Have the confidence to go for what you want with online learning
Article by Sarah Maple
Well it’s my last year of university and I am looking forward to completing my degree with good grades, a wealth of knowledge behind me and a good outlook on the future. After I get my results I am going to meet my fellow students where we will celebrate with a few drinks and a celebratory meal.
The only difference between us and the thousands of other students who will receive their degrees this year is that we are students taking our degrees online rather than in classrooms. In fact this will only be the third time that I and my fellow students have met each other face to face.
I have been doing my online degree with Kaplan open learning. As a mum with a full time job I didn’t think that I would ever have the opportunity to go back to university. There was so much that I wanted to do with my life but as I lacked a degree I also found that I lacked the confidence to apply for the jobs that I really wanted.
That all changed when my daughter came home from college one day and told me that she was thinking of doing an online degree after she finished her final exams in June. At first I didn’t like the idea but the more I looked into it the more I started thinking that it might be something I would like to do myself. In the end my daughter decided to go away to university to meet more people and experience a bit more independence but I was still hooked on the idea of home learning.
I finally decided on the best accredited online degree for my and applied. More and more UK Universities are posting their resources online for the benefit of students by putting up resources such as podcasts, notes and powerpoint presentations to help students catch up when they are busy with assignments. Putting a whole course online is just taking it one step further and seems to make perfect sense. A quality resource is Kaplan Distance Learning.
I would feel out of place in lecture halls full of bright young students and the idea that I would have to commute and take time off work to attend hourly lessons was ludicrous. This coupled with the huge amount of money it would have taken to send my daughter and myself to university gave me confidence that I was doing the right thing by learning at home and in my own time.
I chose a course in Business Management as It was something I was interested in and believed would help take me to a higher level in my current job as a sales team coordinator. The course exceeded my expectations and the joy of learning an interesting subject in an innovative atmosphere gave me a huge sense of achievement.
I honed my internet skills navigating round a ‘virtual’ classroom where you could compare notes and chat to other students which was not hard as there were only 24 of us in the class. I felt as though I received a huge amount of support from tutors and at no point did I feel like I was doing anything less than a worth while and beneficial degree.
Thanks to my online university I now have the confidence to always go for what I want.
About the Author
Sarah Maple writes about Adult Education and Online Courses.