How Distance Learners Can Make College Rock

There’s more to higher education than sitting in a classroom. After hitting the books, college students play ultimate, date, party, flirt, order pizza, and grab late-night lattes to keep their eyes open.

Sound good? Yes, it is. But what if you are a distance learner? Does that mean that you can’t enjoy all those extras? Not necessarily. Here are some ways to keep college rocking, even if your campus looks more like a laptop than a grassy quad.

• Join a Facebook Group for your online college. Our StraighterLine group is a great example. It works like a virtual campus where students can connect and communicate about their online college experiences.
  
  
• Visit your online school’s blog and comment on what you see there. Hopefully, your school has one where you can stay attuned to what is happening – and interact with your school’s representatives and other students.

• Create your own Facebook Group to stay connected to other students in your area. Setting up a Facebook Group is quick and easy. Consider starting one for students who are taking the same courses that you are – or for all distance learners who live in your area. The result? An instant community that keeps the college experience real.

• Set up a Twitter account and send out tweets about your learning experiences. The result can be a fast-growing community of people who are attending your online school – or tweeting about distance learning in general. Example: A quick search for “Straighterline” on Twitter just turned up a bunch of tweets that have already been flying around about us.

• Find real-world replacements for the stuff that your online school doesn’t offer. Instead of the university gym, you can head to your local health club. Instead of hanging at the dining hall, you can grab lunch with other students – maybe those who you just met on Facebook or Twitter. Instead of flirting with that cutie over a foamy barista drink, you can . . . hey, we don’t have to tell you everything, do we?

The point is, taking courses online doesn’t mean that you have to go it alone.


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Why Online Study Takes the Risk Out Of Learning

If you’ve been visiting this blog, you already know the benefits of taking college courses online. You can save money – a lot of it - and even cut the cost of your first college year down to a few thousand dollars. You can pursue your studies at the pace that’s right for you. You can take your classes anywhere, anytime.

But you might not have stopped to consider that online learning has one other big benefit too. It reduces the high cost of failure in your college work – and we all know that with tuition costs today, failure can cost you a lot of money.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways online study takes the risk out of learning:

• Reason #1: You minimize the cost of failure. If you take a class in a regular college and you don’t do well, that course will appear on your college transcript indefinitely. Plus, you paid a lot of money for it. It you study online and a course doesn’t go too well, there is very little downside. You simply don’t have your results reported to the colleges where you are applying, or you don’t report them to your employer. The bottom line? You can try the course before it counts for real.
  
  
• Reason #2: You can front-load your learning. If you have to take a course in English composition in your first year of college, why not hone your skills by taking an online writing course before you arrive at school? The result? You start your learning from an advantageous place.
  
  
• Reason #3: You can shore up weak areas as you go along. You could look pretty bad if a professor calls on you in a classroom and asks, “What’s the difference between a trapezoid and a parallelogram?” But if that same question comes up during your online study, you simply pause the course while you look up the information. The result? You get the knowledge, not the blame.
  
  
• Reason #4: You can take the time you need to prepare for tests and exams. In a regular college setting, you have to take tests and exams on the dates your instructors specify, whether you are ready or not. In online college courses, you can vote yourself extra time to study before you log on and take your tests. The benefit? You can take more time to prepare carefully and earn better grades.
  

Online study represents a terrific, risk-minimized value with a very big upside. So before you write that big check and walk into a college classroom, why not give college online learning a try?


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Sixty Percent of Americans Now See Colleges as Businesses that “Care Mainly about the Bottom Line”

Are colleges now charging more than the average American family is willing to pay?

“Squeeze Play 2010: Continued Public Anxiety On Cost, Harsher Judgments On How Colleges Are Run,” a recent survey of 1,031 adults conducted by Public Agenda, shows that Americans still believe in the value of a college education. But at the same time, more of them are growing anxious as tuition costs spiral out of control.

Let’s take a look at what the survey found.

First, the good news about American’s perception of a college education . . .

• 55% of Americans believe that “A college education is necessary for a person to be successful in today’s world.” Back in year 2000, the same survey found that only 31% of Americans believed that was true.
• 59% of Americans who have high school-age children say that it is “very likely” that those children will attend college.

And now, the bad news . . .

• 60% of Americans believe that colleges “are like most businesses and care mainly about the bottom line.”
• 65% of Americans believe that the cost of education is rising faster than the cost of other things.
• 65% of Americans believe that students have to borrow too much money to pay for their education.
• 69% of Americans believe that some qualified students are unable to attend college today.
• 64% of Americans believe that colleges should use Federal aid to hold down tuition costs. In contrast, only 25% of Americans believe that Federal funds should be used to maintain current programs.
  

In summary . . .

Americans still believe that their children should go to college. Yet they are becoming more skeptical about the value that traditional colleges present. This could be one reason why more and more Americans are turning to online learning to cut college costs.

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The Benefits of College Study while You Are in the Military

Years ago, military personnel wasted a lot of idle time playing cards or reading magazines in the barracks. Now that has all changed. More men and women in uniform are using their time to pursue college degrees online.

According to “Online Degrees Offer Soldiers More Opportunities,” a recent article by Natasha Bright in TRCB.com, more and more military personnel are discovering the efficiency of studying online. According to Bright, “Soldiers have always reported that one of the greatest challenges they face in serving is the rigorous schedules that they are forced to work on. For this reason, many soldiers have commonly felt that schooling was simply not a feasible option. More and more that is simply becoming untrue as colleges open up more flexible and unique education programs to allow students to earn their degree online.”

When you stop to think about it, it makes a lot of sense to take college courses online while you are still in uniform. Here are some key reasons . . .

• You can probably obtain financial assistance from the government. The Post-911 GI Bill is designed to help pay educational costs – even the cost of housing and textbooks – for soldiers, veterans, and reservists. To learn more, visit The Department of Veterans Affairs GI Bill Website or call 1-888-GIBILL-1 (1-888-442-4551). According to some estimates, as many as 385,000 active military personnel and veterans are already taking advantage of this bill.
• You can take online courses anywhere. Are you in Afghanistan? Germany? Fort Dix? It doesn’t matter. And your coursework will not be interrupted if you are transferred.
• The classroom is open 24/7. That’s ideal for military personnel who work odd and off hours.
• The courses you take can make it easier for you transition into civilian life. “Wide reports suggest that soldiers who focus on their education and earn an advanced degree while in the service may have an easier time transitioning into civilian life after they leave the service,” Bright reports.
• A growing number of colleges are granting credit for online coursework. Straighterline, offers online college courses that are accepted at many U.S. colleges.
  

In summary . . .

Online study makes a lot of sense for military personnel and vets. Financial aid is available, and the number of online college course offerings is growing quickly. If you qualify, it’s an opportunity you shouldn’t ignore.

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