7 Ways to Ensure Success With an Online Education Degree

The ability to obtain an online education degree has opened the educational doors for many students who cannot afford to attend school on campus as a full-time student. Distance learning courses definitely provide some advantages over the traditional college education. But, because of the methods of delivering and receiving the material, students must consider the 7 things necessary in approaching an online education successfully.

1. Choosing the best education online institution - Make sure the institute for higher education chosen has adequate resources and accreditation recognized by the proper authorities. Unless authenticity can be verified, find another school. Sadly, unscrupulous degree mills offer degrees with short-term or no real education. Thus, the diplomas are bogus and absolutely worthless. Find a school that provides solid education, ample student support, and the facilities necessary to succeed in your distance learning.

2. Check the cost vs. benefit - Many students don't check the cost-benefit factor before enrolling into an online education degree college. We are all aware that acquiring an education requires huge amounts of money.

But a smart move is to first compare with what the future earning potential of your profession will be once you earn the degree. Once you figure this out, only then would you determine if it makes sense to acquire an online education degree.

3. Degree validation by employers - No wonder many employers are wary of online degrees. With bogus institutions literally selling degrees, employers have good reason to be doubtful and cautious. Therefore, immediately alleviate any potential misgivings by your prospective employer by offering verification of accreditation through an agency sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Education and CHEA.

4. Discipline, determination, and time - First time distance learning students are often surprised by the amount of discipline necessary to stay on task and complete the online assignment. It takes unfaltering determination to achieve an online education. In addition, without regularly scheduled classes, it is essential to exercise good time management skills. To keep focused, without the physical presence of educator and peers, it is important to establish communication with other students to have another push toward success in your education degree online

5. Utilize all the facilities provided by your college - Many education degree online courses provide online lectures and email access to facilitate communication among students, lecturers and administration staff. It's important to take full advantage of these services as they keep you "connected" with your accredited online college. It helps further your motivation in your studies when you make use of these facilities to stay in touch.

6. Make use of credit transfers - Many online education degree colleges allow students to transfer their credits from courses they took in previous colleges, whether online or traditional. By doing this, it means students don't have to repeat courses they learnt before. For this to be effected, it's important for a student who intends to pursue an education online to make sure they get transcripts and results from their previous universities or colleges and make them available to their accredited online college so they can be passed as transfer credits.

7. Take advantage of technology to complete your class work - Another factor for online education degree success is the opportunity to take advantage of all the conveniences that technology provides. Many accredited online colleges provide students with online digital libraries, databases and resources that a student can use to complete their course work and assignments. In most instances the cost of these facilities is already included in the tuition fees. Thus it makes good sense to make full use of these resources to your advantage.

Character Ed Programs For Kids in School

Character education implies the teaching of good habits of thought and deed that enable people to live and work together harmoniously. It teaches kids to live positively as families, friends, neighbors and communities. These core values are inculcated in a kid so that he or she can grow up to be a well-informed, balanced and dutiful citizen. These core values are also focused on respect, justice, civic virtue, service to others and character development. Since our formative years are spent in school character education programs in school can positively shape up a child's program very successfully.

Keeping the above objective in mind, the onus of teaching kids to be morally sound and ethical can only be bought about with character ed programs in schools that help inculcate the seeds of a strong moral character in a child. These programs should be wide enough to focus on a wide range of virtues and activities that can contribute to effective character building in kids. Kids can go in for skits, writing essays and visiting the classrooms of younger children and telling them about the virtues that they have learned. There are many ways in which schools can implement character education in the curriculum. These activities can help the kid get the overall social grooming that is required to help him or her grow up to be morally sound.

The use of class meetings is also a strong and effective means to address moral virtues among students in the class. These meetings help the students discuss with the teacher about some specific practical situations.

They can discuss about the feelings and the perspectives of others when they are discussing these issues. Character education can be used as a guide when these discussions are being done. These interactions will help the students to respect and treat with each other with dignity. The use of children's literature is also an effective means to communicate positive messages to the kids.

The kids in the above character ed programs can also inculcate social skills in the students and teach them about life skills. These skills will help them face all kinds of situations with a balanced approach instead of being confused on what to do. There are many character education programs that can also bring about positive personality development in a child as well. These programs make the child a mature and social responsible person. These quality education programs help the kid to develop safely and in a care giving environment.

Character building in schools is uniform and all the students are taught in the same manner. Such programs cannot be taught at home as parents may not be aware of the right techniques to do so. In fact, this responsibility should be shared among teachers, parents and other members of the community as children are our future generation of society. They should be brought up with care and positive knowledge and skills should be passed onto them so that grow up to be socially responsible citizens of the country.

What Kinds of Degrees Can I Get Via a Distance Learning Education?

One Year Diplomas

After high school, the most basic level of post-secondary education that is out there is typically something that would come in the form of a one year (or shorter) diploma course. These courses come in a variety of different types that are generally designed to provide someone with enough education to get them an entry level job in a variety of industries. These include things like diplomas in business, secretarial programs, and programs designed to provide an introduction to certain trades, such as locksmithing or electrician work (although the latter will usually require a job site apprenticeship as well as such a course).

Bachelors Degrees

Today, you can also study for a bachelors degree via a distance learning education. For most people that are planning on attending a formal university, this is where their education starts. For some, a bachelors degree can provide an entry into the job market. For others, it can provide a stepping stone to further education. Many professional schools, such as those that focus on law and medicine, require a participant to first complete an undergraduate degree before they can apply to those schools.

Because these learning options are now available online, it means that a person can study for a bachelors degree in any discipline via a distance learning education. However, in the world of physical schools, you are limited to what you can study simply by the distance that you are willing to travel to attend a certain school. Bachelors degrees are available online in fields such as the arts, business and economics, social sciences, hard sciences, engineering, and more.

Masters Degrees

For many individuals, a bachelors degree is only the start of their education. This includes people who wish to complete a bachelors degree with the purpose in mind of immediately pursuing further education, as well as those who have been away from school for many years and realized that their job progression has been halted because they don't have a graduate degree. Through distance learning education, it is possible for both of these types to obtain their MA or MBA degrees through one of the many accredited graduate programs that are available to them.

PhD Degrees

Doctorates and PhD Degrees are also available through distance learning education, showing that it is possible to attain even the highest levels of education via correspondence and online education options. Doctorates can be obtained in subjects as varied as psychology to economics.

Online Learning is the Right Education and Training Solution For Businesses and Individuals!

Don't let the terminology confuse the issue. E-Learning, cyber learning, video training, computer training, online learning are all pointing to one key result-improving the quality and effectiveness of employees and opening doors to new jobs and more money for individuals.

Individuals and businesses, using the internet as the delivery tool, can readily identify from hundreds of schools and training providers, the exact solution needed or desired and it can be delivered by a knowledge expert.

The education and career content, data, and training modules used in today's online courses are organized to provide the most up to date, relevant, and accurate information needed based on rapidly changing market demands.

And high quality online training programs are delivered with proof of completion and skill certification, if required, to provide the assurance and confidence every company or individual needs to utilize online resources.

Extreme financial and economic stress such as today's environment demand that both astute business managers and forward thinking individuals continue to invest in skill upgrades or make strategic career decisions to ensure long term productivity. And the diverse selection of online education and training programs gives every party the full range of options needed for almost every situation.

Every manager or individual must identify the tasks and skills the emerging market requires and then examine the gaps or weaknesses and determine what steps can be taken to elevate your capabilities. Only this approach will ensure long term competitiveness.

As a company, it is more efficient and cost effective to identify quality employees internally that are willing and capable of new training than attempting to hire unknown people and hope you get what you need. Those employees that are unwilling to change and not a good long term fit can and should be let go for the benefit of both parties.

If you are an individual trying to prepare for a job promotion or ready to make a dramatic shift to a new career, online education and training in most cases is the perfect solution that offers the flexibility and choices to get exactly what you want.

Whether it is personal or corporate online training, flexible computer based learning courses have demonstrated over and over to require substantially less time to accomplish desired learning or training objectives while doing so in the most cost effective manner compared to traditional classroom settings.

No investigation can be considered complete unless the extensive selection of online courses and educational institutions are carefully considered and weighed against alternatives. In most cases, the solution will be clearly apparent...online computer training and career education is the winner!

How to Create Effective Online Learning Courses

Facilities, labor and travel expenses make the decision to build a cost-effective infrastructure of online learning an easy one. That's why many distance education departments and corporate executives turn to Web designers to develop online education courses to train their students and employees. However, this decision, many times, results in a waste of time and money, and can be frustrating to organizations simply because Web designers are not trained in the area of creating effective elearning courses; usually their focus is on visually appealing aesthetics.

For successful online course development, you need to work with a course developer that has proficiency in building programs from start to finish, while accomplishing educational objectives in every step of the process. An effective elearning course needs to have the same care and expertise put into the educational aspects as the design elements. Course content must be engaging and presented in the proper sequence in order to maximize a learner's memory retention. Skilled developers build courses that are carefully aligned to students' needs and directly achieve their learning goals, making elearning an essential part of education and training.

When it comes to valuable elearning programs, online course development is more than just making the pages look good. Here is how to create an effective online learning course that will successfully meet your goals:

1) Establish your idea - What is the learning objective of your course? What do you want participants to achieve by completing the elearning course?

2) Refine your ideas - Work with a subject matter expert (SME) to determine what the course needs to do to effectively meet your needs. Decide how much information to include in the course and how detailed it needs to be by making a prioritized list of key points you want emphasized in the course. The SME will insure the accuracy and sufficiency of the information you deliver.

3) Decide if your course needs an administrative function - You may simply need a system where participants can take the course without keeping any formal records. Many times, however, training programs need an administrative tool that manages learners and keeps track of their progress across all types of course activities. In elearning, this element is called a learning management system (LMS) or course management system (CSM). It provides a way to enroll students into courses, handle grades, deliver test or quiz material, offer two-way communication between the instructor and the student, upload study resources and keep records and transcripts of content and student-instructor interaction. These systems are designed to your specific training needs and seamlessly move students through the course process and record their progress appropriately.

4) Work with an instructional designer - The instructional designer will ensure that the information is presented in an interesting and successful manner using the established learning principles. They determine how the knowledge is presented, and how it is reinforced through activities, exercises and quizzes.

5) Course production - At this stage, a production team works with the course designer to determine needed illustrations, animation, audio, video or interactive media. Production specialists design the graphics and create the needed media to integrate into each section. They make sure the course is deliverable through the intended target media (local network, CD or DVD, or Internet). The production team is also responsible for quality control. The team checks to make sure the look and style of the course is consistent throughout and all course components are functioning correctly. If a specific LMS or CMS is targeted, they ensure that all components will function properly in that environment as well.

6) Course Delivery - This is the final stage of online course development. If an LMS or CMS is utilized, the course is installed within the chosen system. The course is now made available to the intended students through the previously selected media.

A good course development company, such as Brainband Technology Services, can assist you in every step of this process. However, steps one and two can be completed in-house to reduce cost and production time. Keep in mind if the course is for your business or department, you may be the subject matter expert. If you are able to go to a course development firm with your ideas already lined out, a large portion of the work is already finished.

Distance Learning Education Degree

The major reason for distance learning education degree is to lend a hand to teachers to sharpen their teaching talent. Moreover, it assists them to read the latest teaching technology. As a teacher, there are scores of opportunities for you on the web. In other words, you should not remain dormant in your profession. The net has made it unproblematic for you to boost up your career. Additionally, you don't have to exit your work in order to go back to school to work on your talent. You can get this done in the convenience of your home or office.

There are a lot of profits of distance learning education degree. One, you will be able to discover classes and acquire an advanced degree in your specialties. This is made achievable because of the variety of opportunities for distance learning education on the internet. Additionally, it helps to perform the need for extra training while giving opportunity for flexibility that you may need as a result of your tiring schedule. This means that it is achievable for you to get credits in the evenings and weekends and you also get to learn at your own rapidity. So, you can finish the degree program at whatever time you want.

The good news is that there are countless educational institution out there offering distance learning education degree. Most of the schools uses the net as a medium. In spite of this, you must be very alert as there are countless deceptive educational institution out there offering certificates that will do your career no good. Thence, it is extremely recommended that you shun them by all means. One of the lots of things you must look at when looking for a decent and reliable school is accreditation. Accreditation depict that the school has all that is required to transmit and impart knowledge. In other words, the school has met satisfactory standards required for a legitimate school. This indicate that you can be certain that you will get the most excellent education including a degree certificate that any employer out there will give a positive response.

While registering for distance learning education degree is good and highly suggested, there are a few things you must work out. Discipline is one the necessities for successful completion of an education degree on the internet. This depict that you must be able to get tasks executed without being forced by anyone. If you are always putting off, I encourage you to give up the suggestion of registering for the online program. Even if this is a kind of education that can be completed whenever you want, I imagine you don't want to do it without end. Thence, you must be disciplined to attend the classes, do the class work and still have the time to read.

Continuing Education Programs For Psychologists

Continuing education programs are very necessary for today's psychology professionals. After completing school and working in the field for a few years, psychologists may need to take refresher courses or learn about the new theories and techniques in their field. It has been decades since many psychologists received their degrees, so it is easy to see why continuing education is so important in this sector.

Many schools offer continuing psychology degree programs in the United States that help professionals in this field reach a variety of different goals. Some are straightforward courses that help psychologists refresh their knowledge or gain an understating of the new knowledge that is out there. There are also continuing education programs for professionals currently working in the field who want to get a master's degree or PhD in order to enhance their career options and take their work to the next level. Many of these courses and degree programs are offered by online schools or by traditional colleges that are now offering the possibility to take some courses online, which is ideal for professionals already working in their field.

Going back to school, either online or at a traditional college campus, can help psychologists not only better themselves but prepare them to offer better services to patients.

These continuing education programs provide sound knowledge and prepare the student for its application. After completing a continuing education program, a psychologist can better serve their community and society as a whole. Enrolling in a continuing psychological education program can help a professional person to apply the correct and current knowledge and rkills to various specializations ranging from clinical psychology to school psychology to sports psychology.

The benefits of continuing education for psychologists include being more qualified or eligible in the job market, being able to earn a higher salary, becoming more versatile in one's career, and having a more rewarding experience in the field of psychology. Simply having a bachelor's degree is often not enough to get an excellent psychology job, and oftentimes it takes a PhD to get the most desirable positions. Continuing education programs make it possible.

Considering Online K-12 Classes? Key Tips to Keep in Mind

The rapid growth of online K-12 education has made all public high-school students progressively demand to take at least one class online. Students believe taking K-12 classes online will help anyone, easily register for such classes overcoming geographical boundaries. In various U.S. states, students are emphasizing on the usage of various mobile phone applications to upload courses in their entirety on their iPhones and BlackBerrys. According to Evergreen Education Group (2011 report), "Nationwide, an estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in to full-time virtual schools, up 40% in the last three years."

However, all K-12 schools and colleges should keep a few tips in mind before starting to introduce online classes for the benefit of the student community.

Students Vary As Do Their Needs

People who come to learn have their own interests and requirements to meet. It is misleading to believe that online classes or courses will be a solution to all K-12 education. However, the fact remains that an increasing number of students will encounter at least one online course during their high school or college progression.

What is the Respective Quality of Available Educational Options?

Before organizing and scheduling classes over the internet, one should be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the employed academic staff. For example, after introducing online classes, one may find the class attendance level to be rapidly decreasing because of the inability of the teachers and administrative staff to resolve student queries.

What Courses Work Well Online and Which Do Not?

A math class or a statistics class can work well online compared to a literature class where face-to-face discussions and high interactivity is desired. Science classes that mostly include practical experimentations may also lose something noteworthy in online translation. Students may prefer to learn some subjects face-to-face in the presence of skilled teachers rather than study them online.

What is the Motivation for Taking Online Courses?

Online courses are ideal for students who are unable to attend traditional classroom-styled teaching because of health issues. Additionally, motivated students may desire to learn about a subject that is usually not taught within a traditional school curriculum. However, there may be some students who prefer online courses just because it offers them the freedom to learn at their convenience. Now, this may not be a good motivating factor for online education, because according to online learning supporters, students who do best in online K-12 classes are actually highly motivated, attentive, and disciplined.

What are the Student's Strengths and Weaknesses?

Not all students will be highly tech-savvy or capable of tackling online coursework. Thus, making all K-12 classes online may hamper such student's motivation and zeal to learn.

Careers and Hobbies in Electronics Design - Starting With 555 Timer Circuits

Want to learn how to make circuits? As you have probably guessed, there are many tutorials online for getting into circuit analysis and design, but as a novice, you probably have no idea where to start. If you are somewhat up for a challenge, learning how to build 555 timer circuits can be very rewarding and give you a real advantage in your personal projects or in industry. This is because 555 timer circuits are used in a plethora of electronics devices used today (especially digital devices).

The reason you want to start learning 555 timing circuits as soon as possible is because you will learn the majority of the fundamentals of circuit analysis and design all in one circuit, but also because of the incredible utility this specific type of circuit has to offer for many types of implementations. The most famous of the basic 555 timer circuits is the one that allows the blinking of an LED (light emitting diode) at the rate which you specify when you build the circuit. The rate of flashing/blinking is decided by the time constant of your circuit, which is calculated by your resistance times your capacitance.

It may all seem a bit intimidating, but you will have a lot of resources at your disposal revolving around 555 timer circuits, and the internet is a great place to start.

Manufacturers of the IC used in 555 timer circuits, like those of all other electronic elements, provide a datasheet that you can download for free as a published document file. The datasheet offers a tremendous amount of very specific information about the electrical element, but you will need to take a look at good examples of complete 555 timer circuits in order to replicate and understand them fully.

Digital devices incorporate these circuits to provide a serial clock function that times the sequence of bits that comprises the binary code that makes them work the way they were intended. This means that 555 timer circuits are useful for much more than just timing or counting. Hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of electronics used today incorporate these circuits and would not function without them. Now do you see the importance of why you should learn them right away?

You cannot really avoid learning 555 timer circuits if you plan to get into serious electronics design and want to build your own circuits. Their utility is endless, but the amount of electrical engineering experience you get when building them is perhaps more than when building any other type of entry-level circuit. Start by watching a video on YouTube to get an idea of what exactly it is and what it is capable of doing in simple applications.

A Young Teacher's Guide to Writing Assessment Tasks

The process of learning to write and administer assessment tasks will always be a work in progress. There will always be ways to improve your assessment techniques. You can do this first by reviewing each item after you have completed marking your students' efforts. If you don't do the review and use the item/s again, you will perpetuate the mistake of using a poor assessment task.

Unfortunately, some teachers have believed in the past that their assessment task was perfect and that the students had not done the work to succeed. In fact, the opposite was often true. The assessment task had not shown what the students had known but what they did not know. This situation had often created a real fear of traditional examinations in the minds of students. The profession, in some cases, put it down to poor exam technique when the students, in reality, were given a poor assessment task. Therefore, it is imperative that we write assessment tasks that test what we teach and reflect how we teach.

For the young teacher starting out, remember your own experiences of assessment as a student to help guide you along the way.

Don't just use items you have collected along the way or are given to use when you start your career. By all means, use what you are given as a guide. Alter it to fit into your teaching approaches. Have a teacher mentor on your school staff review it with you before you use it.

What follows are suggestions of a general nature which will help you in an organizational sense to get your assessment development underway. There are no suggestions of a subject discipline nature. You will get these during your training, your teaching practice and from senior staff when you are appointed to your school.

When You Are In Training:

    Collect examples of as many different assessment tasks at all year levels you might teach.

    Make sure you have an answer sheet and marking scheme/criteria to go with each item.

    Write your own assessment tasks to test out the success of your practice teaching program.

    Review each assessment task you use and rewrite it as necessary. Make notes on how to administer it as well as how successful it was.

    Organise an assessment folder in year levels and subject disciplines.

When You Begin Teaching:

    Continue to gather assessment tasks as you go for your assessment folder.

    Most schools and/or teachers will have past copies of all their assessment tasks on file. Sometimes, these will be on the staff or subject area school intranet. Consult and use these as initial guides to gain an idea of the standard of questions you might ask.

    Don't just copy items or tasks or exams in full. Do this only if it fits what you want and reflects your teaching approach for that topic.

    You can use old test items as practice tests for your students. These practice tests will provide ideas for your own tests if you mark the practice tests yourself.

    Decide, beforehand, what skills/procedures you want to test. These should be the basic skills/procedures on which the topic is built.

    Initially, write the assessment items to test these skills and procedures.

    Now, write items that bring these skills and procedures together to complete more complex tasks. These could be tasks of a problem solving/critical thinking/higher order thinking nature.

    You must make sure that you have a range of questions from the simple to the difficult/complex. This gives every child the chance to succeed in some way.

    Putting it a different way, your assessment items must test what basic skills and procedures they know and, later, in the assessment items, how they apply these together in more complex situations.

    Do the assessment items yourself from the printed draft to test their validity and your suggested time requirements. Look for printing errors, errors of meaning and so on.

    Amend the assessment items yourself. Then have another teacher proof read it and comment on it.

    Do an answer sheet/model answer and determine the marking scheme or criteria. Put the marking scheme/criteria on the assessment tasks.

    Write a clear set of instructions on page one of the printed paper. Include the time limit as well.

    A rule of thumb that was suggested to me, early in my career, was to multiply the time you take to do an assessment task or examination by three to get an idea of the time students would take to complete that assessment task. Use this as the time you would give the students to complete the task.

In conclusion, remember to make your first goal in all your assessment tasks to find out what the students do actually know. This will lead you to know what they need to know and your second goal. This will be to revise that knowledge to give your students what they need to succeed in the next teaching period. Lastly, always review each assessment task with the goal of improving it so you can use it again in the future.