Bachelors Degree Is Growing Choice Among Students!

Students who are working for their on line college degree have enough challenges affording a good computer, Internet hookup and a quiet place to study.  That doesn't even include the energy and determination to complete their studies. Many times, new virtual freshmen feel totally isolated because they are used to being surrounded by other students in a classroom. They need that contact.

Actually, they are far from alone. What they don’t know is they are surrounded by fellow students and only have to reach out. One way online schools provide this is to ensure these students have easy contact with their teachers. Paradoxically, the teachers are reporting more contact with their online students than with their on-campus counterparts.

Those not familiar with online education may suffer from the illusion of the e-learner as some kind of a lonely laborer. If so, they are in for a surprise. Actually, it seems the lack of face-to-face contact increases the volume of e-mail messages between teachers and their online students to five or six times per day. In addition to e-mail, students spend their share of time on group message boards and chat rooms with the entire class.

As one can surmise, online students text their professors a lot. In turn, the teachers say they give these students more feedback than the students who spend their time standing in front of their professor’s door during the instructor’s office hours.

This emphasis on electronic communication is leading many to believe the online student is more productive than his or her contemporaries. There’s something about the distance of e-space that emboldens some who would not be able to debate in the real world. There are even cases of a heated online debate between various classmates - with many of the participants actually in the same room.

The teachers also report some unusual benefits. A Montana university professor reported she moderated classes that had students in a dormitory directly on campus and both Egypt and Japan at the same time.

An increasing number of students now understand online classes use the same books, lectures, notes and teachers as physical classes. The only difference is not having to commute. In turn, as more and more students grow up using computers, they in turn have been choosing online classes simply because they are totally comfortable with electronic modes of communication. They enjoy the greater freedom having online classes conform to their schedules provides, particularly working students who can attend only around his or her job.

There are other benefits for the professors, too. One, who meets with his students solely online, doesn't live on or near his campus at all. At that college in Montana, another educator moved to New York to have better access to materials in his personal field of research. A third made some minor headlines as a part-time solider deployed to Iraq. Due to the capabilities of online education platforms, all these teachers continued to teach their classes from afar. One shouldn’t be surprised if this trend actually grows over the years.

More and more students are finding that their online diploma gives them the flexibility they need to combine education and experience.  They get all the benefits of attending a class, including more "face" time with professors, and this makes earning their associate's degree or masters degree through PhD's work in their lives.