One of the most significant differences between online courses and traditional courses is that in online courses, students are expected to learn, master and use online learning tools while taking the course. These online learning tools are often course management systems, which are used to keep track of everything a student does in an online course. Students will be expected to know how to find their homework and reading assignments on the system, as well as know how to upload completed assignments. They will also be expected to understand how to participate in online chat sessions and how to post reactions to lectures and readings in forums.

Course management systems, and other online learning tools, can be easy to use once they’re fully understood. They can, however, be tricky to use at first, and students who experience problems using them can experience a lot of frustration. What to do if this is the case? As is true with any problem, if you are having trouble using an online learning tool for a class, ask for help – and ask for it as soon as you experience the problem! Don’t wait until the assignment is due in two hours. Ask questions early, and ask them as often as is necessary.

Most online course management systems, and other online learning tools, have technical support people, who can be invaluable to students. Email these informed individuals first, and if you are still having problems, let your instructor know about the problem so that you can arrange for additional help and new deadlines. Also, it’s very common for a tutorial session to be set up for students so that they can familiarize themselves with a new online learning tool. If this is offered, take advantage of it! Even if you are good with computers, it’s important to take the time to learn an online learning tool that you will be using every day for your course. Some of these systems are not as intuitively designed as they could be, so it’s better to set aside time to learn an online learning tool’s quirks than to try it by yourself and become frustrated.

Always ask for help if you need it! It’s up to you to take the initiative to answer your questions, and doing so will help you have a successful and stress-free online learning experience.

Tags: Online Education by editor
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Whatever career you are pursuing, it’s important to fully understand how your courses or degree will directly translate into the workforce and into the career of your choice. For example, if you are preparing for a nursing or paralegal career, be sure that you understand exactly what requirements you have to meet before your online degree can be applied to the workforce. Do you have to serve an internship before you can apply for jobs? Do you have to pass a test of some sort in order for your degree to be meaningful?

If you are working part-time or full-time while you study, and your degree directly applies to the type of work you are already doing, be sure to let your employers know that you are pursuing additional education. Ask questions about any additional skill sets you need to develop before applying for new or more advanced positions. For example, if you want to transition into a managerial role at your computer company, be sure to let your boss know that you are completing a Business Management degree and that the skills you are learning will help you become a more effective employee for the company. Even if a job doesn’t currently exist at your company, letting people know early about your studies may result in a position being opened up for you.

This advice also goes for students who are not currently working while they pursue their online degree. It’s highly important to start applying for jobs and to start developing contacts in an industry before you graduate. Begin sending out job applications and letters of inquiry anywhere from three to six months before you graduate, letting employers know that you will soon be graduating with a new degree. Searching for work can be a very time consuming and long process, so the sooner you begin the search, the better.

Finally, keep careful notes about what you get out of the online courses you take, and how the knowledge you’ve acquired can be directly applied to a new job. The more detailed information you can give to employers about your new skills, the better. Think about how you put the things you’ve learned in class into practice – how to make them practical. This will be important for your cover letters as well as for your interviews.

The bottom line is, transitioning from online courses to the workforce is all about thinking ahead, and getting started early. Staying in tune with how you can make yourself as marketable as possible will inform your course decisions, which will in turn help your transition to a paying job much smoother – and hopefully quicker!

Tags: Career Education, Online Education by editor
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In an interesting experiment in online education, some teachers at the University of Washington required their students to publish their papers on Wikipedia. The assignment was intended to enhance the learning experience of writing a term paper by requiring the students to write their paper for a mass audience, thus allowing them to have the chance to get feedback from a large community of peers.

According to a presentation made by these professors, traditionally, term papers have an audience of one, their objectives are limited, and their impact outside of class is limited. However, this term paper project was designed with the hope that students would benefit from interacting with a wider community of peers and that student researchers could benefit from their exposure to comments from the community at large. The issue of motivation was also considered; if students knew that their work was going to be reviewed by a large audience of people knowledgeable about their topic, then they would be more likely to do real research and attempt to present some new, interesting results.

Wikipedia is an online authoring site on which all material can be edited by anyone who has access to it. According to the site, there are currently 7.5 million articles written in 250 different languages, and two million of the articles are written in English. Everything that is published on Wikipedia is immediately available to a mass, worldwide audience. Wikipedia does have its inherent problems; the reliability of information often comes into question, even though it can be edited by anyone using the site, and articles are published anonymously, which means that there is limited accountability to those authoring the articles.

Two groups of students were given the Wikipedia assignment. In Autumn of 2006, a group of Environmental History and Globalization students were tasked with writing a 1500-word minimum paper that would be 60% of their grade and posting it on Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia guidelines. In Spring of 2007, a group of Conservation and Sustainable Development students were tasked with creating a paper which would be worth 40% of their grade; the length was based upon group size. 34 of the Autum students published papers to Wikipedia, and 14 groups in the Spring class published papers to Wikipedia.

And the results? Some of the Wikipedia feedback was difficult to swallow. Some Wikipedia members deleted student articles, drastically edited content and there was apparently some rude discussion in the Wikipedia community. However, none of the students had difficulty actually publishing their information, and surprisingly, most of the students reported having very positive experience with the assignment. Some students reported feeling a sense of accomplishment that their papers were being read by a wide community of people, and that their research could go on other help other people. All but one of the students in the two courses reported that they felt the assignment was a valuable experience.

Some of the issues to be worked out included helping students translate their paper “voices” from term paper to encyclopedia entry, more time to post entries and more instructor time was needed to help students through the process.

Tags: Learning Technologies, Non-Traditional Students, Online Education by editor
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Many students choose to take classes online because doing so allows them to work their classes into their busy work schedules. Students who work at a job full-time during the day can still pursue a degree in the evenings and on the weekends by taking courses online, many of which have very flexible requirements and homework schedules.

Online courses may indeed be flexible, but balancing work with online homework and classes is far from easy. Rather, it takes work – real dedication, motivation and practice. For students who work at a computer from 9-5 and then have to come home to do homework online, the prospect of sitting in front of a computer screen for an additional two hours may not always be appealing. Sometimes, though, it simply has to be done. This is where practicing good discipline comes in. Students need to remind themselves of the goals they are trying to achieve, and constantly remind themselves that while online courses may lack the strict format of traditional classes, they still be taken seriously. Homework and projects must be turned in by deadlines, and readings must be finished in order to complete the homework and projects.

How do busy students successfully balance their work and online homework and classes? One strategy students use is to carefully block out their time, so that no hours are wasted. For example, a student might plan to do online homework from 7-9pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and then for four hours each Saturday and Sunday. This provides structure, which is helpful for many students who need to complete their tasks on time.

Another strategy students use is to notify their employers of important school deadlines ahead of time, so that the student and the employer can work together to arrange a work schedule during that time which works for both of them. Employers always appreciate being given advance notice if an employee must take one or two days off, and if a student knows that they will need one or two extra days to finish a large project, they can plan for that ahead of time. That way, nobody is surprised, and the student shows that he is being responsible about both the school work and the work schedule.

Finally, many students actively schedule in “play time” for themselves. Though this might seem like an unnecessary thing to do, it is actually very important for success. Students who mindfully plan out their down time and relaxing time have much lower risks of burnout. Juggling school work and a job can be a very difficult task, but structured fun time can greatly help to alleviate the stress which goes along with this balancing act.

The key word here is balance – as much as possible, students should take care to not overwhelm themselves with either work or with school.

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education by editor
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There is no doubt that online learning is convenient. Fully online classes mean no commute (except from the bedroom to a computer) and no traffic. Students do not have to pay for campus housing, and they can complete courses on their own time and at their own pace. Essentially, online learning allows students to work their classes more easily into their busy work and family lives.

However, being a successful online student requires a lot of motivation, excellent time management skills and a strong sense of accountability. Some students struggle with online courses’ inherent flexibility. And, many students feel that, once they begin the course, that they are being robbed of a “real” instructor who can answer their questions and concerns. Finally, the any technological difficulties during a course can turn students off, and their frustration can turn into indifference as to whether they finish the course or not.

How, then, can students make sure that they maintain their online learning motivation? Here are some suggestions.

1. Carefully read the course requirements and expectation before you sign up.
   Unless you really familiarize yourself with the amount of work which is going to be involved, and with what is going to be expected of you, you might sign up for class that is too much work or one that is not relevant to you. If you are unsure about any of the course descriptions, ask for clarification early on. Nothing will destroy motivation more than having much more work than you anticipated.
2. Make sure you understand how the course is relevant to you.
   It’s important to understand why they’re taking a particular course. Understanding a course’s relevance, and how it fits into the overall course of their studies, is likely to help you stay more motivated.
3. Reach out for help if you need it.
   Don’t let problems with coursework or technology fester until you want to give up. Online courses do not have the face-to-face contact between students and instructors that traditional courses do, so if you don’t make the effort to reach out and ask for help, you’re likely to feel lost and become unmotivated to do the work.
4. Set realistic goals, and reward yourself for achieving them.
   Make sure you set defined, realistic goals for yourself, and reward yourself for reaching them. For example, tell yourself you will finish the assigned paper in two weeks, and if you achieve that, treat yourself to a night out with friends or something else you’d enjoy. Feelings of achievement greatly increase motivation levels.
5. Develop a strong support system, and look at past success stories.
   Make an effort to read about previous students’ successes with the class you’re taking, or contact previous students to talk with them about the class. Finding out what other students’ experiences were with your course can help prepare you for what you should expect, and help you realize that the concepts they are struggling with were tough for previous students, too. It’s important for students in online courses to create a strong support network for themselves, because completing online courses usually takes more discipline than traditional ones in which you have to be somewhere at the same time on the same day.

All of these suggestions are ways in which students can help ensure that their motivation levels in online courses do not wane. Online courses are meant to make students’ lives easier, and degrees easier to achieve, and with a little work in the motivation department, every online students is capable of achieving his or her academic goals.

Tags: Online Education by editor
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Even as online learning continues to grow in popularity, debates about the many positive and negative facets of online learning continue to take place. One of the most popular forms of teaching and learning in online environments are discussion forums, where students have the opportunity to interact with each other and the professor whenever they want to log in. Students can ask other students about something they were confused about in class or pose questions about an entirely new topic and get feedback. All of this takes place in the form of “chat rooms,” where students have a full view of what they have typed as well as all of the responses from the other people in the room.

So, what are the positives for an interactive discussion environment such as this? One idea is that before a class takes place, the professor can prepare the students for what is going to be taught in class with a brief, pre-class discussion about the topic. This allows the professor to focus on only the new material when the actual class takes place. The professor and students can make better use of class time, and the professor can tailor the lecture to the areas which really interest the students.

Shy students can benefit as well, as they tend to be more likely to feel comfortable asking questions in online sessions than in a face-to-face situation. What’s more, ideas can be written down, erased, edited before presented to the forum, which gives shy students a lot of power over their words. Additionally, “touchy” subjects, which students may not feel comfortable discussing in class, can be more readily discussed in an online format. Students often feel safer in the more anonymous environment of online chat rooms.

Those are some of the good parts to online discussions – but what about the bad parts? Sometimes, there can be too much discussion; students sometimes complain that discussion forums provide too much outside work and professors complain about the heady task of going through the comments and responding to them. Also, students may not write about how the really feel if they know the professor is watching or listening in on what is being written about. Finally, sometimes, online discussion forums are simply not necessary. For course content that does not require a lot of discussion in class, out-of-class discussion sessions may be adding extra work with no added benefits. Some students also prefer the face-to-face format of in-class discussions, where they can get the “expert” feedback of their professors, as opposed to the inexperienced feedback of their peers. Also, if the discussion forum is not moderated or watched by the professor, students might be posing questions to each other about the content they learned about in class or in their readings, but none of them have the answer; if the professor is not present in chat sessions, students could get frustrated.

Online discussion forums and chat rooms are becoming integral parts of many online courses, but it’s important for professors to carefully think about how they will contribute to the overall course before incorporating them. When properly implemented, online discussion forums can add to the learning experience.

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education by editor
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In 2008, virtual learning environments are rapidly becoming more mainstream and popular. Classes taught entirely online as well as hybrid classes are aggressively competing for traditional brick and mortar students, and the results are starting to show. As virtual learning environments become more commonplace and accepted, it becomes harder to remember what the earliest days of virtual learning were like. Some people remember the days of distance education courses (which are definitely still around), in which course materials were mailed through students. Surprisingly, these types of courses got their start, in America at least, almost 300 years ago. According to a Wikipedia article, an enterprising gentleman in 1728 began mailing out shorthand courses to students all over the Eastern seaboard. Consider the advertisement for these courses, which sound very similar to those written today about online courses!: “Persons in the Country desirous to Learn this Art, may by having the several Lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston.”

Fast-forward to 1906, when The University of Wisconsin-Extension was founded – the first true distance learning school. During the 1900s, improving technology increasingly began to play bigger roles in distance education and virtual learning opportunities. In 1953, when television was still quite young, the University of Houston offered the first televised college courses which could be taken for credit. The courses came on at night, so that working people could still take the courses. The University of Chicago followed suit in 1959 with its Sunrise Semester, which were also courses delivered via television. In 1960, PLATO was developed, which allowed students to communicate with professors using on-line notes as well as study assigned lessons on a computer. In 1969, Stanford University jumped onboard and offered twelve engineering courses via television. In 1974, an international school of sorts was held in a very remote Italian resort and which used the then state-of-the-art CAI computer assistance program.

The virtual learning environment really started to pick up in the late 70s and early 80s; in 1979, “the world’s first public viewdata service” was opened in London in a small cluster of mini computers. The experiment didn’t take hold, but those who were there to witness it probably felt the same sense of amazement and awe as those who saw the first Internet pages a decade later. A number of technologies were developed in the 70s which allowed students to read content on computers and to respond to it on the computer, though not in today’s online format. However, the information could be saved and viewed by their teachers.

By the mid1980s, a number of distance education courses were available all over the world, though only small numbers of students signed up initially. The University of Phoenix began offering online courses in 1989 in San Francisco. With the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, online courses and virtual environments really began to grow, and the developments are too numerous to cover here. And the developments in the first decade of the 21st century continue to come at a faster and faster rate. Virtual learning environments have an exciting future ahead of them, and as is true of any relatively new technology, it will be question and doubted as it continues to grow and improve.

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education by editor
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