ONLINE-COURSES

Before choosing appropriate online math courses you should know costs of the online math courses.
            1 What will be the total cost - registration, tuition, books and materials, equipment, other fees?

Can you afford it? Are there special technical fees or access fees that are not usually included with tuition?
            2 Are the cost options (e.g. taking math course for university credit may be more than taking a course for noncredit) clearly stated?

Do you need college credit in order to transfer to a degree program? If you take it noncredit, are there different expectations for passing the course/program?
            3 Is there financial aid available? How is it accessed?

Are there limitations on the financial aid in terms of the number of math courses, the timeframes for completion, or the level of the course? Are there scholarships or grants, as opposed to loans?
            4 How do you get out of the course if you are not satisfied? What are the policies for withdrawal and refunds?

Check specific rules for refund timelines and amounts. If you withdraw with the intention of returning at a later date, are there special fee arrangements?

Online math course delivery system     
1 Is there a demo of a math course or how the course delivery system works that you can practice with and evaluate first?

Some online course delivery systems require special browser configurations, passwords, or security protocols. How do these work with your computer configuration?
            2 Is the navigation logical and well-organized? Can you find the materials you need when you need them?

Is it easy to use? Can you practice with all the course options (e.g., discussions, quizzes, reading, simulations, etc.)

3 Do you need to download software to interact with the course or must you be on the Internet to interact with the course?

If software is downloaded is it compatible with your computer system? If you must be on the Internet, what is the time requirement and does that affect your overall cost (e.g. per minute charges for Internet access).

Effective collaboration with other online math courses students requires you to plan in advance and come to sessions well organized. Most online collaboration is accomplished either through email or through chat rooms. Recent advances in online whiteboard technology (the ability to interactively create drawings online) make it another medium used for collaboration - particularly in the corporate environment. Using email for collaboration is no different from sending assignments to instructors or attaching documents for your classmates to review. This section will elaborate on techniques for collaboration via synchronous communication methods: chat and electronic whiteboards.

The belief that face-to-face instruction or tutoring is the most effective way to teach, than through online student courses, is still the accepted tenet of quality education at most institutions. Certainly, most learners would love to have the luxury of personalized instruction in a one-on-one setting that to study through online student courses.

In a very few universities the opposite approach is taken. For example, at Cambridge in the UK, the student does attend limited class sessions (lectures). Students meet regularly (4 to 5 times per week) in a “supervision” group with up to six other class members and an instructor to discuss their progress and to hand in work accomplished in their individualized study pursuits. This is what is often referred to as a “student-centered” approach to learning.

A good online learning student courses environment is much more like the Cambridge experience than the typical learning environment of other institutions around the world. It relies on a student-centered methodology that requires students to be responsible for their own student courses learning and to be motivated to study in a continuous and consistent manner without the structure or requirement of attending physical class sessions. As budgets decrease and student population’s increase, the need for serving larger classes and more diverse people becomes an absolute necessity in the struggle to provide equal access to education around the globe. Online learning student courses have become one of the responses to this need. Consequently, more and more training options are being developed using online learning student courses as a part of, or the whole of, the education experience.

Though some people may access courses via CD tutorials thought online student courses or only through email communications, the primary interface for people who want to study in online student courses is through Web pages and a variety of communication tools used on the Internet. Learning in an online student courses environment differs significantly from a traditional face-to-face setting. The electronic medium lends itself very well to discussion, brainstorming, sharing understandings, clarifying misconceptions, and developing knowledge in a collaborative way. The online student courses environment is also a wonderful medium in which to promote critical thinking.

Nowadays many people believe online learning student courses are a new phenomenon brought about the spread of the Internet. Surely, student courses online have their pros and con. In higher education and corporate training, quality online student courses education is now shaped by exploration and discovery, collaboration, connectivity, community, multi-sensory experiences, and authenticity related to student-centered needs. Surely, student courses online have their pros and con.  Let’s look at a few examples of how online student courses education is being used today and how these initiatives are characterized in online courses.

It is helpful to begin looking at institutions in your location first, and then branch out to other institutions based on your subject needs. Before committing any money or resources, be sure you thoroughly acquaint yourself with the institution. Consult their academic advising services and ask several questions. Below is a checklist of questions to ask any institution or organization that is providing online makeup courses education. The checklist is divided into five categories.

1. Basic information about makeup courses online education provider should make clear
            2 Important technical considerations
            3 Day-to-day operations and experience of the course or program
            4 Costs of the makeup course/program
            5 The makeup course delivery system

Checklist for evaluating online programs.

Basic information any makeup online education provider should make clear
            1 How credible is the makeup course?

Do they have a good reputation? Can you check references?
            2 What are the qualifications of the makeup course designers, instructors, delivery personnel?

Do they have proper licensure or accreditations for your needs?
            3 Exactly what are you expected to learn?

Is this what you want to learn? Do the outcomes match your needs?
            4 What are the “intended learning outcomes” for each and every course and the entry level knowledge or skills necessary for your success?

Do you have the necessary preparation to be successful in this course or program?
            5 What will you get when you finish the course or program? e.g. college credit, completion certificate or professional designation.

Can you do anything with it? Will it be recognized by another institution? Will it help you get a job, raise, promotion, or into a degree program?
            6 Who or what accrediting body recognizes the institution and its programs or degrees?

Are the courses and programs reputable? Have they been recognized by a government entity or a well-known professional organization?
            7 Is the timeline/timeframe flexible for completion or mandatory?

If there is a mandatory timeframe (e.g. within a typical term of 15 weeks) how much flexibility is available within those weeks? If you are traveling and don’t have computer access for two weeks, will you fail the course? If the completion timeframe is extremely flexible (e.g. one year) is that too much flexibility for you? Are you able to keep yourself on task without an impending deadline?

8 Who are the teachers/instructors and what are their credentials? How will they interact with you online?

Is their any human interaction in the course or is it all computerized? Is the instructor credible? You might try sending the instructor an email and see if you get a response in a timely manner.
            9 How will you be assessed? What is the criteria for evaluation and success?

Parenting courses education programs that are delivered in an online environment rely on written communication as the primary interface among students and between students and the instructor. Every electronic communication, except some audio or video conferencing, requires some aspect of writing to be effective on the Web. You are communicating with writing in email, on courses discussion boards, in listservs, and in parenting courses chat rooms. Even when using the shared white boards, you will probably need to use some written communication along with the diagrams you draw.

The better your skills in written communication, the more successful you will feel in an online parenting courses environment. Each of the forms of electronic communication contains certain common requirements. The foremost rule for any communication on the Web is to keep it brief. Write with as much clarity and brevity as possible. Let’s look at some good and bad examples of Web-based communication.

Discussion boards also follow the brevity rule. Because many people are posting to a discussion group, the board becomes difficult to follow when discussion points are long or several postings by the same person appear. Just as with email, it helps to provide some format to your thoughts if they are more than one screen. As most courses discussion boards provide the capability to link to Web pages, it would be best to format longer comments on a Web page and provide a link. Alternatively, you could attach a document.

Discussion boards are a favorite tool for asynchronous class discussions. Frequently, parenting courses instructors will post questions or points to ponder. They are also used as a place to ask general questions and see the instructor’s or your classmates’ responses. When parenting courses discussion board is used for a class discussion, you are frequently graded both on your willingness to participate and on what you actually post. As this is an asynchronous communication tool, you have time to formulate your response and post it in whatever format works best for you.

There are three ways to approach posting long discussion items. One way is to format your response(s) on a Web page and provide a link. The second is to compose your response in your word processor, then attach the document to your discussion board posting with a brief explanation about the attached document. The third is to organize and compose your response in a word processor, then cut and paste it onto the discussion board.

One way to approach to the marketing courses online is to divide the trip into lists of easily accomplished steps. For a marketing courses online there are four major groups: mindset, course content, technology, and the environment. Mindset is how you approach the marketing course. If you are afraid of the technology, are ill prepared, or do not look for ways to participate, you greatly reduce your chances of having a positive experience. This is true whether you are on a vacation or attending a classroom or synchronous session. Marketing course content covers two areas: prework and content delivered in the live session. Technology examines the software and hardware involved in connecting to a synchronous course. Environment is the characteristics of the location from which you will attend the course. Preparation in these four areas should be reviewed each time you attend a marketing courses online provided by a different company or school.

There are two aspects of mindset that affect success in a synchronous session: your comfort with the technology and your attitude toward learning. Both of these impact the way you feel about the first and possibly subsequent sessions. This can be broken down into a number of facets: •            How you feel about attending online
•          How you intend to participate, and
•          Your ability to feel connected with others in the session

It is normal to feel isolated or disconnected from the facilitator and classmates in a synchronous session. After all, you cannot see them or hear everyone in the marketing course. You do not have a sense of their reactions to you or to the material being presented. In most synchronous sessions you will hear the facilitator talking, and on occasion you may hear a classmate ask or answer a question. So what can you do to deal with these differences in experience?

The software you will be using to connect to the course provides a variety of ways to interact with the facilitator and others in the course. You will have the ability to signal the facilitator that you have a question by clicking on a “raise hand” button, send questions by voice or text message, and exchange text messages with others in the online marketing course. Being familiar with the capabilities of the software and the function of each button will help you feel comfortable attending the online marketing course.

The online writing courses environment offers a great many advantages. Writing online courses can promote a sense of equality by granting each participant an equal voice. This may not be the case in traditional classrooms, where students may feel intimidated or shy about voicing opinions due to competition for “air time.” Also, the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle influences of non-verbal cues are missing in online courses. Responses have a greater likelihood of being judged on the basis of their substance and merit rather than by the appearance of the person commenting. This non-visual courses atmosphere can be highly motivating, as well as liberating. Sharing information through active, ongoing dialogue and constructing knowledge through mutually-shared understandings all contribute to the development of a sense of writing courses community online.
                                 
However, online writing courses communicating may take some adjustment, especially if you are accustomed to a more teacher-centered, traditional approach to learning. In this section, typical new courses student difficulties are highlighted: “Did you get my email? Did you? Did you? Did you?”

The seeming immediacy of the writing courses online environment can be deceiving and lead to bad habits. For example, you may feel that you need to get immediate answers to questions or to emails. In the beginning some online courses students fear that if they don’t get an immediate response from the instructor it means their email has been lost in cyberspace. These writing online courses students make the mistake of sending three or four messages a day asking instructors the same question: “Did you get my paper?” or “I need to know about this assignment right now.” This is not necessary the same question, you need to also trust the Internet.

Allow a reasonable amount of time for people to respond to your email, and give yourself the same leeway. Remember, the flexibility of online courses learning permits everyone to fit learning into their personal schedule. It is wise to wait 24 to 48 hours before sending another email message requesting the same information. Remember to consider time zone differences and also give time for reflection. Some people working at online courses may be logging onto the system at midnight or at 4:00 in the morning, and your writing courses instructor is not online 24 hours a day. He or she probably has a few courses hours each day scheduled to login and get emails, so you need to be patient. This also gives you permission to answer courses messages at a time which fits your schedule and outside activities.

It is well known that “International Virtual Medical School” was built by the worldwide group of medical schools. The purpose of this organization is to allow students to begin study, through physician online courses, toward a medical degree thousands of miles from a classroom. The virtual physician online courses, known by the acronym IVIMEDS, is based at the University of Dundee in Scotland, but is actually an international collaborative comprised of over 50 institutions in 16 countries. Many of the participating physician online courses are in the United Kingdom; other contributing online physician courses are located in Portugal, Italy, Singapore, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

The goal of the physician online courses program is to replace the traditional lecture-and-textbook approach of medical school. Supporters of this approach also see broader potential in long-distance physician courses education. Online physician courses would help the doctors from poor communities to practice medicine at home. Physician courses online are designed specially for such doctors with the purpose of staying them where they are really needed and not relocate them for four years.

The physician online courses program is based on the concept of a “virtual practice”, where the computer presents students with patients to treat. For example, a video patient may appear in the online physician course complaining that his leg hurts. He believes it started when he was jabbed in the leg with old rusty nail while mending his fence. First aid, that he needs, is a tetanus shot and antibiotics, but the next week he comes back again complaining about the worsening state of his farm and wondering if his family would be better off without him. The first task of the student now is to examine the man for depression. When the student presents the diagnoses, the physician courses computer program will provide some automated feedback and direct the students to background reading. Faculty will also closely monitor students’ physician online courses performance. Students and teachers will interact over email or on discussion boards, and at some point in the online courses program students may be required to volunteer in local clinics or hospitals.

The online physician courses plan is for students to be able to finish their first two years of medical school by completing a series of computer-based assignments of physician online courses as well as some hands-on work at local institutions. Then, like all medical students, they would finish their degrees by spending two years doing hands-on clinical work in a teaching hospital.

Contact with your teacher and with other students is conducted primarily through the use of email, language course bulletin boards and online language course chat rooms. Using email and Web pages will probably be the most convenient and fastest way for you to transmit and receive materials from your language course instructor and your peers. Most lecture materials are transmitted via Web pages in online language course education. Instructors prepare their materials and post them to the Web well in advance of your language course assignments. Once the initial Web page has been posted, it varies from instructor to instructor as to how updates or continued materials are distributed.

Some will regularly update their Web pages throughout the term of an online course. Others will provide updates by emailing them to their online course students, and still others will send them via the postal service. No matter how updates are transmitted, it is important for you to take responsibility for receiving them.

If you already use a word processor, you will be accustomed to reading text on screen and should know how to scroll up and down pages. Reading Web pages for lecture materials or course language assignments is no different. They are usually presented as text and pictures. In addition to your scroll bars, you can also use the page up and page down keys to move through the material one screen at a time. The reading style you employ may also determine which method of scrolling you use.

Some online language course’s Web pages may also contain animations and sound. Depending on how those course’s pages are developed, you may be required to download certain browser plug-ins (e.g. Real Audio, Shockwave, or Acrobat Reader). It is also possible that language course lecture materials will be available as a file to download to your computer. (For example, a Microsoft Word™ document, a spreadsheet template, or a Microsoft PowerPoint™ presentation.) Instructions for downloading course’s information and/or installing free browser plug-ins to your computer are available in your browser documentation.

There are many online language course teaching programs that are entirely asynchronous (for example, those using print plus email, or those using the Web for both course delivery and interaction), and others that are primarily synchronous (for example, those using language course videoconferencing for delivery and interaction). However, the trend is to combine synchronous and asynchronous media in an attempt to capitalize on the obvious benefits of both modes.

The first task you should do is to know day-to-day operation and experience of the online marketing course or program            
1 How skilled do you need to be at reading, taking exams, managing your own time? What are the learning skills you need for success in this online marketing course/ program?

Is there an orientation course or some instructional tutorial available to help you prepare for learning online?
            2 What is the type of material you’ll cover in the course/program? Why is it important to the field or to your profession?

Is the content current and relevant or is the syllabus filled only with old citations? Is the required textbook’s publication date within the last three to five years?

3 Is the content relevant, well-organized and presented in an interesting manner?

Is it easy for you to read? Are there options for learning in addition to reading? Are there helpful explanations or other interactions that help clarify concepts? Do you see examples that you can apply to your life or work?
            4 How do you get started and connect with the supplier? Are the complete instructions and registration procedures and services available online?

Is it easy to register? Can you track your registration? How do you order books or other needed supplies? How to you access advising or financial aid services?
            5 How do you get help during the marketing course (technical assistance or content expertise)?

If you have questions, who do you contact and how? What is the response time? Is there instructor assistance if you have problems during the course/program? Is that free or an additional cost?
            6 Are there optional paths to learning? Can you personalize the course for maximum benefit or is it one size fits all?

If you are having a problem, are there links to remediation? If the course is too easy for you, is there a way to learn more in-depth?
            7 Are various approaches to learning styles included - reading, doing, listening, viewing, demonstrating competency?

Is the way you like to learn a major or minor part of the course? (e.g., if you need pictures to understand concepts, are there sufficient pictures for you?) Are you willing to adapt your learning style to this course/program if it is different?
            8 How is communication conducted during the marketing course?

            9 Are there a required number of “check-ins” online (e.g. you must login every day or five days out of seven) and are they reasonable?

            10 Do you have frequent and sustainable opportunities to communicate with teachers, content experts, process experts, and other students as needed?

The business world is also a prime candidate for online courses learning opportunities. In a global knowledge economy, businesses are under pressure to get new products and services to the marketplace ever more quickly, and to respond to increasingly demanding customers. To remain competitive businesses need to improve every aspect of their performance and ensure that they are benefiting from the economies of scale available through online employee courses training. Many commentators have acknowledged that the speed at which an organization learns is its only sustainable source of competitive advantage. Thus, corporations are taking a more critical view of how they develop their people.

In some areas traditional sources of education - colleges, universities and training organizations - continue to provide what is required. But just as the needs of corporations are rapidly changing, the ways of learning opportunities is changing as well. Learning centers and corporate universities are just two instances of how online learning impacts the business world. In addition, online learners can enroll in Internet-based learning employee courses programs with commercial providers thousands of miles away (sometimes even in a different country). Or, a corporation may choose to have employee online courses training designed specifically to meet its needs, allowing the topics to be tailored to an individual’s requirements while still maintaining the corporate philosophy and strategic goals that are desired for needed online courses. Businesses now rely on online courses learning to develop skills and knowledge faster and when needed by employees that is “just-in-time” learning.

The types of corporate training and online courses favored by businesses range from complete MBA programs, in partnership with major universities, to skill-training programs for specific job positions in an organization. Let’s look at these two extremes of online courses training that meet corporate needs.

Online courses’ students are required to demonstrate their analytical thinking and understanding of coursework through problem-based assignments that are set in a virtual courses environment. Students can engage in online discussions that connect them to their counterparts around the world. Online courses active interaction between students and lecturers occurs through real-time Internet chat, threaded discussions and similar Web-based communications tools. Other courses online learning applications are provided through online courses learning system. This system includes courses online announcement boards and special notepad functions where students can create their own lecture notes.

MBA programs are frequently the first online degrees offered by a university; consequently, there are hundreds of programs worldwide.