Can Online Education Help Meet Workforce Needs?
An educated and skilled workforce is essential to the long-term prosperity of our country and our citizenry. Evidence indicates, however, that we cannot meet the demands of the 21st century by relying solely upon centuries-old approaches to higher education. New models are needed to expand access, improve quality, and assure accountability in higher education. This need is especially true for working adults whose busy lives don’t fit easily into the strictures imposed by traditional colleges. They need greater flexibility.
When Bill Parisen decided to return to school to complete his bachelor’s degree, he was concerned about how to fit education into a hectic life that already included kids, coaching, and a busy career at Hewlett Packard. “I wanted to complete my degree at an accredited university, but I needed the flexibility to study and continue my work at the same time. I just couldn’t balance my life and professional commitments while attending a ‘brick-and-mortar’ institution,” he explains. He decided to attend Western Governors University online.
In 1996 Western Governors University embarked on a mission to expand access through distance learning technologies. But for the 19 U.S. governors who founded WGU, simply translating a traditional college model to an online environment wasn’t enough. They had an even broader vision.
Because employers were clamoring for better prepared college graduates, the governors insisted WGU require that students develop and demonstrate a high level of competence before they are allowed to graduate. “There is no ‘getting by’ at WGU. If you don’t know the material, you don’t pass the assessments. If you don’t pass the assessments, you don’t graduate. It’s that simple,” said Bill.
Today, over 11,000 online students are enrolled in a WGU competency-based, online degree program in business, education, information technology, or health professions. For each program high standards of learning are clearly spelled out by expert councils, and students demonstrate their competency through rigorous assessments (exams, projects, assignments, etc.).
WGU students have greater flexibility, even compared to other online schools, and may be able to accelerate their time to completion based upon their prior education, existing competencies, and determination to proceed faster.
Bill used his college credit from a previous university, professional experience and current projects at work to accelerate his degree program and finished his undergraduate degree in only 30 months — that’s a four-year degree in a fraction of the time he would have spent completing his degree at a “traditional” school.
Keeping tuition affordable is also crucial. WGU has developed a new financial model that keeps tuition much lower by utilizing existing courses and independent learning resources, supporting student success through personalized mentoring, and controlling administrative overhead costs. Even though WGU is a private, not state-supported school, tuition is competitive with state schools and is much lower than typically found at other online schools.
After graduating from WGU, Bill decided to pursue his MBA at a traditional brick-and-mortar university. Not long into his degree program Bill decided to return to WGU even after six graduate classes with a 4.0 GPA at what is considered a top business school in Southern California. “At WGU, it was much easier to balance business travel, career challenges, and schoolwork,” says Bill. “Comparing WGU to this top-ranked school made me realize just how excellent the quality of education and personalization is at WGU. Despite the fact that it was online, I actually felt more engaged and more motivated to learn at WGU.”
For more information about WGU’s competency-based online degrees, visit www.wgu.edu/CB.
Nurses Can Take Advantage of Online Degrees for Career Advancement
Most nurses are worked in shifts and many of them work in 12-hour shift making them hard to plan for evening class on continuous education program whether they are doing a day shift or a night shift. The advantages of online degree programs that enable students to enter to the classes remotely with flexible learning schedule provide the best solution for nurses to earn a degree for their career advancement.
Many hospitals and medical care centers are encouraging their registered nurses to pursue their academic careers, which are good not only for the hospital system, patients and the community, earning a bachelor or graduate degree helps nurses to enjoy better income and career challenges. The hospitals typically try to give their nurses as much information as possible about the education options, and many of these hospitals are allocating education reimbursement benefit for the nurses to encourage them to earn a higher credential through continuous education program. Hence, the nurses should utilize the benefit for their future career planning.
Prior to the available of online degree program, the key barrier that stop most nurses from continue their education after entering the workplace is they are facing difficulties to find time to sit through years’ or months’ of coursework in a traditional classroom setting. Since the available of online education in nursing or healthcare majors remove the barrier and enable nurses who are interested to advance their career to pursue an academic degree online. They can choose to logon to the online classes whether from their home, workplace or where ever they are, even if they are on travel. Most online degree programs allow a good degree of flexibility that enables students to plan their study schedule based on their own pace.
Seeing the demand of nursing degree programs and the advantages of online education, many traditional campus-based nursing schools have made their nursing degree programs available for online students while other online universities are offering various online nursing programs to those who are interested in nursing careers. Nurses who are interested to advance their career to a higher level can take advantage of the online degree program to purse a bachelor or graduate nursing degree while continue their current work life.
While the demand drives more nursing degree programs being introduced in online education format which provides more choices for students to choose one that best meet their needs, there are a few factors you need to take into consideration when deciding to pursue a degree online; one of them is “diploma mill”. Diploma mills are those who offer fake degrees or degrees that are unrecognized in job market need to be avoided with your best efforts. The best way to avoid yourself being a victim of diploma mills, you are advised to only consider online nursing degree programs offered by national or regional accredited schools.
The bottom line is online degrees provide a better option for nurses to pursue an advanced degree and nurses should take advantage of it to become a better educated health professional that benefit both the community and their own career future.
Source: http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=20081020_nursing_degree_online_courses.htm
A Start-Up Helps With the Run-Up to College
Brightstorm, a start-up introduced Tuesday, offers online courses to augment what teenagers learn in school and help with the ever-more-challenging process of honing their resumes for college.
The target audience is teenagers hoping to improve their grades and test scores to get into college, as well as their parents. Right now the site has 19 courses ranging from S.A.T. preparation to writing skills to an advanced placement course in United States government. It plans to add more classes, including A.C.T. preparation. The classes, which are not for credit, are taught via online video by high school teachers in 15 to 20 15-minute episodes. A course costs $49 for a year’s access. Enlarge This Image
“It’s teaching the way teens want to learn, using multimedia,” said Jeff Marshall, co-founder and chief executive of Brightstorm. “It’s not a ‘go buy the book, crack it open and work through it’ experience anymore.”
Mr. Marshall used to teach math and English at public high schools in California and Arizona. He then changed course and went to business school and became a management consultant. Later he worked at a start-up that created online courses for corporations to teach employees, where he hatched the idea for Brightstorm.
“I saw something special that could be created for the kids I used to teach,” he said. He recently raised $6 million from KTB Ventures to start the company.
Web 2.0 technology has been slow to arrive in the education sector. Recently, though, “a few seismic shifts have opened up a new learning economy,” Mr. Marshall said. With more charter and private schools and some districts offering a choice of public schools, parents need to be more involved in their children’s’ education than ever, he said. No Child Left Behind and similar policies have meant that teachers spend more time teaching basic skills and less time on extra help. Meanwhile, broadband is widely available and teenagers are comfortable watching videos and interacting on the Web.
In the videos, teachers try to appeal to the students, who are called “learners” on the site. Brian the geometry teacher, for example, starts his course off with music and thought bubbles. He moves to different settings, like a construction site, a city street and a classroom. He talks about his favorite food, pizza; his least favorite subject in school, geometry; and careers where the skills he teaches will come in handy.
Mr. Marshall interviewed the teachers who applied via Skype so he could evaluate their video skills. Teachers are paid for the courses they teach plus a portion of future revenue. Mr. Marshall said that if the company succeeds, teachers could double or triple their salaries with income from Brightstorm.
The site includes a social network where students can create profiles and talk with one another. In addition to classes, it has short videos related to education, like words of wisdom teachers wish they had heard in high school, or how to use a graphing calculator on the S.A.T. Another section challenges students with prompts, like writing their own constitutional amendment or creating a time capsule that depicts youth culture today. Parents get e-mail updates on their child’s progress. They might get a message, for instance, telling them that their child learned about quadrilaterals today, with a sample question to ask at the dinner table.
Mr. Marshall said he was after “that awestruck moment when you see great teaching. That’s what we’re here for.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/start-up-at-the-intersection-of-education-and-technology/?pagemode=print
Touring Harvard University
Touring Harvard University including Main Gate, Statue of Harvard, Harvard Hall, Memorial Church, Dining Hall, Science Center, University Museum, etc
Online MBAs from Public Universities Ranked Best Buys by Online Education Experts
The average cost for a regionally accredited online MBA: $20,528. “But,” warns educational analyst Vicky Phillips, “consumers can pay as little as $7,000 or as much as $45,000. The best deals will go to consumers who research online education providers thoroughly.” WNews Imagehere can consumers turn to find their best buys in online MBAs, and who offers some of the worst deals in distance education?
GetEducated.com surveyed 168 accredited distance MBAs: 91 of these offered by graduate business schools accredited by one of the regional accreditation boards. GetEducated’s survey of 91 regionally accredited MBAs revealed learners in the United States should be prepared to pay as little as $7,065 or as much as $45,000 for a regionally accredited distance grad degree in business administration (MBA).
Premiering at the number one ranked “most affordable” spot this year is Chadron State College (Nebraska), a public institution with a modest cost of $7,065 for an online MBA degree, regardless of the learner’s state of residency. Athabasca University, a public institution located in Canada, but approved to award degrees in the USA, topped the price chart at an estimated cost of $45,000 for tuition and fees for American learners.
Every school on GetEducated’s list of Top 40 Ranked Best Buys in Online MBAs - Regionally Accredited costs less than $20,000. GetEducated.com’s Top 40 Ranked Best Buys in Online MBAs - Regionally Accredited is archived online at Best Buy Online MBA, Regional
Consumer Tips: Selecting Best Online MBA
“Consumers searching for their Best Buys in online education should start by considering public universities in their own back yards,” says Phillips. Brand name, brick and mortar, public universities continue to dominate GetEducated.com’s list of highly ranked values in online learning. “Ten years ago most distance degrees came from universities few had heard of. Today, the best online degrees are being granted by universities that have been helping people get educated for a hundred years or more,” comments Phillips.
GetEducated’s top ranked values include names that have earned the trust of consumers and employers alike. Most are publicly-supported universities that have ported their degrees nationwide using online delivery. Many publicly-supported institutions offer the same low tuition they offer state residents to learners everywhere. A distance MBA from California State University Dominguez Hills, for example, costs $12,000 for all learners, regardless of their state of residency.
“$12,000 may sound like a lot of money,” says Phillips, “but in truth the average regionally accredited MBA costs $20,500. CSU costs $8,500 less than the national average. Consumers need to know that a quality MBA need not cost them their life savings.”
GetEducated’s top ranked values in regionally accredited distance MBA business schools include, among others, California State University, Western Governor’s University, Fort Hays State University, Baker College, Empire State College - State University of New York, Upper Iowa University, Excelsior College, Northcentral University, and Troy University.
Free Guidebook to Distance MBAs
Consumers can explore all their online business school options by downloading a free copy of the clearinghouse’s 2008 guidebook to accredited online business schools, GetEducated.com’s Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools, Business, Management and Online MBAs, available at Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools, Online MBAs
About: Founded in 1989, GetEducated.com, LLC is the safest place in cyberspace to shop for an online degree ™. In a nationwide effort to help consumers get educated about quality online learning the clearinghouse publishes and disseminates free ratings and rankings of online universities. The clearinghouse operates the Diploma Mill Police, (SM), a FREE online degree accreditation verification service designed to help protect online learners from educational fraud, and publishes a series of 100% FREE ebooks to online colleges.