Online Degrees: Who Would Hire an Online Grad?

by Jennifer Mulrean Tags: Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, Phoenix University, Sloan Consortium, Vault, Columbia University, Columbia Video Network

We know. You're naturally curious, committed to lifelong learning, and generally ambitious. Those are great reasons to pursue an education. But with the high price of college, it's safe to bet that you're also hoping that degree will pay off in more practical terms--with a first job, a promotion, or a job change, perhaps.

The good news is, it probably will. In simple terms of dollars and cents, a college degree can be worth millions in income over the course of your life. According to the most recent United States Census Bureau survey, people holding bachelor's degrees are expected to earn $2.1 million over the course of their working lifetime--almost $1 million more than the $1.2 million in lifetime earnings for people who hold high school diplomas only.

But before you pile up those riches, you first have to get through the door of the human resources department. As a current or prospective online student, it's important to consider how an online degree will measure up against those earned at traditional brick-and-mortar programs.

Attitudes in flux?
When asked directly, well-known Fortune 500 companies such as Intel and Wal-Mart said they'd accept online degrees, provided they come from regionally accredited programs.

The last time the question seems to have been put to human resources departments on a broad scale, however, was in late 2000, when Vault, a job-search service and publisher, surveyed almost 300 hiring managers. At the time, 77 percent of respondents said online degrees earned from well-known schools--the Stanford Universities of the world--were more valuable than those from online-only institutions.

A lot has changed since then, including the number of people enrolled in online courses. A 2004 Sloan Consortium report estimated that more than 2.6 million people logged on to at least one online class in the fall of 2004.

Support from employers?
If you're attending a school that offers both campus-based and online courses, chances are your diploma won't distinguish whether you logged on or sat in a traditional classroom to earn it. At Columbia University, for example, online students can earn various graduate engineering degrees through Columbia Video Network (CVN). There's no need to distinguish the degrees as having been earned online because they're identical to the courses delivered at the physical campus.

"The degree (CVN students) earn is identical to what the offline students are getting," says Evan Jacobs, marketing manager for CVN. "The modality is secondary; the content is what's important and it's exactly the same."

Many of the CVN students are adults with full-time jobs, and as such, Jacobs estimates that 80 to 90 percent have their tuition reimbursed by their employer. The University of Phoenix estimates that a similar percentage of its own student body also has their tuition reimbursed by their employer.

"They have the full support of their companies," Jacobs says. "The fact that the employers are reimbursing them for their tuition is really a validation of our program and of distance learning."

"We've heard from a lot of students that they didn't feel they'd have been able to get that promotion or that next job without the skills and knowledge we provide," he says. And as the number of online students? increases, attitudes toward online degrees should continue to open up even further.

The bottom line?
Randy Miller, CEO and founder of ReadyMinds, which offers distance career counseling to everyone from students in college to adult learners, says that just in the last two years, human resources departments have become more comfortable with online degrees.

"They're realizing a lot of quality applicants are going the nontraditional route--if you can still call it that--and they don't want to miss out on this quality applicant pool," he says.

Of course there will always be people--recruiters included--who are have reservations about new kinds of learning. But for some perspective, consider a survey by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) that found that almost 70 percent of corporate supervisors rated the value of a distance degree as "just as valuable" or "more valuable" than resident-school degrees in the same field. The survey pool, however, was comprised of managers with at least one employee who had earned a degree through a DETC-accredited distance program, suggesting that familiarity breeds acceptance for quality programs.

In the end, Miller says, job seekers of all types have many of the same challenges. "It really comes down to the individual--they still have to distinguish themselves," he says.

About the Author

Jennifer Mulrean is a writer on MSN Money. She has written articles for the Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times, and In Style magazine. She lives in Seattle.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by panampro at 3:05 PM CDT

Updated: Monday, 25 June 2007 3:21 PM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Tags: Pell Grant, Scholarships, Department of Education, accreditation processGrant Programs Eligible for ENOCIS Students Await New Legislation in Congress observes University...

House Panel Moves to Raise Pell Grant and Block Accreditation Changes

By KELLY FIELD

Washington

The bill, which would finance most higher-education programs for the 2008 fiscal year, would also raise the maximum Pell Grant by $390, the largest increase since the end of the Clinton administration, and provide $750-million in additional money for the National Institutes of Health.

An appropriations subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives approved the bill this month, one week after Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, warned Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings that he would seek to stop her department from using its regulatory authority to transform the way colleges are accredited. The department is considering regulations that would introduce new measures of "student-learning outcomes" into accreditation and prohibit colleges from denying the transfer of academic credits solely on the basis of the sending college's type of accreditation.

In a floor speech late last month, Mr. Alexander, who served as education secretary during the administration of President Bush's father, said he would offer an amendment to legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act that would prohibit the department from issuing any final regulations on accreditation until after Congress passes the much-delayed reauthorization bill. The Senate is expected to take that bill up later this month.

"Congress needs to legislate first," Senator Alexander said. "Then the department can regulate."

Cheryl Smith, an aide to Rep. David R. Obey, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, said the spending limitation in the education appropriations measure was also meant to signal that the department should wait for Congress to act. Mr. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, added the spending restriction to the bill at the request of college lobbyists and presidents.

The measure still needs the approval of the full Committee on Appropriations before heading to the House floor for debate.

Outspending the President

Over all, the subcommittee's bill would provide $151.5-billion for federal labor, health, and education programs, an increase of nearly 5 percent over this year's spending levels and $10.6-billion more than President Bush proposed. The largest single increase in the bill would go to the Pell Grant program, which would receive $2-billion ? or 14.6 percent ? more in the 2008 fiscal year, which begins October 1.

The proposed $390 jump in the maximum Pell Grant would come on top of a $260 increase enacted this year. Combined, they bring the maximum Pell Grant to $4,700, $100 more than President Bush proposed in his most recent budget, released in February.

The bill would also restore funds for several education programs that the president had sought to eliminate, including the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program, or LEAP, which matches each dollar that states commit to need-based aid, and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, which augment Pell Grants for needy students. Another campus-based program, Federal Work-Study, would see a gain of $138,000, to $980.5-million.

The federal TRIO college-preparation programs, which the president has proposed abolishing in the past, and for which he proposed level funds in his latest proposal, would get $40-million more under the House panel's bill, rising to $868.2-million. Gear Up, another college-preparation program for which the president proposed no increase, would get $20-million more, or $323.4-million.

Hispanic-serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities would both receive an increase of almost 5 percent ? $4.6-million and $11.4-million more, respectively.

Standing Pat With Perkins

Lobbyists for higher-education institutions said they were relieved that the House panel's proposal would increase the maximum Pell Grant without raiding other programs. President Bush's budget would have paid for the Pell Grant increase by slashing subsidies to student-loan companies and killing the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and the LEAP programs.

"This is the direction we need to be going in," said Stephanie Giesecke, director of budget and appropriations for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "We hope the Senate will at least match it."

The bill did not appear to provide any new money for "capital contributions" to the Perkins Loan program. Such contributions ? along with institutional matching funds and proceeds from repaid loans ? go into a pool of revolving funds from which colleges make new Perkins Loans to students from low- and middle-income families.

However, the bill would provide $65.5-million for Perkins Loans forgiveness, the same as in the current fiscal year. President Bush had proposed abolishing that program.

For the National Institutes of Health, the House's bill includes $29.65-billion, $1-billion more than the president's request, and a 2.6-percent increase over the current fiscal year. Mr. Obey called that the largest increase in four years, saying it would allow the agency to finance 545 more grants than it did this year. The NIH is the largest single source of funds for academic research.

The Association of American Universities, which represents leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada, said it was pleased that the committee had proposed a second straight increase for the agency after three years of flat federal support levels and despite the administration's proposed $511-million cut. "We need to restore momentum to NIH," said Robert M. Berdahl, the association's president.

But the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which has called on Congress to increase spending on the agency by 6.7 percent in each of the next three years, expressed disappointment that the proposed increase was below the rate of inflation. "The flat funding we have experienced over the past several years has had a devastating effect on the scientific enterprise," said Leo T. Furcht, the federation's president.

The bill rejects the president's plan to all but eliminate funds for the Health Professions program, which trains students from minority groups and disadvantaged backgrounds to be physicians, dentists, and other health professionals and encourages them to work in poor and rural areas. Instead it would provide a 24-percent increase for the program, to $228.3-million.That money would help offset a deep cut passed two years ago, when the program's budget was halved, to $145.2-million.

The panel also approved an 11-percent increase for a related program that supports nursing education, which Mr. Bush proposed reducing in 2008.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by panampro at 8:37 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Tags: Pell Grant, Scholarships, Department of Education, accreditation processGrant Programs Eligible for ENOCIS Students Await New Legislation in Congress observes University...

House Panel Moves to Raise Pell Grant and Block Accreditation Changes

By KELLY FIELD

Washington

The bill, which would finance most higher-education programs for the 2008 fiscal year, would also raise the maximum Pell Grant by $390, the largest increase since the end of the Clinton administration, and provide $750-million in additional money for the National Institutes of Health.

An appropriations subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives approved the bill this month, one week after Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, warned Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings that he would seek to stop her department from using its regulatory authority to transform the way colleges are accredited. The department is considering regulations that would introduce new measures of "student-learning outcomes" into accreditation and prohibit colleges from denying the transfer of academic credits solely on the basis of the sending college's type of accreditation.

In a floor speech late last month, Mr. Alexander, who served as education secretary during the administration of President Bush's father, said he would offer an amendment to legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act that would prohibit the department from issuing any final regulations on accreditation until after Congress passes the much-delayed reauthorization bill. The Senate is expected to take that bill up later this month.

"Congress needs to legislate first," Senator Alexander said. "Then the department can regulate."

Cheryl Smith, an aide to Rep. David R. Obey, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, said the spending limitation in the education appropriations measure was also meant to signal that the department should wait for Congress to act. Mr. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, added the spending restriction to the bill at the request of college lobbyists and presidents.

The measure still needs the approval of the full Committee on Appropriations before heading to the House floor for debate.

Outspending the President

Over all, the subcommittee's bill would provide $151.5-billion for federal labor, health, and education programs, an increase of nearly 5 percent over this year's spending levels and $10.6-billion more than President Bush proposed. The largest single increase in the bill would go to the Pell Grant program, which would receive $2-billion ? or 14.6 percent ? more in the 2008 fiscal year, which begins October 1.

The proposed $390 jump in the maximum Pell Grant would come on top of a $260 increase enacted this year. Combined, they bring the maximum Pell Grant to $4,700, $100 more than President Bush proposed in his most recent budget, released in February.

The bill would also restore funds for several education programs that the president had sought to eliminate, including the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program, or LEAP, which matches each dollar that states commit to need-based aid, and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, which augment Pell Grants for needy students. Another campus-based program, Federal Work-Study, would see a gain of $138,000, to $980.5-million.

The federal TRIO college-preparation programs, which the president has proposed abolishing in the past, and for which he proposed level funds in his latest proposal, would get $40-million more under the House panel's bill, rising to $868.2-million. Gear Up, another college-preparation program for which the president proposed no increase, would get $20-million more, or $323.4-million.

Hispanic-serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities would both receive an increase of almost 5 percent ? $4.6-million and $11.4-million more, respectively.

Standing Pat With Perkins

Lobbyists for higher-education institutions said they were relieved that the House panel's proposal would increase the maximum Pell Grant without raiding other programs. President Bush's budget would have paid for the Pell Grant increase by slashing subsidies to student-loan companies and killing the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and the LEAP programs.

"This is the direction we need to be going in," said Stephanie Giesecke, director of budget and appropriations for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "We hope the Senate will at least match it."

The bill did not appear to provide any new money for "capital contributions" to the Perkins Loan program. Such contributions ? along with institutional matching funds and proceeds from repaid loans ? go into a pool of revolving funds from which colleges make new Perkins Loans to students from low- and middle-income families.

However, the bill would provide $65.5-million for Perkins Loans forgiveness, the same as in the current fiscal year. President Bush had proposed abolishing that program.

For the National Institutes of Health, the House's bill includes $29.65-billion, $1-billion more than the president's request, and a 2.6-percent increase over the current fiscal year. Mr. Obey called that the largest increase in four years, saying it would allow the agency to finance 545 more grants than it did this year. The NIH is the largest single source of funds for academic research.

The Association of American Universities, which represents leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada, said it was pleased that the committee had proposed a second straight increase for the agency after three years of flat federal support levels and despite the administration's proposed $511-million cut. "We need to restore momentum to NIH," said Robert M. Berdahl, the association's president.

But the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which has called on Congress to increase spending on the agency by 6.7 percent in each of the next three years, expressed disappointment that the proposed increase was below the rate of inflation. "The flat funding we have experienced over the past several years has had a devastating effect on the scientific enterprise," said Leo T. Furcht, the federation's president.

The bill rejects the president's plan to all but eliminate funds for the Health Professions program, which trains students from minority groups and disadvantaged backgrounds to be physicians, dentists, and other health professionals and encourages them to work in poor and rural areas. Instead it would provide a 24-percent increase for the program, to $228.3-million.That money would help offset a deep cut passed two years ago, when the program's budget was halved, to $145.2-million.

The panel also approved an 11-percent increase for a related program that supports nursing education, which Mr. Bush proposed reducing in 2008.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by panampro at 8:37 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Tags: Ministerio de Educacion, Martin Torrijos, TOEFL, universal languageThe Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) Appoints Admission Officers in Latin America and the Caribbean

The launching of the ENOCIS Basic English program for Spanish speaking students has attracted such an influx of students that the Enoch Olinga College has found it necessary to establish Admissions Representatives in 21 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. ENOCIS hopes that this more personal attention to its student body will create a higher level of student satisfaction with the program through more personal attention to students? needs. Previously, ENOCIS used a centralized office in the United States to address the requests of students around the world. One of the directors, David W Morris, commented, ?I hope this more personal attention in each student?s native language and culture will improve the educational experience,? adding, ?It is evident that one universal language needs to be developed around the world to decrease misunderstanding and confusion between diverse races and cultures.?

The Enoch Olinga College of Intercultural Studies, Inc. is an online institute of higher education whose purpose is to provide the equivalent of a four-year college degree to international students who, for various reasons, have trouble physically attending an accredited college or university. There is a great demand for higher education in many parts of the world that cannot be met locally, due to limited resources, lack of qualified faculty, or the expense of attending traditional brick-and-mortar institutions. The expensive option of traveling to a foreign country for higher education is not available to more than a few people.

Education and access to opportunity is what separates technologically ?developed? from ?developing? nations. There should not be such a binding relationship between excellence, the capability of serving one?s community, and the financial resources to educate children to technologically advance their nations.

?The objective is to realize a massive transformation of the curriculum, a proposal that intends to improve the quality of education, to benefit the students and the development of our own country.?-Dr Miguel A Canizales, Ministro de Educacion de Panama

?The only way we are goig to break this vicious cycle of poverty, is to educate and improve the quality of life of our children.?-Presidente de Panama Martin Torrijos, 7 de Abril, 2006

The Enoch Olinga College is a project developed with the assistance of the Sons of David Foundation and with the cooperative guidance of the Ministry of Government and Justice of the office of Political Indigenista in Panama. ENOCIS is designed to offer educational opportunities to the underserved peoples of the world. For more information on the ENOCIS project, please visit the web site www.enocis.org. Education: the tool to break the chains of poverty.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by panampro at 5:29 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Tags: Sons of David Foundation, TOEFL, Ministry of Government and Justice, Politica IndigenistaThe Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) Announces New English Program

The Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) announces the launching of a new English program on line for Spanish speaking students.

ENOCIS has received funding from a private Latin American foundation The Sons of David to offer full scholarships to qualified candidates, a value of over $2000 USD to prepare these students to take the TOEFL examination. The only cost to students is a small registration fee and for the certificates of completion. For more information go to the ENOCIS web site www.enocis.org and click on the button ?Clases de Ingles?.

ENOCIS over the last year found that many of its students did not have an adequate mastery of the English language to successfully participate in its US university classes. For this reason, ENOCIS designed this bootstrap English program for Spanish speaking students. As the program evolves it will be translated into Chinese and Vietnamese.

The Enoch Olinga College project is the result of over ten years of research and development of a education platform for the indigenous peoples of Panama and other underserved persons throughout the world. Developed in conjunction the Office of Politica Indigenista of the Ministry of Government and Justice, ENOCIS has been offering services for over a year from its US base in Macon, Georgia. ENOCIS works with many nations and cultures throughout the world. Education: the Tool to Break the Chains of Poverty.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by panampro at 6:40 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

English, the Language of Common Communication and Unity… by David W. Morris

As the world is ever more rapidly becoming a global community as a result of advanced technology, it is increasingly necessary to have one common language. Many of the world’s problems come from the inability to communicate. In today’s society it has become necessary to learn your mother tongue and a second common auxiliary language to exchange a few words, consult and solve problems with those of other cultures and other languages.

English is quickly becoming that language of choice. The Enoch Olinga College has found that many of our students do not have the Basic English skills necessary to adequately use the language to enter a US university degree stream. To this end, ENOCIS has designed a series of English preparatory classes to aid students to prepare for the TOEFL Exam, a requirement to earn an US university degree.

The Enoch Olinga College, (ENOCIS) has applied for a grant from the Sons of David Foundation, (SOD) a private Latin American foundation for the advancement of education amongst the underserved peoples of the world. SOD has agreed to provide full scholarships to qualified Spanish speaking students to go through the three part course.  For each qualifying student this represents a more than $2000 USD scholarship. The only expense incurred by the student is a small registration fee and the cost of printing and shipping of the certificate of completion for each level of the course. For more information you may go to the Spanish ENOCIS site “Clases en Ingles”.

As the preparatory program evolves ENOCIS will add a language chat room to practice your skills, a TOEFL Pre Examination Program and English language preparatory programs in Vietnamese and Chinese.

English, now the global language, drifts from its roots

By Noam Cohen the New York Times

Published: August 6, 2006

When the Iranian president proposed last month to ban English words like "helicopter," "chat" and "pizza," Iran became the latest country to try to fight the spread of English as a de facto global language.

But with interest in English around the world growing stronger, not weaker - stoked by American cultural influences and advertising, the increasing numbers of young people in developing countries and the spread of the Internet, among other factors - there are some linguists and others who say: Why fight it? Instead, the argument goes, English, particularly the simpler form of the language used by most nonnative speakers, should be embraced.

"It's a lost cause to try to fight against the tide," said Jacques Lévy, who studies globalism at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and is a native French-speaker. English, he added, is just the latest in a line of global tongues. "It could have been another language; it was Greek, then Latin, French, now it is English."

In a report for the British Council, a government body that promotes English culture around the world, a linguist, David Graddol, cites figures saying that 500 million to a billion people speak English now, as either a first or second language.

Under a plan he calls the World English Project; countries would recognize the advantage of English as a global tool and introduce English instruction earlier in schools. As a result, he writes, there could be "two billion new speakers of English within a decade."

But the danger is that proper English will be overwhelmed by the English of nonnative speakers, he acknowledged.

"This is not English as we have known it, and have taught it in the past as a foreign language," he wrote. "It is a new phenomenon, and if it represents any kind of triumph it is probably not a cause of celebration by native speakers."

Leave it to a native of France - a country that itself in the 1990s briefly required that 3,000 English words be replaced by French ones - to suggest that this simpler English be codified.

Jean-Paul Nerrière, a retired vice president of IBM, calls his proposal Globish. It uses a limited vocabulary of 1,500 words, taken from the Voice of America, among other sources, which can be put together clumsily to express more complicated thoughts. Little concern is given to the complexities of grammar, and he proposes that speakers of Globish say the same thing in different ways to make up for difficulties in pronunciation.

The typical conversation in Globish could be grating to a native speaker, but get the job done between, say, a Kenyan and a Korean trying to navigate a business deal or asking for help at the airport check-in. For nephew, there is "son of my brother/sister"; kitchen is "room in which you cook your food"; chat is "speak casually to each other." Pizza is pizza, however, because Globish considers it to be an international term, like taxi or police.

"Globish is not a language, it will never have a literature, it does not aim at conveying a culture, values," Nerrière wrote in an e-mail message. "Globish is just a tool, practical, efficient, limited on purpose."

Nerrière said he got the idea from his travels in Asia while working for IBM. "I observed that my communication with my Japanese or Korean colleagues was much easier, much more efficient, and much less inhibited than what I could observe between them and the American associates traveling with me," he said.

Globish is something that an American would need to learn as much as a non-English speaker, he said, although a book he has written about the idea is not available in America. (There are French, Korean, Italian and Spanish versions.) He said he was working on software to identify words that fall outside the vocabulary limits and propose substitutes from Globish writing.

As the world learns to deal with the domination of English, whether through Globish or the more-intensive language training proposed by the British Council report, it is native English speakers who could be in need of extra preparation. Though English fluency can seem like the key to the kingdom today, in the future, if there are two billion people who can speak English, the English speaker without knowledge of another language will be at a disadvantage.

Lévy said he liked Globish's idea of reminding native English speakers that they cannot assume that the entire world is as fluent as they are. "The global English world is not a world where Anglophone people speak the same as they would at home," he said. "We have to force native English speakers to limit the use of these tools."

Posted by panampro at 10:32 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Free Quick Quiz Creator by Jimmy R.

I'm proud to present the new JimmyR quiz maker. Before I was still proud of it but it had a few bugs and worst of the entire GUI for generating the quiz confused a lot of people. A lot of bugs were fixed, the new question generation was made a lot more efficient and the new interface is way easier to use.

Features

Creating a practice quiz is easy. It currently accepts multiple choice selections and direct input questions. It infinitely continues asking questions so you can study until you feel you've mastered the questions.

I'm thinking about registering a domain for it and posting it in various places as a web 2.0 site. It really doesn't use Ajax. I can probably import vocabulary lists from different RSS feeds and auto-generate a course of some kind but RSS doesn't really seem useful for the topic. Anyway most people think web 2.0 is having generic logos that look 2.0-ish and the dhtml feel so I probably won?t have any problem anyway.

Future Additions

I'm thinking about setting up a sub-blog just for Berkeley courses or anything else I study. I'll just modify the code to where when taking notes in the blog a quiz is auto generated when I submit the blog based on the blogs contents. That would be awesome. Automation can do a lot for convenience.

I might also buy a domain for the quiz creator not exactly sure which yet. Many of the good domains are just held by bastard domain tycoons that just have thousands of ad stuffed doorway pages with no actual content made by the site itself. I wish people would learn to use Google instead of guessing URLs so these evil marketers would stop preventing legitimate content providers.

Competition: Funny Personality Quizzes

I'm a little concerned about the competition for quiz generators. Most people are searching for stupid funny quiz creators which, at the end of taking a "quiz", generate some stupid image and give you some kind of embed code so you can share the results of the quiz with friends. This is pretty efficient in that you get tons of inward links. The down sides are that people hotlink your large images, you'll be linked on a massive amount of low ranked pages and your main visitors will be kids.

Competition: Flash Card Generators

When I was making the free education site I found a great online flash card making site. It's kind of weird but it seems the word "quiz" has been associated to stupid personality quizzes and the unpleasant pop-quizzes the teachers give at schools. The term flash card on the other hand is associated with positive self academic study. Setting up a site about generating quizzes could send me the wrong audience and in the end clutter the site with upset people looking to make and share really stupid quizzes to share with their friends. I think my quiz maker is much more efficient for learning new material than flash card style programs but in the end better targeting usually favours efficiency.

Powered by Qumana

Posted by panampro at 7:35 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Education Online wrote: With the recent boom in distance learning programs, millions of Americans are getting a degree in the comfort of their own home. Yet while these programs are gaining in popularity, the feature that makes them so attractive ? flexibility ? can also make them challenging. The best and most successful students use the following practices to maximize their distance learning experience.

• Set a schedule and stick to it.

It?s great that you can choose when you want to study ? as long as you don?t put it off. Make a daily or weekly schedule, reserving enough time to complete your assignments. Once you?ve determined when you will study, honor that commitment as though you were attending an actual class. Turn off your cell phone and resist the urge to wash the dishes.

• Organizeyour workspace.

The best learning takes place in an environment conducive to concentration. Find a spot where you can focus on your work. Stock up on the necessary supplies and store them for easy access so you don?t waste precious time looking for things.

• Recruit familyand friends.

Make your plans known to the people close to you so they can be allies in helping you meet your goals. If you have children, scheduling ?family homework time? may help everyone get their work done at once.

• Connect with others.

You are not alone! Find a fellow student with whom you can share tips and research resources, or just vent. Having the support of another student will help you stay motivated.

Make the most of your distance learning experience by using these best practices. They?ll come easier in time and soon you?ll be giving advice to other students!

Powered by Qumana

Posted by panampro at 11:16 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

In the wake of Virginia Tech it is becoming increasingly necessary to find alternative methods of continuing education. It is becoming ever import to balance the United States' social responsability to the world with its' own need for internal scurity in the wake of September 11 and Virginia Tech.

Is on line education the solution to continuing education? The other day I ran across an interesting site The Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) which may address this ever pressing need.

ENOCIS is a consolidator of quality higher education and has a TOEFL prpearatory program and offers scholarships to exceptional students from the underserved peoples of the world.

Posted by panampro at 2:46 AM CDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink