Many of the schools that have popped up with a strong online presence (University of Phoenix, etc.) are not non-profit educational institutions. They are for-profit businesses. Frankly speaking, I was not impressed. I took two classes at a similar school (not online) when I was much younger. Experience was sub-par. The decision wasn't entirely my choice, I botched my own schedule and ended up a few classes shy of what I needed for graduation. I needed a couple extra general academics to finish my Bachelors, and my college did no offer night classes. I took the classes at the local edu-business after receiving confirmation that my school would accept it and .... it really made me kick myself for not being organized enough to take my GenEd classes at my "real" college.
Going the established university route is the way to go, should you decide. I've been a whisker away from my 2nd Bachelors from UMass Lowell (the best engineering school in the UMass system) and the experience has been positive. There is also nothing in my transcript that shows whether I took the class online or in person. I took my first online class in January 1998....fourteen years and many job interviews later, I have yet to be asked whether I attended online or in-person.
The downsides...
If you take an academically rigorous class, from an academically rigorous institution, it will be anything but a walk in the park. Instead of sitting in class for a lecture where you can interact with the teacher, you have to read long lecture volumes on your own, and if you have questions you need to wait for the professor to answer your e-mail. They will answer it in a timely fashion of course, but it won't be instant like it is in class. You'll have to scramble for a lot of information on your own that would normally be given in class.
Many lectures are more interesting delivered by a live person than they are when they read from a web page.
College is 50 percent what you know and 50 percent who you know -- or more accurately -- who knows you. That can be painfully missing from online environments. A friend's son took a C programming class at Yale shortly after I took mine at UMass. We compared notes when he finished his class, my final was as difficult as his, if not moreso, and I was held to a very strict grading standard. 95 was an A minus (ouch). So why is Yale known all over the world, and UMass Lowell known only in New England? At Yale you study with the kids of old money. UMass Lowell notsomuch. This parlays to online classes because it can be MUCH harder to network with online classmates. You never meet them in person. You log in to a site created by Blackboard.com, get your assignment and due-date, check message boards. You do get everyone else's e-mail address but an e-mail from a classmate has the tone of stranger-approaching-stranger.
You may not have quite the collaboration that you do in a classroom. Discussions such as "Hey, I did it this way, may I see how you did yours?" are more difficult to come by and naturally a good student is not going to give away the store to a strange voice online.
Deadlines are strict. Don't confuse online with leisurely. If your due date is 23:59 on Monday then the professor must receive your assignment by then. Doesn't matter if the power was out or the internet was slow.
The upsides:
No commute. And for me that means extra safety -- no commuting in to and out of the 17th most dangerous city in the country according to the FBI Uniform Crime blahblahblah.
No weather issues. I don't mind snow at all, but I bloody hated to drive to school in it. A long day at work, then fighting through slop to get to school...only to find out that it could be even worse by the time school gets out. Ugh.
No attendance, No classes to cut. If you put in a steady effort over the week and one of those days you REALLY don't feel like working on schoolwork, it won't affect your attendance record or otherwise affect you negatively. Of course, if you put things off till too late, that's a whole 'nother story
Its shift-friendly. I used to work 2nd shift, no way I could make the continuing ed classes at night. But I could swing the online program.
Fantastic professors that are doing, not just teaching. All of my professors had strong academic cred....and all worked full-time doing whatever it was teaching. I learned UNIX shell program from a fellow who was a senior UNIX admin at Raytheon for over 25 years.
Practical exams. Some classes require proctored exams, meaning you must go in to the university and take your exams in a hall with a proctor that ensures no one has an open book, etc...but this is not overly common. All of my exams were designed to potentially be open-book, open-note -- but what was being asked was not questions that could be found in the book or in my notes. Instead, I was given tasks to demonstrate or create something using the concepts I learned. This made for very interesting and practical challenges.
Fewer toxic students. While online classes restrict your networking opportunities, they are also a good shield from the attention-whores and the do-nothings. Most of the people in continuing ed really want to be there, and some folks have very powerful reasons for studying. When I took my calculus class some years ago, there was a friendly guy in the group named Mike. Mike was a truck driver. Didn't need math for his job. So why was he taking math, let alone calc? "I want to always be able to help my kids with their math homework." Don't think I'll ever forget that.
There is so much to learn! Online training can open up access opportunities that may not have been available to you before. I'd wager that you're the type of person with the discipline to sweat out the challenges and make it work. If you can make it back, online or in person, its a great feeling to kick your brain in to learning mode again.
Good luck, however things work for you :asian:
