The Key to Online College Classes - Have It Your Way (By Tim Arnold)

Never before has online education been more esteemed than today. In most circles online learning is haled as a viable alternative to traditional classroom settings. Not long ago, distance learning was perceived as trendy, faddish and nuvo. What's happening to change that?

The driving forces behind the online education phenomena are convenience and demand. Two reasons you can obtain an education and "have it your way." How are the terms demand and convenience important to online education? Let's take a look. As we take the opportunity to explore the up-trending in online education you will easily see why these terms are important to it, and why so many Americans are turning to classes offered via the internet to fulfill there educational needs.

Demand.

Demand here implies that a need is being met. This is important because without the need for online education programs they simply wouldn't exist. Schools are adding online educational opportunities at a rate of 10 to 15 a month. That's quite remarkable considering

10 years ago, distance learning via internet was scoffed at. Neither educators nor students are laughing now! Hundreds of students are completing their e-classes online in virtual class rooms each month, they are obtaining an actual degree their own way, and upon doing so, receive their diplomas and transcripts as proof of their hard work.

Numerable online programs are awarding their students with earned authentic degrees that they will utilize to gain employment or improve and increase the wage they currently receive from their present employer.

Convenience, the second force that makes online education work is no less important. Because colleges online are so convenient, Americans can have education their own way, and students from all walks of life can be reached.

Distance learning degrees are available to the stay at home parent, the single parent, the working parent, working class men and women of all ages, and home bound men and women as well. If you are unemployed or under employed distance classrooms are just the thing for you. Did you think of anyone who wouldn't benefit from an online program? An online degree can make a difference.

Today, potential students are not limited to community classes, universities housed on large campuses, or night school. The
anywhere, anytime convenience of education online is waiting for you. Online degrees aren't limited in subject content, either.

Virtually any subject you wish to study is becoming increasingly available on the internet. Do you have an interest in a foreign language? Have you ever wanted to study the arts or sciences? Is computer technology your field of interest? What are you waiting for? The market is right for you, employers are looking for someone like you, and there is a program that is convenient enough for you.

Now you can see how online degrees have become so prevalent. First, we need them. And, secondly, we want them. So many of us in today's world require a user friendly way to obtain additional education, that it just makes sense. Investigate what an online degree can do for you. Search for a degree that interests you. Then see what everyone is talking about. Receive your online degree today, get your education and have it your way.

Timothy Arnold is a college recruiter and presently recruits college students via his college portal http://www.finding-a-college.com/ and http://www.choosing-your-college.com/

How to Give Yourself a Raise with an Online College Degree (By Gerald Maccoux)

There are many people today from all walks of life who are getting an online college degree from home. Dollar for dollar, an online college degree or post graduate work pays off.

The quickest way to give yourself a raise is to receive your certification in an area in which you are all ready working. Examples where board certification is pertinent include technical and vocational fields to name a few.

Sometimes an online college degree is very necessary in these instances. In some cases you have previously learned the information required of you for these various certifications, but will need the necessary degree in order to advance in your particular field.

So, let's discuss possible uses of a college degree via distance education. Many who are presently working in technical and vocational fields enroll in online courses to restructure and enhance their careers, and receive additional certification status.

Examples of this occur on an on-going basis. A thirty year old immigrant from South America began working as a nurse's aid, and is presently in her second semester of training from home at an online college.

A 50 year old white male enrolled in an online technical college to study electronics when the factory in which he had worked moved to Mexico early last year.

During a downsizing exercise at a psychiatric facility in Missouri, an education staff member returned to an online virtual classroom to gain continuing units of education, and add a minor to her present degree.

Thus, you can see with the use of those brief examples that continuing education can be useful as well as critical to your intellectual growth base.

An online college degree is more important than ever for several reasons.

1. Employers feel that we are presently in an employer's market. This means that they can be more selective in individuals they hire.

2. Jobs that glean more pay are more specialized. Specialized jobs require more training/education. This is true because these jobs require the manipulation of facts, figures, and/or technology which is often times sensitive, adaptive, or computerized.

3. Our current jobs in the U.S. are becoming more and more service oriented. These jobs have relatively low pay and our labeled unskilled work. Thus, one must retool to prepare his or her self to obtain a job requiring more skill and offering more pay.

4. Finally, we have entered a global economy. Such an economy demands higher prices for homes and automobiles without providing numerous gainful employment opportunities.

How do you know if an online college degree is for you? First, if you lack a high school diploma, a college degree is a must.
High school non-graduates make 25% less than starting salary employees with a high school education.

Secondly, you may presently hold a position that would pay you more if you held a degree from an online technical school or online community college. You may know this information from coworkers or acquaintances in your line of work.

Thirdly, if you are considered a non-traditional student. Financial incentives are available to attract such students. So if you could be described as a non-traditional or a minority student, smaller financial payout is a good incentive to continue your education.

Check out an online college degree portal and invest in your future. Give yourself a raise.

Gerald Maccoux is an online college recruiter and presently recruits college students via his college portalhttp://www.locate-a-college.com

Consolidate Student Loans and Shop Online (By Nick Smith)

If you run a home business, you know that budgets can be pretty tight. Saving money wherever possible can be the difference between the business that succeeds and the one that fails. This article represents a broad survey of things you can do, from consolidating your student loans to getting small business deals on supplies, that will help you spend less each month.

Next Time You’re Online, Buy Something

Billions of dollars are spent each year online. Rather than suggest that you hurry and move your business online, I’d like to suggest that you add some of your dollars and cents to those billions already spent. Companies who move operations online reduce their overhead costs and often pass on those savings to you. Computers, airplane tickets, even student loan consolidation, can be purchased or arranged online. It has been my experience that I can find almost everything I want online for less than I can find it anywhere else. Next time you’re thinking about biting the bullet and making that big purchase, spend a little time shopping around online and see if you can’t save a few dollars.

Consolidate Student Loans and Get Your House in Order

Chances are good that you’ve been out of school for a while, but don’t skip this paragraph. If you consolidate student loans or other financial obligations, you will typically save a great deal of money each month on your monthly payments. Running a home business often blurs the line between personal expenses and business operating costs – do yourself a favor and make sure you have your personal financial affairs taken care of before you find yourself overwhelmed with past obligations. The government might not have cared about your credit score when they gave you those student loans, but banks looking to give business loans are a whole different story. Making sure everything is taken care will keep financial doors open that, once they’re closed, are very difficult to reopen.

Score One for the Little Guy

Believe it not, most people want small businesses to succeed. There are a lot of people willing to give you a break on prices because you own a home business, but you might need to ask about it. Office supply retailers and computer distributors sometimes offer discount prices to registered small business owners. The savings are not always monumental, but even the smallest savings multiplied over a year or two start to add up to pretty substantial amounts. Shop around to see if the suppliers you use are willing to offer you a discount on supplies or equipment.

Do Without…For a While

I’m probably not the only person that drove a car that was older than I was during college, or who ate Ramen noodles more than once almost everyday. Don’t forget the lessons you learned while you were a poor college student – the same ability to make do with what you have can save you a lot of money in the long run. I had just graduated from college and I wanted to get a new computer to replace the older, though fully functional one I was using. This was before I took my own advice to consolidate student loans, so money was still pretty tight. I wanted to kick myself when I saw that the price on the computer I bought dropped $300 in three months. Some expenses are necessary and unavoidable. For everything else, look to see if you can manage with what you have for a while longer.

Don’t Do It Alone

Nobody likes data entry – it’s time consuming, boring, and time consuming. If you find yourself spending too much of your day punching numbers into spreadsheets, consider hiring someone or outsourcing it to another company. If you think that you can’t afford the part-time salary, do an inventory of your time and see if what you would pay someone is worth the amount of time you’ll be able to invest into the meatier matters of your business.

I know I’m risking sounding like your father giving you a lecture about money, but remember that a penny saved is a penny earned. A successful business minimizes costs while maximizing profits.

---

Nick Smith is a client account specialist with 10x Marketing - More Visitors. More Buyers. More Revenue. For information about how to consolidate student loans, check out Agilix GoBinder.

Secrets Of Successfully Sitting Exams (By Anthony Keith Whitehead)

Many people work hard studying various subjects to sit for examinations in them. Fine. Hard work is usually a necessary condition for passing exams. Unfortunately it does not follow that it is a sufficient condition! Exam technique can be almost equally as important. It can make all the difference between success and failure or between poor grades and good grades.

As students, we often complain about the examination system. That is usually because we feel the pressure of an uncertain outcome. But like all systems we need to understand its mechanics in order to make it work for us.

What follows is largely concerned with exams needing written answers, rather than mathematically-based subjects.

Frustrating Examiners

This section applies as much to writing course work as to examination answers

When you consider writing essays, also consider the person who will have to read them. He/she has a psychology. Make it work for you, not against you. Most examiners do their job well and effectively but...

Exam assessors usually have a mountain of scripts to wade through. They like to get through them faster rather than slower, with relative ease rather than difficulty. When they find a script which facilitates the two former objects, they are delighted and their disposition towards the writer soars.

A great frustration is caused by having to '.dig' into the essay to discover whether or not the student has given a correct or acceptable answer. Sometimes this job is very difficult. The examiner has to re and reread the essay to discover what is actually being said. Sometimes an actual decision has to be made by the examiner as to whether a correct answer has, in fact, been given, because the composition is so obtuse.

Some method is needed which will avoid this situation and which will improve the examiner's disposition towards the writer.

Writing Effectively

Writing effectively in exams is really not that difficult. There is a simple technique which can be used and adopted to virtually every type of question.

The technique is to divide your essay into three (unequal) parts:

1. An introduction

2. An expansion of 1;

3. A conslusion.

Numbers 1 and 3 are quite short and basically say the same thing except in rather different ways.

1. is critical and is a short version of the answer. This lets the examiner know immediately that you know what you are talking about. It require slight differences of emphases depending on the actual wording of the question.

For example, a question which asks something like "What are the factors which influence..." needs an introductory answer which starts something like: "The factors which influence so-and-so are... " And you mention them in descending order of importance. A question of the type: "Discuss such-and-such..." needs an answer which starts something like: "When discussing such-and-such one needs to take account of..." and then mention the major points which you consider to be important and which you are going to discuss.

There may be other variations in the phrasing of the question, but the approach you adopt needs to be always the same: present the examiner with what is effectively a concise answer to the question. It usually takes no more than a few lines, maybe a dozen at most. He/she will jump up and down in excitement at having found someone who not only knows the answer but who can also actually make it explicit.

2. The expansion of the essay is simply a development to show that whatever you said at 1. is correct or relevant. This takes up most of the essay. Use a new paragraph for every new point. Don't be afraid to be pedantic. End each of these paragraphs by relating what you have said directly back to the question. e.g. "Hence it can be seen that..." and so forth.

If, during the course of writing your answer, you suddenly remember a really major point which really should have come earlier, just "knit" it in as if this is where you always intended it to go. Thus: "Of course, a further point which needs to be given especially emphasis at this juncture is..." Try and make it seem the most natural place to put it. The examiner may think it better put elsewhere, but he will not usually penalise you for that

3. The conclusion will be little more than a restatement of the introduction - but you do need a conclusion. During the writing of the essay you may have thought of some other points not mentioned in the introduction. If so, be sure to mention them in the conclusion.

Read Before You Write

Always spend at least six/seven minutes out of a three hours exam reading the question paper. Read it three times. The first to get a general impression. The second to mark any question which you can reasonably attempt. The third to check that your second reading decisions were accurate - sometimes, in the face of nervous tension, they are not. This is time well spent. As an invigilator, one often groans within at seeing student grabbing their pens and beginning to write before the clock has stopped chiming the hour to commence!

Dividing Time

Unless some questions have unequal shares in the total marks possible, always divide your time equally between the questions. There are severe diminishing returns to each extra minute spent on the present question - more could be added to the overall total by going onto the next.

Conclusions

As already said, don't throw away your hard work during the year through bad or none existent exam technique. With good technique it is, in fact, possible to do rather well with skimpy knowledge (although one does not advocate the practice!), whereas it is commonplace for students to underachieve by neglecting their technique.

About The Author

A K Whitehead

Web Site: http://www.christianword.co.uk; akw@christianword.co.uk

The author has had many years experience in setting examining, marking and invigilating examinations and has used the above technique to considerable personal benefit.

The Family University Network: Unplugging Institutional Higher Education (By James Bartlett)

Why not build a Christian family enterprise with the energy, funding, and infrastructure that would otherwise build the state or private educational institutions?

It is common knowledge today that serious moral problems exist in families, churches, schools, colleges, corporations, and political arena. These problems have academic, moral, and philosophical roots reaching back centuries, and have been promoted by the systematic separation of knowledge from faith in God. The significant amount of teaching required to equip people with the ability to discern the times and apply Scripture by faith to all areas of life, requires diligence in all areas of learning, and at all levels of education.

Secular universities are openly hostile to the Christian worldview, and the best of the Christian colleges cannot replicate the family away from home. Nehemiah Institute worldview assessment of 1177 students in 18 Christian colleges over 7 years demonstrated that Christian students are graduating from Christian institutions with a secular humanism worldview, even where their professors have a Biblical Theist worldview. Even the above average Christian colleges are little better than their secular counterpart because the curricula are developed under the same institutional accreditation guidelines, the same text books are used, many of the faculty were trained at secular institutions, and the family learning context is ignored.

Even the best of Christian distance education does not purposefully involve the family in the learning process, nor couple with individual family convictions, nor uses the family knowledge base, nor earns family income. It is time to unplug institutional higher education and bring higher education home.

The establishment of family universities and networks based on the fellowship of the church is one solution. This can help individuals and families implement the Christian philosophy of education through developing their own family university and complementary business as a part of the dominion mandate (Psalm 8).
University education needs to be reinvented with a Biblical understanding to strengthen the family and church. Christian people can easily learn how a family university can uniquely provide the humble, relational, and Spirit led ideal Biblical higher education for their young adults to participate in building a strong Christian family, church and culture.

The benefit of a network for learning was forseen by Ivan Illich, philosopher of the 1970s who spoke in favor of home education. He stated that "If the networks I have described could emerge, the educational path of each student would be his own to follow, and only in retrospect would it take on the features of a recognizable program. The wise student would periodically seek professional advice: assistance to set a new goal, insight into difficulties encountered choice between possible methods. Even now, most persons would admit that the important services their teachers have rendered them are such advice or counsel, given at a chance meeting or in a tutorial. Pedagogues, in an unschooled world, would also come into their own, and be able to do what frustrated teachers pretend to pursue today." Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1970.

There is only one such family university network in operation at this time, but the time has come for this concept and therefore this is likely just the beginning of home schooling expanding into home college.

Dr. James Bartlett, PhD, PE ret., is President of Bartlett University which hosts the Family University Network with its Christian business incubator. Dr. Bartlett and his wife Lynn homeschool four boys in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota. Dr. Bartlett can be contacted by calling 701-263-4574 or visiting http://bartlettuniversity.com.

Discover How Online College Classes Work (By Tim Arnold)

It's no secret that more and more people are looking to the internet for a convenient way to further their education. Online classes are a great way to obtain an accredited college degree from home and continue to work a full time job. Many times a student can attend classes from their computer and schedule those classes around their job. Some schools allow the student to login to a class at their convenience. Imagine taking a class from the comfort of your own home and not having to deal with parking problems, child care, lunch, or transportation expenses.

You can also get an online degree from top, accredited online colleges and online schools that may not be available in your local area. An online education is also a great option for non-traditional students, the handicapped, people in remote areas, and people with a full-time job or a schedule that doesn’t allow for a traditional education.

Distance education can be delivered in several ways. We will examine two of the many ways education can be delivered via the internet.

One of the most common is through live media. In this type of online classroom, students typically login to a chat room type environment that allows not only for text chat but also live audio chat, similar to many of the popular “instant messaging” programs that are widely used today. The lecture can be heard through the computer speakers or through a set of headphones. The students communicate with the teacher and other students by text chat or simply by talking into a PC microphone. The teacher can also allow students to view him/her in a smaller window on the monitor via a webcam. The lecture can also be recorded and posted to the school website to allow students to listen to the lecture and review the material at a later time according to their schedule, and as many times as necessary.

This type of online class makes it necessary to be at the computer at a scheduled time each day.

One advantage to this type of online college classroom environment is the student receives live instruction with structured classes. It is well known that students working within in a structured setting have a higher probability of success of finishing their degree. An obvious disadvantage would be lack of scheduling flexibility.

Another variation of the online classroom setting involves text messages such as email and message boards. Each class may share a group mailbox or a message board system, which becomes the "electronic classroom". The instructor generally posts lectures on the topic of study, posts the assignments, and provides discussion questions related to the topic. The student can view lectures, notes from the instructor and other students, and assigned projects. The student can also post messages or questions to the instructor and other students.

One advantage of this system is 24 hour access to course materials and the ability to work at one's own pace without regard to scheduling. A disadvantage would be lack of direct contact with the instructor.

In both scenarios students are expected to logon to the class site a certain number of days per week. Students also can contact the instructor via e-mail to ask questions or receive answers. When assignments are due, students send them to the instructor online or by email, where they are graded and returned. Students may also have access to their individual performance reports by logging in to a website where that information is posted. Test may also be taken online. Typically, online classes last five to six weeks.

Although the degree of difficulty is the same for the online classroom as in a traditional setting, the internet has broken down many barriers and is providing educational opportunities for people worldwide that were not previously thought possible.

Tim Arnold has recruited online students for http://www.acit.com and also recruits students via his online college portals at http://www.educationlocation.net/ and http://www.finding-a-college.com.

IMT College - Full Online (By Dr Mirjana Radovic)

IMT College - full online

* Ensure Your Future

* Immediate Use of Skills

* 8 Week Certificate Course

* Online Faculty Support

* 100% Online

* Anytime, Anywhere, for everybody

Explore Your Possibilities

Now, no matter where you live or what your schedule, you can tap into one of the nation?s leading business schools and learn valuable skill-sets that will have an immediate impact on your current job and help ensure your future success!

Our approach to managerial skills be characterized as attempting to teach all what is necessary to have success in business world and to reach your business goals. Attending our courses you can test your new skills all the time answering on our questions in many tests which are prepared for our students. For each topic or chosen course you can pass exam if you wish and get our diploma. The exam effectively tested skills that you learned in the managerial skills. The skills tested are of the great importance to anyone involved in day to day business life. Maximum points for diploma are 30 and minimum 5. The exam was very well structured and ran at a rapid but satisfactory pace. The concept is excellent.

How does our method of learning work?

Firstly, you must choose one or more courses and inform us by e-mail. After, we shall inform you about all conditions and ways of learning and send you literature in English. You must read materials and literature and after that we can organize internet meeting and discussion. You can openly make questions and need more explanations. At last you will write essay about some topic which is chosen by you. Our professors will read it and send you their opinion about. At the end of our program you van pass examin. All courses are two months long, except stress and time managament which are one month long. For the most number of courses we have special softwears. Choose course promtly because we shall begin our program on 1 of February 2005. As you can notice our prices are very popular and acceptable!

Professors are certificated with great experiance in many different subjects of teaching.

We have large amount of e-books in our members section for self learning wich could help you easier to reach your certificate.

If u want to be a member of our College and use all benefits (E library for example) you can apply for only 50$.

Also there is 24h support on email mirjana@metropola.net

Dr.Mirjana Radovic is a professor at F.Dickinson University,Lacrosse University and Akamai University and of course at IMT College. She has great exsperience in teaching students online and face to face. Also, she is author of seven books related to business management.