear every single image one at a time, since almost all of them were by different people. Converting the rest of the material was quite simple in comparison
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
But why? Are you not being short sighted. there are many reasons to go to an online school.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
Try WGU.edu It is inexpensive, uses the same online classes as the more expensive online/physical schools, and allows you to test out of classes you may already have enough experience in that it would be moot to sit through the class. The chat & forum tools were equally bad as most other schools. But, I was able to live with them. It was the ability to take the final as soon as you thought you were ready that made it a good fit. Even if that was on day 1 of the class.
I earned a degree from WGU. I also did it in record time. Why? Life experience. I went for a teaching degree. I already had a 4yr degree in an area that was not able to be certified. I did the program that suited me. I needed another BA.
I was able to whip through the program quickly, because I had already been teaching for three years. I know the core stuff of the degree. I had taught and was able to draw on experiences for the papers on: make a plan to do XXX.
Time was a another factor. I was able to work at my own pace. Which turned out to be 8-12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week.
Oh yeah. no problem getting a job. One interview. One job.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1.
That's the problem right there. Any educational institution that does not contain prior learning assessments is a money making machine with zero interest in its students. (Either that, or its an American High School.)
Its basically the whole reason behind Wikibooks/Wikiversity - you aren't railroaded into courses you already took.
IT should be like the other trades with on the job apprenticeships and more hands on and less filler class. Does a plumber real need to have a 4 year degree to do that job? About about Backhoe and other Construction vehicles operators.
The cost of school is to high now days and why do you need a BS or MS for help desk level 1? I don't comcast even wants that much to do phone work / sit at a customer sever desk.
I have two social science degrees (Bachelors and Masters), and I got bored, and wanted to expand my career horizons, so I'm going back for a bachelors in Computer Science. I started out at the local public community college to knock out some of the math courses I didn't need for my other degrees. So far, I have been shocked at the quality of education. The math courses were alright, but not great. The computer courses however, have been horrific. I had a 96 in the last class I took, and half-butted the final. I got back a perfect on it. I quiried the instructor and told him I knew I had made mistakes on the project (Already had my A, didn't care), and he responde with "Well, you turned something in, which is more then most of your classmates, so I just gave you an A." That speaks volumes about the *quality* of student being produced. I'm sure just turning something in will make my future employers estatic. Then again, compared to the competition in my class, I'm solid gold. Too bad I'll get my ass kicked by some foreigner who has a *real* education. And frankly, I understand completely why.
Do you really want to stay at help desk level 1 forever? Where I work at, the entery level person can have a HS diploma. To get a real promotion you need a BA degree.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
"Big deal."
Just trying to point the discussion in the right direction - toward facts, rather than inaccuracies and hearsay. That may not change anyone's overall assessment, but at least it provides a better basis for making such a judgement.
"Overall, they're a pernicious influence in society."
If you see them as the trend toward which every college should go, yes. On the other hand, they also provide educational opportunities to a lot of people ignored or sidelined by traditional colleges, and as an additional option - like community colleges are an additional option - I see value.
Perhaps the difference in our opinion is really that I don't view traditional universities in as positive a light, particularly for people who don't fit into the expected mold, so the standard by which I judge Phoenix is lower.
--Matthew
but to just to get to level 1 needs to be lower and why need a Degree to move on vs takeing on more and more work on the job and moving up under there setup vs the different set ups in the M$ books?
There are many significant differences between classroom and online learning environments--too many to detail here. And, as has been noted, there are some unsavory institutions out there that are simply milking the online learning cow, without regard for their students (or, in the long term, their own reputations). I taught adult learners in a college environment for five years ('04-'09), mostly in classrooms, but with some online components. Also, I recently completed my own graduate degree in a program that was supposed to have an online option, but I ended up being forced into nothing but online classes for about the final 40% of all my coursework. Thus, I've experienced both traditional and online learning venues, and from both sides of the instructor's desk.
One of the primary things to realize about most online learning methods is that they tend to be based on androgogical methods (the teaching of adults) versus pedagogical methods (the teaching of children). Most of us are familiar with pedagogical methods--lectures and lots of note-taking, tests, etc. You see, the methods are not entirely invalid in adult learning environments, but it is just that the burden of learning changes. Most associate and baccalaureate programs still include many classes that are aimed at the traditional college student (e.g., 18-22 years of age), and often rely on those methods that were still common in high school, though the amount of work (and expected quality of outputs) should increase. When dealing with adult students, a greater emphasis is placed on leveraging the students' own life experiences, and pulling in real-world examples and experiences to help connect the students with the learning topics. Often, much more reading is required, but there likely are fewer tests, with a greater emphasis on the completion of written papers or other projects that allow the student to demonstrate mastery of a concept. To my knowledge, since most online instruction rose out of adult-education environments, and has since been adopted by schools targeting traditional students, it explains one significant difference. Don't expect online courses to be just like another classroom experience with long lectures, note-taking, and tests.
Then, another significant difference is the absence of the classroom environment. Even I, who spends much time in the virtual world each week, and has been online since 1992, found that I despised the online learning environment. The reason? No verbal banter--no back and forth. Yes, online classes have attempted to emulate class discussions through the use of threaded discussions and other messaging forums, but, in my opinion, they are a pale shadow of the original. In my own experience, the content of student postings was often defined in the syllabus or weekly assignment, severely limiting the exchange of ideas. Yes, everyone had to put together a coherent post about the topic (and the posts took the place of quizzes or tests), but the interactions were stale and often simply in line with what was expected. Only rarely did anyone (usually me) raise a contrary view. After the initial post(s) for the week, the rest of our participation was similarly prescribed. We had to make x initial posts by one day of the week, and y replies by the end of the week. Some classes (not all) required that you reply to each reply you received. If you were one who tended to post toward the end of each window, that typically meant you'd get little or no feedback.
That's entirely different from a classroom setting, where an instructor might pose a question and seek responses. Rarely would all students be expected to answer, and the most valuable (in my opinion both as an instructor and as a student) interactions were often when one student would chime in, "I don't buy that at all...", prompting often heated debates. Classroom instructors have long known they must seek to consider different learning styles when presenting materials--lecture and discussion for auditory learners, g
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
How is this incentive any different than at a state run school?
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
You only get out of an education what you put in to an education. I find it difficult to believe that if you read every chapter of every book (that is required reading) for every class, every recommended scholoarly article, and go beyond and even seek more scholarly articles from their library that you will be learning "nothing."
Why would being privately owned make an accrediting agency meaningless?
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
"Do you actually believe that?"
You seem to be confusing the quality of pedagogy with the quality and depth of material. Yes, my impression is that teachers are held more accountable to students at University of Phoenix, as opposed to traditional universities.
"Many of the people in her *masters* program could not write at a college level. We were floored with the low quality of the people taking these classes."
That is also a separate issue. For myself, taking graduate classes online at another university, the fact that I didn't have to justify my ability to take the class before signing up was a boon... fewer hoops to jump through, no need to prove both my formal and informal education in the prerequisite material, etc. (I'll still have to go through all the hoops before I actually receive a Master's). It's a double-edged sword, sure, but it's useful to have universities that do it in addition to universities that don't.
--Matthew
If you want to learn about Web Design and it's associated disciplines, I highly recommend http://www.lynda.com./ It's very affordable, and the videos feature top quality instructions recorded by industry professionals. Check it out!
I honestly believe for profit higher education should not qualify for subsidized government loans. Why should a company be able to secure government funding for private profit? The conflict of interest is just too great.
After finishing my associates degree at the local community college (online and brick and mortar), I tried to go to the local state school, but the class schedules were very inconvenient for a parent. After taking a year hiatus, I discovered a not for profit online college Western Governors University.
If a student already have experience in a given subject, WGU is a great idea. I would not recommend someone try these programs cold. Just like a brick and mortar college, the finals are proctored at a local college or testing facility (online only test are not reputable) for most classes.
The tuition is very reasonable, less than the state schools. Some of the books are expensive, but that is a universal problem. The IT program has actually been pretty good so far and is unique in that some of the classes also reward industry certifications.
I do miss the networking, but most of the education is very pragmatic compared to credit hour programs. The things that I am learning have actually been useful to me, even some of the fluffy business classes :P
North Central Association of Colleges and Schools:
I'm not really sure where you are getting your information, but very basic Google searches are proving you wrong.
Seriously. Try to transfer your UofP credits to a state college and see what happens.
I don't have any UofP credits to transfer; as I said I am taking online classes elsewhere and my undergraduate degree is from a traditional university. However, my experience at traditional universities is that transferring credits between them is unreliable at best, and based at least in part on the opinions of the admissions people at the school you're transferring to.
--Matthew
I had an excellent experience with my online education while obtaining my M.A. in Leadership from Saint Mary's College in Moraga. We had very intelligent discussions online, but it took a bit of time for us to get into the habit of making more informed posts than one would usually see in a online forum. It took a lot of moderating and poking and prodding by the facilitators (teachers), but after 6 months, we reached a comfortable point. I should point out that we did meet face-to-face at the beginning and ending of each module. As to your other issues, you may have picked the wrong program for what you wanted. For my B.A., online program, I was able to "test-out" of beginning classes by writing a 15-20 page paper on the subject I wanted credit for. So, in short, there are online programs out there that work, you may want to attend open-house sessions and talk to graduates to see what their experience was like and see if it suits your preferences.
"In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change" --Thich Nhat Hanh
"How is this incentive any different than at a state run school?"
I don't think a state-run school would be allowed to use the same deceptive practices. At least not for very long. There's more accountability to taxpayers and state legislators.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I've been thinking about doing a security related degree, and University of MD University College (UMUC) has both a Master of Science in Information Technology: Information Assurance & a Master of Science in Cybersecurity. The Cybersecurity one, to me, looks like it's for people who already work for the government, which is not me, so I'm leaning towards the IA. (The IA has also been around for a while while Cybersecurity starts this fall.) If anyone has any thoughts on either of these I'd be interested. If not, maybe someone else will find the links useful!
http://www.umuc.edu/programs/grad/msit/information_systems_assurance.shtml
http://www.umuc.edu/programs/grad/csec/index.shtml
I'm attending Florida Institute of Technology right now - they have an online program for some majors. I'm getting my BS in Computer Information Systems. Research I did before selecting this school: Does the diploma have "online" written on it ANYWHERE. (no) Is the school ranked? In this case, FIT is ranked by US News and World Report - not the highest but not the lowest either. It also did pretty well on the ROI report published by Business Week: http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/bs_collegeROI_0621.html?chan=bschools_special+report+--+buyer+beware_college+degree:+buyer+beware. Did the college start off with a physical campus, and then add the online extension later? (yes) What you want is a school that offers an online degree in order to attract students from across the country, and not because they can't afford an actual campus.
a football school degree should not beat a tech school.
why does HR like stuff from schools that are more about sports then class work and not like tech school that are more about IT work then schools that say we have a real good football team.
City College of San Francisco has a lot of online courses, and a lot of hybrid courses that are mostly online, with occasional face-to-face meetings. I found that the quality varied a great deal, but ultimately, it depended upon the instructor.
There are a few distinctions between online classes and face-to-face classes, in practice. First, there's the quality of the instructor's writing. I had a few instructors who posted notes online that, in scope and quality, were as good or better than our textbooks. I had one instructor who posted almost no notes at all. Second, there's the quality of the online discussion. In that context, the quality of your fellow students' participation is as important, if not more important, than the quality of the instructor's participation. At least sometimes, I found having excellent fellow students made up for having a lousy instructor.
Finally, last semester I took all my classes online or mostly online, and that proved to be a mistake. There is something to be said for immediate, real-time interaction between an instructor and students, and it takes more independent work to make up for that.
Reasonably priced, good instructors - I've taken at least half-a-dozen Web-related classes from them and not been disappointed yet.
In my experience: Even a college degree is no assurance someone is capable of doing a certain job. I've seen MSc. CS graduates who barely knew how to write a piece of code to give me the average of two numbers. Or how to translate some of what they learned into practicality. I've also seen graduates who were able to perform some mind bending feats.
The catch is: I've found there are at least an equal amount of CS pro's out there without degrees who can do either as well as the person with the degree. Also in my experience: the best people keep learning new tech/languages all the time and their accomplishments speak for themselves.
Make sure your resume paints a compelling picture so you get a foot in the door and then show people how good you are. If the company is going to be a good place to work they've probably learned to source and interview properly. Make your accomplishments speak for you.
As the original Ask Slashdot poster, the idea of OU is intriguing. Unfortunately, one click into their website returns, "An error has occurred, please try again later." Not exactly a good first impression.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I tried that. I worked at a .com startup in Santa Clara after high school. Made a ton of money while I was there, but the 60-70 hour weeks along with the horrendous commute ruined my brain. They also went bottom up.
If it was a great startup, possibly, but in all likelihood it could very well be a waste of time.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Good advice, but in my case, a bit redundant. I am completely aware of the free knowledge. My brain is filled with it. I haven't looked at many of the options you put forth, but I have gone through CS106A from Stanford. I loved it and I actually learned something.
When Intro to Java came around, I already had a good idea of what to do. I'm not sure the instructor appreciated me posting the video lectures to other students, however.
While, of course, the primary goal is to learn, I am also interested in the prestige part of school. Prior to my current enrollment, I spoke with other graduates and they mostly had good things to say about my program. I felt relatively good about putting UoPx on a resume. Now, not so much. Hell, if I were checking over resumes, I would definitely give the UoPx candidate more scrutiny after seeing first-hand the types of students that can come from there. I wouldn't ignore them, of course, but I would be wary.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
As a current student in Open University, Bahrain branch, I'm highly satisfied and will graduate within the next 6 months. Not worried about accreditation as it is backed by the British government, and the middle east branch is backed by royals, most notably al-Waleed bin Talal and the King of Bahrain. Total cost for a 4 year program is less than 8000$. The US can learn a thing or two from this system as its been successful for the past 40 years.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/07/open-universities-try-to-bring-college-to-masses201.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_University
Absolutely sucked. I was enrolled in the Electronics technology program, and the material was horrid: tests asked questions that looked for whether trivial information had been memorized, and crucial items were omitted. For example, the test for the unit on batteries did not focus on SAFETY, when, at the technician level safety awareness when working with batteries is of utmost importance. Then, I went into a looooong 7th grade flashback when I found myself in the English unit. They literally have some old women in there who probably retired from teaching Junior high . . . I turned in an essay, and lo and behold, I was told that I "had uploaded the wrong file" (when I had made and honest effort at the thing) as if I had cheated on it . . . I am willing to accept an F if I messed up THAT bad, however, at age 34, in a college environment, I simply will not be treated like a child . . . Materials were late in the mail (according to the post stamp, they had been shipped late) and some of the literature had glaring factual errors . . . My Penn Foster experience was quite negative I am afraid. MOE
SARAVA!
schools are primarily for those who evaluate based on your possession of a "pass" from the school.
Online schools will almost never let you skip classes, because usually, their only income is from those who pay -- and if you skip, then that means 1) they get less money for granting you a 'degree', and 2) the over-all value of their degree (measured in $$ to get degree) becomes less.
If they all too many people to get degree too cheaply, degree becomes too easy to get and becomes worth less. You might find that you could proficiency through 90% of their program -- and their $10K+ degree program is now only gonna cost you $600 + materials... That wouldn't mess up their system.
Conventional schools *sometimes* offer proficiency exams to pass through lower level course. They have a mixed incentive. Since part of their income comes from governments, they are often paid, "per-seat-term", with "term"=(1 if attendance >90%; 0 if attendance 90%). Notice how that part of the equation is only based on attendance, and not based on grades. In this sense conventional schools are paid for being babysitters for undertrained "persons". They aren't really (as far as I can tell) given alot of incentive to actually educate the students. Free market doesn't work because there is usually little or no competition for conventional schools -- they often have a semi-monopoly in their geographic market, though freedom may be granted to adults to attend out of their geographic region depending on local rules and situation.
Conventional schools do have a charter to serve students -- which means they usually create turnover by creating time limits within which you have to graduate, but some have no such requirement or incentive. Depends on school.
In either case, they don't really have any incentive to actually teach you anything. It's not required. You are just required to fulfill your "educational"[sic] institution's requirements.
Evaluators -- such as future employers use your being able to complete those requirements as a rough-yard stick of competency, when you have no other measures, or when other measures/assessments are hard to evaluate or compare.
Obviously, real learning, is a 'self-discipline'. It *CAN* occur at a school -- and if you are lucky course requirements will assist you and make it difficult to not learn, while completing them -- but this is 'luck' based primarily on teacher. As for support by the institution, what does the institute offer to support the instructor? Can he hold students back? Can he fail 30%? Will he? If he does, is he at fault? How is this assessed? [Good luck in determining an objective answer to that!]...
Meanwhile, you have to determine whether you are disciplined enough to learn in a vacuum. Having other people to bounce ideas off of is useful, only if you get a chance to bounce ideas off of other people. If you have no interactions with people, then a classroom experience (including virtual) is of questionable benefit). Indeed, a virtual classroom could include virtual students, that ask common (but real questions) taken from real world classrooms. They could ask these questions on a classroom virtual whiteboard, where student's ask their questions and everyone in the classroom sees the questions -- so whether someone really asks important questions or not, the virtual shill/students could to make it look like someone was paying attention and someone is asking questions that might make you think -- and to encourage others to ask questions.
Until schools and educators can have some financial incentive for for your actual learning, any learning, by you, will be a side product of the system.
It is definitely worth looking again.
While this is a brick and mortar school story, it should be applicable to the current age.
I grew up in Idaho. Idaho is a non very wealthy state, quite conservative. School funding is local, and spotty. The constitution of the state specifies that anyone who graduates from high school has to be admitted to University.
Some high schools offered only the minimum required courses. Some offered Calculus, 2nd year sciences, advanced English.
So the university was faced with a wide spectrum of freshmen each year.
Their solution:
* The math stream started with Algebra and Trig. If you took Calculus I and passed it, you were automatically credited with the earlier two courses.
* I walked into Biology 200 -- intro to biology, and was told, "The computer screwed up -- we have 30 more people that the room will hold. Monday will be a test. The top 15 will receive credit for this course, and can take Bio 201 or 202. The bottom 15 will be transferred to Bio 100 -- Biology for people who didn't take bio in high school.
* ANY course could be challenged. There was a $25 per credit fee which payed for someone to set the test, and a grad to mark it. You could not have more than a third of your credits as challenges.
This last rule was a shock to certain departments that had a reputation for sand piling -- notably business and education.
The regents weren't sympathetic, and said that the material for the course content had to be available at the book store or at the Library.
This then, is the answer for online education. Good placement tests to determine what you know. Modular instruction to fill in the gaps.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Everybody is a professional until they reach the ground with or without a degree, the only reason you want this degree is because you want to proof something. It will not make you a professional.