It’s a new world out there. When I first began college, distance learning was a unique concept that some of my professors were bumbling with and trying to gain work. My first online professor, in fact, had such a hard time with it that you could begin up your online tests and all of the answers were pre-filled. (I made a an A in that course.) Today, I could become Dr. Danielle Reynolds without ever stepping my actual foot into a classroom. The idea of distance learning was highly appealing to me from the moment I started college. I began college with a toddler at home and pregnant with my second child. I was a single mother/mother-to-be and had to work two jobs to support my children. Having to also find time to go into a classroom was difficult, to say the least. I was committed to going to college so that I no longer had to work two jobs to survive, but I struggled with attendance. The work was easy enough to manage after the kids were asleep. The schedule wasn’t as easy to manage. Then I found distance learning.

I spent the first year and a half of my ten years of college going to traditional classes. The rest were obtained through online courses. I’ve learned a lot about how to fetch, manage, and be successful with online learning. I’ve also learned a lot about how to manage the degrees once you obtain them. I find that a lot of people don’t know how to accept information, acquire or are unable to manage the programs, or are just haunted of them altogether. I hope this article can help.

Finding the right school

The first step is to find the right school. If you’ve already found the right school, skip to You’re enrolled, Now What? If you are afraid to go fully into distance learning, explore colleges near you that offer both online and traditional classes. Try them both. Almost every college now offers course online. If you are committed to distance learning and want to pursue it from beginning to kill, you don’t have to rule out colleges in your area. Many colleges and universities now offer entire degrees online right in your hometown. This also applies if you already have an undergraduate degree and are looking into graduate school. In another time, I could have given you the entire list of schools offering online degrees. Now, you will have to come by it for yourself. There are many, many websites where you can search. Most will put you on the upright track. A small amount of research will result in a large amount of options.Don’t limit yourself to only schools you have heard of. I ended up attending a school that I had never heard of and obtained my BS from that school. With so many options, how do you know which school is right?

Search by degree

After you find the massive list of colleges that you can back online, search by degree to find the ones that offer what you want. Be realistic when making the decision to attend distance learning. If you want to become an LVN or are trying to relieve med school online, you just aren’t going to find it and you aren’t going to be well served by the degree if you do find it. If you are interested in a degree in psychology, English literature, teaching, computer information, business, and so on, you’re in the right place. That said, if you don’t find the degree you’re interested in in the drop down list of whichever website you choose, it doesn’t mean you can’t get that degree online. Try another site or search by a related degree and check the specific web pages of the schools from those results. For example, you are enthusiastic in a degree in child development. This may not be specifically on the list, but psychology or sociology are related and you can obtain that degree.

Check their credentials.

In order for you to build use of your degree in the real world, your degree must be from an accredited university. Beware that just because a college or university advertisement or homepage states they are accredited, it does not mean that they are. The easiest way to ensure that the school you are most interested in is accredited is to check with CHEA (Council for Higher Education Accreditation). This website tells you everything you need to know about accreditation and has a comprehensive search where you can find out if the school is accredited and by what agency. You will see the term “diploma mills” regularly used with the term “beware” as you embark on this search. Pay attention. You should beware of diploma mills. Diploma mills are schools that voice diplomas without any true requirements. You can’t earn a degree with one paper, life experience, or by paying a fee. Checking is worth your time. Graduate schools, employers, and others will and can verify if your degree is accredited. It’s famous that you know that it is. 　

Make sure you can afford it.

Any school will have a way for you to calculate tuition. Your best bet is to find the financial aid page for the school and survey. If you know nothing about what tuition should be, check comparable schools. Peterson’s offers great information about the cost of tuition and allows you to compare different schools’ cost. Rep the search tool here. If you need financial aid, check the website and beget sure that they offer financial aid. If the school does in-house financial aid or states that financial assistance can be obtained through a private bank, they may not be eligible for federal financial aid such as pell grants or federal student loans. Personally, I’m leery of any school that isn’t eligible or doesn’t offer federal financial aid. Otherwise, you have to rely on your credit in order to get these types of financial aid, your interest rates will likely be higher, you aren’t eligible for any of the loan reduction programs offered by the federal government, and you will have a harder (or impossible) time getting deferments or forbearances. Make sure you do your research because you can’t be successful if you can’t afford to go

Read reviews from trusty people.

Just because a school is accredited, it does not mean that it is a advantageous school and it doesn’t mean it is right for you. Reading reviews can go a long way to gain distinct that you don’t get yourself into a school that will not work for you. GetEducated.com is a gigantic place to score information on what a school is like from real people who have gone there. If all else fails, google it and see if there are a lot of complaints and rants about the school popping up. You can’t always trust just a few people’s opinion. But, if you inspect a distinct pattern, take trace. You can also find out what type of work you are expected to do. For example, most of the online universities that I attended required that you mainly write essays as assignments. I, personally, would prefer an essay to a test or book work. If you hate writing essays, make positive you don’t befriend a college where this is your primary way of making the grade. You can find this out by getting feedback from real students who have attended.

Check admission guidelines.

You need to be positive that you qualify for admission. If you are interested in entering graduate school to regain your Master’s online, be sure that your undergrad credentials are acceptable. If you are applying for college for the first time, make sure you meet the admission requirements and have access to the information the school needs. This applies to any college, but distance learning can be particularly tricky because you can’t prance into the admissions office and hand them what they need.

It is not unusual or suspicious to have to have an application fee. Most online schools are very easy to apply to and likely require an admission fee to pay the salary of the person processing all of those applications. This can also weed out people who are just exploring and don’t really intend to apply. This should not make you suspicious unless this fee is more than $100.00. The fee is usually closer to $50.00.

Once you have found the school, applied and meet the guidelines, you need to enroll. This is dazzling straightforward, but you need to understanding for this to take longer for a distance learning college. You will be mailing information (or having it mailed) to the school and it may take longer to process. As I’ve already said, you can’t usually walk in and hand them what they need. This makes it take longer. If you don’t provide them with the right information the first time, it can take even longer.

Talk to the school

Even though you can’t walk in, the college has staff to help you through the admission and enrollment process. Counselors are available. Some schools, such as Walden University, assign you a counselor or admissions ambassador that you are required to work with. Talk to this person, they will serve you. Don’t be afraid to ask every question you can think of.

You were approved and you are enrolled. Now you need to know how to manage going to college with no professor, classroom, schedule, or classmates. First, understand that you do have professors, a classroom, a schedule, and classmates. You may not be able to view any of them with your right eyes, but they are there. Your professor will be a name on a screen or a say on the telephone. Your classroom will be a webpage, chatroom, or conference call. Your classmates are the other people on the screen or the phone. Your schedule will be a itsy-bitsy more tricky. Your syllabus or assignment list may be your only schedule or you may be given a trusty schedule. I have taken courses where all assignments were due by the end of the semester and that was that. This is fairly rare. Generally, you will be given assignments with due dates and requirements for participating in message board, chat room, or phone discussions. This is your schedule. You have to orient yourself to this type of environment.

Five Tips for Quick Success:

Time management. Time management. Time management.
Did I mention time management?

If you take anything away from this article, it is that the key to success for distance learning is time management. You will not have anyone staring you in the face asking for your assignments or reminding you that you have something due. You will be free to do your work on your schedule, so you have to make that schedule or your work will not get done.

My most potent and my quickest lesson when going online was that I had to come up with a serious strategy for time management. I am a procrastinator. It is likely only because I have so much other stuff to do that I tend to do things about 15 minutes before their latest deadline. After some very long nights and some fairly bad grades, I realized that this doesn’t work well with distance learning. I won’t pretend that I completely learned my lesson. Up to the last course I took online, I waited until the last cramped to turn things in. The difference was, I knew it was coming.

In order to be successful, you must manage your time. I have attended online classes at four different universities. All four allowed me to print the syllabus and assignment list for the semester a week before class began. Like any school, you will have some courses with more work than other. Like most schools, you will likely have a major assignment due at the end of the semester. Knowing what you are expected to do each week will go a long plan in helping you thought ahead of time how powerful time you need to win the assignments prepared.

Things you can do:

Create a calendar in Outlook or comparable programs that set reminders to inform you when things are do and give you fair warning that they are due. (Your school may provide you with a calendar program that does this for you). Put every assignment on that calendar at the beginning of the semester and set appropriate reminders before your semester even starts.

Give yourself a structured schedule. As I’ve said, I had time for education somewhere closer to midnight. I had a set time every day that I checked on my courses and worked on my assignments. My time was 11pm to 1am. (As they say, I went to school in my pajamas.) Although you are making your own time to go to classes, you do have to devote the time to your classes. Create a schedule that works for you.

Check in every day. You may only have to submit assignments weekly, monthly, or even semester-ly. But things change, people discuss, and professors provide you with information. Checking daily can help you catch any changes, get hints or ideas from others and catch all of your professors important comments or updates. Don’t only check in on the day your assignment is due. The due date or assignment may have changed. It has happened to me enough times that I strongly recommend this to anyone.

Get ahead when you can. If you find yourself caught up with time to spare, move on to the next week or assignment. the more ahead you get, the more chance you have to revise or relax later. This also helps you if you have one of the million little emergencies that life tends to throw at you.

Use the tools that are given to you.

You may have access to online tutorials or tours that walk you through your classroom or course. Don’t skip this, no matter how computer savvy you are. Every environment is different and every course is set up differently. You need to know what is available to you and how to use it. Don’t assume that you know or can figure it out.

You will be given access to a Virtual Library. Use it. This will give you access to journals, articles, texts, and other resources that you would otherwise not be able to accept or would have to pay to access. Virtual Libraries can be a much more vast resource than a local University library because you generally have access to a lot of data that is out on the web or available electronically that your local University does not have in-store. Databases such as EBSCO can only be accessed by institutions and your Virtual Library is the only way you are going to get these resources.

You will likely be given access to writing centers, research resources, peer leaders (experienced students who can answer your questions), career development resources, mentors, and tutoring. Exhaust them if you need them.

To find out what is available at your school, search the student pages.

Interact with your classmates.

This has the same advantages as it does in a traditional classroom. The feeling about distance learning goes one of two ways. Either you feel more comfortable talking to your classmates because you feel so anonymous or you feel more anonymous so you don’t feel like there really are other real people in your class. Reach out and talk to someone.

Honest because you are in distance learning, don’t retract you can’t have the college experience. You can join clubs, even fraternities and sororities. You can join study groups. You can make friends. You can even get together in person. You can participate in extra-curricular activities, they objective may be a minute different than the college football game. Buy the T-shirt, have a beer, and chat with your classmates.

Talk to your professor

Your professor is a person. They may be in Ohio and you in south Texas, but they are still a person. You need to interact with your professor to ask questions, clarify assignments, or anything else that you would want or need from a professor you see in the classroom. Your professor will provide you with an email address and a phone number along with times they are available. Get the information and hold it. Use the phone. Don’t be afraid. They are paid to voice you. Many online professor are also professors in a weak classroom. Pay attention to when they are available and call them on those times. If you can’t wait or are unavailable yourself at those times, send them an email. They are living and breathing, even if it doesn’t seem that diagram.

Don’t overload yourself

As I’m sure I’ve made clear, I went to college while heavily obligated to other things. I, personally, am a quite effective multi-tasker and can handle a large load. Create sure that you can handle what you are getting yourself into. If you have a full life outside of school, don’t take five courses at once. You may deem that because it is online, you can take as many courses as you want and do them whenever. If “whenever” is only when you sleep, don’t take as many courses as you want. Take as many courses as you can handle. If you need to take a semester off, do it. Take it from someone who’s made all the mistakes, it’s better to take on less and succeed than to rob off more and fail.

*Go to my associated affirm homepage to look for more on distance learning.