Asking for opinions on online colleges........?

Question

I'm considering enrolling in Penn Foster college. Anyone have experience with any of these online colleges. Anyone"graduate" How does it work? Are they legit?

Answer 1

Today it makes a great deal of sense for many people to study on line. Home schoolers do it a great deal now, and where I live high schools often offer courses on line because we have so many rural schools and it is diffiuclt for a small school to offer a full challenging academic program with "real life" teachers.

I think you have to be careful with them and do your research well. The ones I see mentioned most often are yours and University of Phoenix in the USA. Here in Canada we have Athabasca University, a school that has been providing distance education for decades, and it has developed as sort of reputation and is probably more accepted now than it used to be. Many universities in Canada offer courses and programs on line and through correspondence as well as on campus.

Consider what you plan to do with the certificate or degree you would get on line, and before spending a lot of money research employers and find out if they would accept credentials from an on line school.

Another thing to consider is whether the school has a "real life" campus as well as the on line environment. A school that has a real campus as well as the on line version, is more likely to be recognized and respected.

Best of luck with your plans. I hope these thoughts are of some help.

Answer 2

I took an online programming class from the local community college, and thought it was a poor way to learn. I found that not having face-to-face time with the instructor and the class made it difficult to learn the material, especially for a course that has lots of technical details and opportunities to make errors.

Unless I went to the campus and met with the instructor, all of our handouts, assignments, and work was sent back and forth via e-mail. It didn't help that the instructor was slow about answering e-mails. It usually took 2-3 days to get a reply to a question. If you had a followup question, it took 2-3 more days. That meant you were a week behind sometimes.

I will not take another technical class online unless I have to.