Online University Rankings

– Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

You would think that the majority of online students would be found in places with limited access to premier educational institutions, but that’s not the case, according to the results of a survey by eLearners.com. New York emerged at the top of the list of cities with the most number of online students, followed by Los Angeles and Atlanta. Others in the top ten are Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas, Houston, and San Francisco.

On closer examination, the list does make sense though – these are the cities where traffic is terrible, where jobs are at a premium, and top qualifications needed to survive – all features that support the growth of online education.

The survey, when adjusted according to the population of each place, brought out the fact that military personnel are avid enthusiasts of online education. Of the top ten cities on the list, six are home bases or posts for the U.S. military.

Online education is growing by leaps and bounds in the country; The Sloan Consortium reports that there are 3.2 million students in the United States enrolled in at least one online course, while Eduventures estimates that 7 percent of all students pursuing a higher education belong to the fully online category.

– Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

If you’re a lawyer with the Florida Bar Association and are looking to earn your Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits, but are strapped for time to attend legal workshops, seminars or conferences, the online option offered by Human Equation, Inc. may be just what you’re looking for.

The online training solutions provider is offering a group of three courses as part of its CLE Ethics Suite tailored to meet the needs of attorneys in Florida seeking Ethics recertification credits from the Florida Bar. “An Overview of Employment Liabilities,” “Managing Diversity in the Workplace,” and “Preventing and Managing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace” pack in learning that can be completed between one and two hours, and earn you up to 5.0 CLE credits to satisfy General and Ethics requirements.

Follow this link for more information on CLE Ethics Suite.

– Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Interested in earning a degree in Criminal Justice? Well, the Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana just announced the launch of its associate’s criminal justice degree offered wholly online. And if you’re worried if it’s properly accredited, rest your fears. The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools has stamped its seal of approval on the degree. Inside Indiana Business reports:

Ivy Tech also offers online degrees in Accounting, Business Administration, Computer Information Systems, Design Technology, Early Childhood Education, General Studies, Human Service, Library Technical Assistant and Office Administration. The college offers more than 320 courses online.

–By Sagar Satapathy

Welcome to the second edition of the Carnival of Online Education. Although there are not many blogs on online education, it is good to see some great submissions for this week’s carnival. Without further ado, let us take you through the blog posts in the order they were received.

Matthew Paulson presents Finding Financial Freedom in College posted at Getting Green. According to Matthew, the notion that the typical college student has a lower net worth than the average collection of pocket lint is by no means nothing new. College students are now graduating from post secondary institutions with greater student loan liabilities and credit card debt than ever before in our nation’s history.

Steven Aitchison presents How to memorise an entire essay or speech posted at Change your thoughts. Steven’s post will guide you on how to memorise a complete essay or speech.

Phil presents Selecting a College Major « Phil for Humanity posted at Phil for Humanity. Phil’s post is a guide to selecting a good college major and career.

Michael Nelson presents University of Washington – Online Construction Courses posted at C-School – Construction Management Education. Lear about the online masters degree program offered by the University of Washington.

oticeboardMatthew Paulson presents Learn How to Teach Yourself About Money posted at Getting Green. Learning how to teach yourself about Money! Most Americans have never taken the time to teach themselves about money. It was never taught as a topic on high school or college, and they never become educated about money. Read on…

Scott Lee presents How to Improve Public Education posted at Dirty Mechanism. Learn some good tips on how to improve public education.

Linda Freedman presents That Bagel and Cream Cheese posted at Everyone needs therapy? Lessons from a family therapist. This blog presents an academic social worker’s personal alternative to on-line education. TherapyDoc posts regularly on psycho-educational topics that she brings into everyday life, usually with humor or pathos. This post presents assertiveness training combined with a strategic family therapy technique to demonstrates to budding therapists as well as her very substantial on-line readership, how to handle certain uncomfortable interactions.

Wise Bread presents 158 Free Investment Classes From Morningstar: Earn Rewards While You Learn posted at Wise Bread. Wise Bread gives information on how to get the most out of the 158 free online classes from Morningstar.com.

That concludes the second edition of the Carnival of Online Education. I look forward to see more interesting and useful posts in the future editions of this carnival. I request you to send blog posts that are exclusively related to online education.

– Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Here’s another regular brick-and-mortar educational institute that’s offering a postgraduate degree that can be earned completely online. Want to become a Master of Education? Then the California University of Pennsylvania, or U Cal, is just the place to be! Or not to be – you can take the course from the comfort of your home, sitting at your computer. According to Joseph Zisk, the chief architect of the course, the credits are transferable, and the course is as challenging as the one offered on campus. Registration for the spring semester 2007 is open till Jan 16.

Follow this link for more information. 

– Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Catch them young, seems to be the motto of the Virtual High School, an incentive that offers high school students all over the world access to online courses. And the subjects taught are not just your run-of-the-mill science, history, mathematics and the like; they include offbeat topics such as “Learning to invest in the stock market,” “The Holocaust,” and “CNN gods: Power of modern media.”

Instructors in the Virtual High School pool are put through the NIM (NetCourse Instructional Methodologies) program before they are allowed access to their students. They have to chart out the entire syllabus before the course starts, which gives students a rough idea of the direction the lessons will take.

Schools that have teachers signed up as virtual instructors are offered a discounted rate for their students who wish to enroll in the courses offered. It’s a wonderful opportunity for children all over the world, says last year’s site coordinator Thomas Forbes, and hopes that the scheme will be used to help students recover credits from failed programs, a sort of summer school.

I’m taking a design and art course. So what’s new about that? Just that it’s one that’s taught completely online! And before you think I’ve gone completely nuts, check out the Studio Art School based in the United Kingdom.

The institute is a one-of-its-kind school, offering students all over the world the chance to develop and nurture their creative skills with complete flexibility and at the same quality as the courses offered at any regular art school. The brainchild of Michael Stewart and his colleagues, the Studio Art School holds the distinction of being the only institution in the UK that is approved to offer the Level 3 Diploma in Foundation Studies (Art and Design) through distance learning methods.

A digital camera and a computer with an Internet connection are all you need to enroll in this course, besides an aptitude for art and an eye for design. All the courses are nationally accredited and are entirely Web-based. The school caters to the needs of students who are hampered by limited working space and a tight materials budget. Interactions between students and instructors take place via message boards in students’ personal online studio spaces.

A recent venture of the three-year-old institute is the series of online seminars planned in conjunction with the British Council in Moscow to offer students in Russia the chance to study art and design in the United Kingdom.

Follow this link for more details.

– By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

The side-effects of cultural mixes and conglomerations – languages that merge to generate new dialects, like Spanglish (Spanish and English). Then there’s that blend of Portuguese and Spanish called Portunol, widely spoken in Uruguay.  So how do you earn a degree in Spanish, as it is spoken in the United States, and not in the way it is in Spain?

Through FUNIBER, of course! An acronym for Fundacion Universitaria Iberoamericana, this non-profit, international alliance offers advanced distance education degrees in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese through member institutions in various countries. Comprising 50 universities in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Latin America, the alliance just set foot in the United States with an office in New York. While no formal agreements have been reached with schools in the US, as many as 170 people in the country have already signed up for degrees taught through FUNIBER. Inside Higher Ed reports:

The member institutions include the Universidad de León in Spain, the Universidad de Santiago de Chile and the Universidad de The members, most of which are public and only a handful of which are for-profit, are well-recognized in their respective countries. The two institutions in Puerto Rico, “the bridge” for FUNIBER between the United States and the Spanish-speaking world, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico and the Universidad de Puerto Rico, are both accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

– By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

It’s not all good news in the world of distance and online education. There are some parts of the world where education offered from a distance is not what it’s promised to be. Students in the African country of Rwanda are not too pleased with the Kigali Institute of Education. And rightly so, considering that a three-year course has extended to its sixth year, that face-to-face instruction times were drastically reduced, and that some students have been told to repeat whole years even after they had cleared the exams. All Africa reports:

"We signed a contract of three years running from November 2001 – November 2004. We were supposed to have completed our diploma courses by the end of these three years. Kigali Institute of Education authorities have continued to delay the completion of the program giving us many lame excuses," a student said.

– By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Always wished you could study at one of the world’s most premier institutes? Well, your dream is almost a reality, thanks to the OpenCourseWare movement started at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The school, which already has 1,550 of its courses up on the Internet, with access provided free to anyone interested, is planning to make all 1,800 courses taught in its classrooms available online by the end of 2007.

It’s an ambitious and generous endeavor, and it’s been aptly dubbed “an act of intellectual philanthropy”. Internet users all over the world are able to access and download syllabus details, video and audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, illustrations, and other course content, not only in English, but also in various other languages with the help of companion sites that take care of the translation.

The OCW consortium, comprising MIT, Tufts University, the Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, Michigan University, Notre Dame University, and Utah State University in the United States, and institutions from China, Japan and Spain, has come in for some effusive praise from users the world over. While professors are using material from the site to supplement their own teaching methods, students are gaining by access to extra study material, and those with a thirst for knowledge are quenching theirs effectively. If you were to go by one user’s opinion, OCW is single-handedly undoing all the damage done to the United States’ reputation by the Iraq war.

The venture, while offering knowledge to all, is not a substitute for a formal education, as all its supporters agree.

For one thing, OCW learners aren’t able to receive feedback from a professor – or to discuss the course with fellow students. A college education is "really the total package of students interacting with other students, forming networks, interacting with faculty, and that whole environment of being associated with the school," says James Yager, a senior associate dean at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Even so, it’s a commendable and generous gesture on MIT’s part!