Category Archives: online learning

college guidance, college planning, online learning

What if your student wants to attend an online university?

 

online universityYou’ve probably dreamed of sending your child off to your own alma mater, not to mention watching him walk to the stage to receive his diploma. Even if your kid is the first generation in your family to attend an institution of higher learning, you probably want him to have the college experience, including living in dorms, participating in Greek life, and so on. But times are changing, and more and more students these days are looking to save time and money by attending online schools to earn their degree.

You might be understandably concerned about the ramifications of going this route. What will it mean for your student and his prospects of gainful employment? If your teen tells you he’d rather attend an online school, there are a few things you’ll want to consider before you agree.

Check the accreditation

The most important thing to keep in mind when choosing an online college is the status it holds; you want to make sure your student attends an accredited school. Luckily, many online universities these days are accredited, and they enjoy the same accreditation status as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. You can find such institutions online via the U.S. Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education (ope.ed.gov/accreditation/), which is required by law to compile a list of qualified institutions (even though they don’t themselves offer accreditation). But why is choosing such a school so important?

A school that has gained accreditation has proven that it meets certain standards for excellence in academia, and this means that other schools are far more likely to accept students coming out of such an institution. Many employers might question the validity of an online degree as well. Offering accreditation communicates that the courses offered are beneficial as they apply to your work preparation.

Weigh the financial savings

Of course, there could be other issues, as well. If your teen stays home he will certainly save money on tuition and living expenses, and the flexible schedule offered by an online university will allow him to continue working part-time. He won’t get the opportunity to socialize as much; and while this might not sound so terrible, consider that the peers he meets in college could one day be his colleagues. In short, he’s missing out on a prime chance to network with others who will eventually be in his industry. This is a big loss. He also won’t have access to internships and job placement.

Online education can also be costly. Many online universities attract students by offering student loans. Which can seem appealing at first, but later down the road, upon graduation, the debt is unsurmountable. If your son has applied for scholarships and won, verify that they can be used at an oline university.

So while attending University of Phoenix or WSU online might certainly be easier and more cost-effective, it’s important to impress upon your teen all that he might be missing by remaining at home instead of heading to campus. If he’s set on staying home, he needs to consider all of his options before making a choice that could affect the rest of his life.

file storage, Guest Posts, online learning

Cloud storage for your student

shutterstock_97246499January is the month to start those college preparations for your seniors who are looking towards college in the fall. While you are waiting for those all-important college acceptance notifications, you can use the time to make some early preparations. Part of the college preparation process involves technology: laptops, iPads, smartphones, and cloud storage.

We all hear how technology is changing the very nature of how we do business. New devices and applications are making file transfer and communication more efficient at a very rapid pace. Business environments are relying more and more on digitized methods, so much so that many are even prioritizing Internet security through companies like Share File. But what we don’t hear as much about, is how technological developments can benefit people outside of the world of business, and primarily, students.

Of course, to some extent the benefits of technology for students are clear – every student can make use of a laptop, tablet, smart phone, etc. However, there are some newer developments that you may be very interested in exploring as a parent. For example, consider cloud storage systems, which have been implemented on a broad basis and can make your student’s life easier, and his or her work more secure.

These days, an enormous percentage of work in college environments is done electronically. Simply put, it is quicker to type a paper and save it on a computer than to write one and file it away physically. But, this same convenience also exposes students’ work to a number of potential vulnerabilities. Here are a few that just about every student has experienced at one time or another:

    • Loss – If a student saves a paper on an external hard drive, a USB drive, or even a computer itself, and then loses that object, the paper is simply gone. Professors are often somewhat intolerant of these sorts of issues, and lost content is usually beyond recovery, which means this can be a disastrous problem on multiple levels.
    • Damage – Similarly, if any electronic system on which a student has saved data, a paper, notes, etc. were to be damaged, that content may simply be inaccessible. This can be a major setback in your student’s studies.
    • Malfunction – Finally, the devices on which students traditionally save their work can also be prone to random malfunctions. If a student’s computer freezes just before he or she planned on printing out or sending a paper, there is serious risk that the assignment will end up being late!

For most students, these problems are uncommon. However, the do occur, at some point, for just about everyone, and the consequences can be extremely unfortunate. Cloud storage technology, however, solves each of the potential problems listed previously, by providing students with an external, digital storage source that can be accessed from just about anywhere.

With a cloud storage system, students can save notes, papers, research, and other files to their cloud, and then access it from a variety of devices – laptops, smart phones, school desktops, etc. This means that if a single device fails, the student’s files are still safe and accessible via the cloud. And, given the increasing use of technology in school work, this is extremely valuable to the modern student.

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Today’s guest post contribution was from Jason Saunders, a blogger and freelance writer. He contributes to a number of sites on topics relating to technology and its impact on the world of business.

in the news, infographics, online learning

America’s Most Innovative Colleges

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In late June 2012, CampusTechnology.com revealed the winners of its 2012 Innovators Awards, which are given out to IT leaders who have come up with extraordinary technology solutions for campus challenges. This infographic gives us a snapshot of the leaders; I bet you will be surprised who scored an award!

Innovations on Campus
Put Together By: OnlineUniversities.com

college guidance, college planning, Guest Posts, online learning

Traditional students are embracing online education

Only a few years ago, online education was the realm of the non-traditional student. Whether you were a high school dropout, a dad working three jobs, or a retiree who simply wanted to take some classes, chances were that you were not a typical college student if you were signed up for courses online.

In the last couple years, though, that all changed. In an era of tablets, smartphones, and omnipresent technology, it only makes sense that education – both traditional and otherwise – would gradually bleed into the virtual world.

Traditional students are quickly embracing the concept of online classes and obtaining various valuable degrees. There is no limit to what one can obtain via online courses. A degree like Information Security is easy to sign up for and schedule around just about any job or career. Furthermore, a degree like this is practically recession proof when considering technology’s exponential growth.

Online education offers the chance to change their career path at any time in their life. Combine this with the fact that there are plenty of opportunities in cyber careers like Information Security and there is no reason not to at least go online and see what is available.

Now, more than ever before, a student or alum from a traditional university can be found taking classes online. Here, generally, is what prompts these students to do this:

The Motivated Student

This student is enrolled in a traditional university – or, perhaps, they are a high school student who is about to matriculate to one – and they seek an intellectual challenge they cannot find in the classroom. Their classes may be too easy or the subject they seek to study may not be offered; either way, this student is self-motivated enough to go online and find an alternative.

The Prerequisite Search

Imagine that you signed up for a course at your university that you need for your major, for graduation, or simply wish to take for your own enjoyment. Now picture that this course has a prerequisite that must be taken but does not fit with your schedule. Maybe it’s a difficult mathematics course. What to do? Increasingly, students in this position are dealing with this issue by turning to online classes.

Students are also utilizing the help of powerful new tools that facilitate differentiated math instruction in and outside the classroom. Click here to learn more about such options.

The Second Degree

With the economy as it is these days, people often get a traditional degree from a four-year college, head out afterwards into the workplace, and quickly learn that they don’t possess many employable or marketable skills. Many of them, at this point, decide to work part-time towards an online degree that will provide those skills and, hopefully, help them find a job that they want.

With all these new types of traditional students entering the world of online education, the process of getting a degree over the internet suddenly becomes more widespread and traditional. As the lines continue to blur in the future between traditional and non-traditional, online and offline, we should expect to see this phenomenon occur with even more regularity.

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Today’s guest post was contributed by Amanda Green, a freelance writer who normally writes on the topics of education, business, and personal finance. Amanda has been writing for multiple years on the web and enjoys writing on less serious topics like pets and crafting in her spare time! You can read more writing by Amanda at paidtwice.com