ELearning Jumpstart

How Online Education Can Help Boost Your Career

Many high school graduates can’t wait to spend their summers at the beach, shopping for a college wardrobe, and otherwise planning for their university experiences, which includes lots of parties and football and, somewhere down the list, getting an education. But that is not the reality for many of us who didn’t go straight into college after high school and now don’t have the time or resources to attend college full-time. For the rest of us, pursuing a degree or certificate may require us to attend an online college or get some type of online training.

Why Are So Many of Us Pursuing an Online Degree or Certificate?

There are now over 10,000 online degrees available in the United States. According to this source, online learning, or e-learning, is the most dramatic change in higher education in a century. In 2012, 71.1 million, or 33.5% of college students, were taking at least one ecourse in pursuit of a degree or certificate. But why? What are the advantages for us, the students?

Tom Snyder, the President of Ivy Tech Community College, has summarized the benefits of online learning for The Huffington Post. He starts with the obvious: we all have obligations other than earning a degree, and we need the flexibility to incorporate the degree goal into a life filled with other priorities. And we can’t overstate the attractiveness of eliminating the time and aggravation of the commute and its equally irritating cousin: finding a parking space on campus. Moreover, let’s not forget that many employers pay for job-related courses taken by employees. In fact, some companies are rather liberal about the definition of “job related,” opting to include courses for a desired job as well as a current job. That’s a pretty good deal. The fact that some schools give credit for work experience makes it all the better.

What Does an Online Education Say About Our Abilities on the Job?

In a word—lots! First and foremost, few experiences can make us more tech-savvy than having to navigate through online research sources, dashboards, webinars, track changes, and innumerable other electronic advances designed to “simplify” our lives. As Snyder points out, lifelong learning should be part of everyone’s career growth, and taking online courses helps those of us who nail these courses to remain competitive in the workplace.

Even if the boss isn’t that interested in having a technological genius on staff, having someone who has mastered the time-management challenge of balancing school, work, and home life responsibilities is very tempting. Those of us who have survived the school/work balancing act are probably relatively organized and strongly determined to excel, which is a crucial ingredient of on-the-job success.

The successful pursuit of an online degree can also say something about our ability to learn independently, which in the supervisor’s lexicon translates to “can work independently.” In a similar way, as online learners, our implied above-average reading comprehension is, from the manager’s viewpoint, translatable to “above-average ability to understand and follow instructions.” That’s music to a supervisor’s ears.

Smart online schools collaborate with the business sector to design courses that will help develop the skills to meet current and future workforce demands. Certainly, if we have received an online degree or certificate while earning a living in the “real world”, we can assert that our education has not been strictly theoretical. Theory has been laced with the “real-world” problems of the businesses that have employed us, and those of us who have experienced both at the same time can be a real asset to many companies. Being an asset is career capital.

Can You Use Online Schools To Build Your Resume?

 

 

Becky only had to send out 12 resumes and within three weeks she had a full-time job. In her feedback several months later, she told me that her boss, who hired her, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and was impressed that she was taking classes from his old alma mater.

Is It Difficult to Find an Online School?

Hardly. The list of online academic resources available to the learner is ever-expanding. The following is only a small sample of the choices available to help in the pursuit of lifelong learning and career advancement.

• Academic Earth was designed to provide universal access to a top education.
• Alison is a learning community of over 12 million online learners taking advantage of free resources.
• Coursera  partners with universities and organizations to provide free online courses.
• edX is an organization offering classes from top universities, worldwide, for free or nominal fees.
• Free-Ed explores hundreds of free online courses ranging from a few hours to an entire year.
• Khan Academy  offers instructional videos, practice exercises, and a personalized dashboard to facilitate self-paced learning.
• Open Culture offers over 1,000 free online courses from top universities, worldwide.
• Open Yale provides free online access to introductory courses at Yale University.
• Udemy  offers online, on-demand courses, some of which are free.
• Vocational Alliance  helps students form a nexus between school and work in an adult world.

There is nothing easy about juggling a full-time work schedule with pursuing an academic degree. But with the myriad of free online classes, self-paced, and on-demand alternatives available, post-high school education has never been more learner friendly. We’re actually able to get a degree after the kids are in bed. We can do this!

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