Online Education Blog

Distance learning provides the same quality education as campus-based programs, provide the distance learner makes smart decisions. In order to get the most out of your online education, follow these tips for selecting your online school:

1. Make sure you attend an accredited school. Accreditation, whether it is by one of the Six Regional Accreditation Agencies, the National Accreditation Agency, or another accreditation agency approved by the Council of Higher Education (CHEA) and/or the U.S. Department of Education (USDE), determines the worth of your online school. While there are valuable online schools that are not accredited, it is safer to attend a university that has undergone accreditation and proven its performance is parallel to the performance of traditional campus-based programs.
2. Make sure your school is compatible with your future educational goals. If there is a chance you will transfer to a different school in the future for the purposes of graduate studies (or other extended postsecondary educational pursuits), it’s imperative you attend an online university with transferable units.
3. Make sure you are compatible with your online school. Take a look at the prospective school’s curriculum. Does it match your interests and time available? Some schools have online programs that are conducted at faster or slower paces than others. You want your online school to mesh with your schedule. Remember that online schooling is supposed to accomodate to your schedule, not the other way around.
4. Read what others have to say. Most feedback you find about your prospective online school will be positive; this is because negative feedback is not usually advertised. If you look through these praises, you can get an idea of what the school is best known for and what it has to offer.
5. Find out the methods of communication professors have with their students. Do online professors at this prospective distance learning school communicate with students via discussion boards, e-mails, chatrooms, or all of the above? How often are they available if you have a question? Discuss your concerns with a counselor from the prospective school and make sure the instructor will be available frequently enough to satisfy your expectations.
6. Ask questions about the program(s) you are interested in. While you are talking to a counselor from the prospective school, ask about the specific program you are interested in as well. Make sure it matches up with what you would like an educational program to offer you.
7. Find out how many students are enrolled in classes. How many students there are in a single class will determine how often you hear from your professor. There are online programs that only have a handful of students, others that have hundreds, and everything in between. A large classroom is not necessarily a bad thing–that means more peers to work with you on discussion boards–but it will affect how often you get to interact with your instructor and is something you should bear in mind.
8. Find out how old the online university is. The longer the distance learning school has been around, the better. The last thing you want is to be part of the first semester of students at an online university that is not accredited and it mysteriously vanishes during your education.
9. Know the tuition rate. It’s important you know how much you are being charged for your education before enrolling. You do not want to enroll at an online school and find out you cannot afford it. Keep in mind most online schools are private schools and therefore are more expensive than a government-operated counterpart that receives federal funding.
10. Visit the campus. If your online academy also has a campus, take a weekend to go visit and see what the school is about. While you might not belong to the campus’ on-site classes, you are still going to be a student of this school and should understand your school’s spirit and atmosphere.