Your Online Education Experience? 428
pspahn writes "I am currently enrolled at a very well-known online school. I was hesitant when I enrolled; now more than a year has gone by, and I am regretting my decision. The main problem is that I am not learning anything. I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1. Similarly, there are other classes on my list that will teach me very little I don't already know, yet will cost me money all the same. Now, I do have a great desire to learn and to further myself academically, but I just don't see much value in continuing to take classes I could have aced in ninth grade. It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer and our online discussions are reminiscent of an AOL chat room. While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies. I am interested specifically in Information Security programs. What online education programs have Slashdot readers been happy with and considered successful?"
There is (Score:5, Insightful)
ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:College (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, that's pretty much what your typical college dropout says. Dunno about you but I did learn quite a bit.
Your natural medium should be more natural (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies.
When you deal with people in nearly any industry it will often be far more intimate than online discussions. I would suggest taking courses in person so at least you learn skills in an environment that will apply in your future career. Think about it: most customers would rather discuss their web designs (which you'll be making) in person rather than someone at the end of a phone line, chat room, or email thread. Taking offline courses helps you in so many ways. You'll discuss ideas with classmates, learn how to debate about best practices with others, and learn to learn through many different methods.
Welcome to College (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem is that I am not learning anything. I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1. Similarly, there are other classes on my list that will teach me very little I don't already know, yet will cost me money all the same. Now, I do have a great desire to learn and to further myself academically, but I just don't see much value in continuing to take classes I could have aced in ninth grade. It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer
Hey, welcome to college! Going to an online school might have lowered the standards a bit, but it's all part of the same experience.
:) OR conversely, tough it out and do well, then get into a decent master program, and use your performance there to get into a top-quality Ph.D program
The truth is that academically most of college in just highschool part 2. For anyone who is getting a degree in a field that is already their passion & hobby (e.g. someone who has invested 10000+ hours of personal time into programming and then goes for a computer science degree), it's only in the final 1 or 2 years that the coursework is even worthwhile. The rest of the time is spent underachieving because the content is so rudimentary that you can't even stay focused. You think the colleges want you to just buy the quality courses at the end? Hell no, they want you for 2-4 years of tuition!... errr I mean "broadening experience!"
Furthermore there are always a few assholes in the class who think they know more than the professor, and take every opportunity to bicker with them about each point. You may know a lot about the current subject, but most of the professors are teaching way below their knowledge level anyways... So that's a check on "incompetent classmates" too (not even mentioning the ridiculous amounts of cheating that goes on to pass tests that have no practical value except testing your ability to remember things)
So yeah... welcome to college. If you want a real higher-learning environment, go for a masters and then a Ph.D with a quality advisor. First though, you need to get to that point... and a lot of us call it quits after a bachelors anyways ("it's good enough, and I can't bear another semester")
Academically and averaged out over the entire experience, college (bachelors level) is a waste of time. A lot of people don't even work in the field they got their degree in -- I learned hardly any practical knowledge in college courses that relates to my current job... Of course, it's not all bad -- you do learn how to learn (supposedly), and you learn rigor (lab reports, etc), and you do get a bit of exposure to other interesting fields. Furthermore, if you're not an hermit, you can have a great time with social life. Well maybe that last bit isn't quite applicable to you.
Summary: tough it out and get a degree, then forget the experience and get a well-paying job. You can be bitter all you want afterwards, but at least you'll have a good salary
Welcome to the real world... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1
The same applies for real courses too. I did Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Maths at High School, and then when I went to Uni I did Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Maths - all over again. Pretty much the exact same thing as I did in High School. If I then went to do another science degree, I would get recognised prior learning. It basically comes down to the Institution has to cater for the fact that not everyone has done the subjects being taught. And in your case, you have experience - but that's not recognised (generally) as "prior learning".
Not unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
To an extent, this is just how college is. How long have you been at it? I had a similar situation in a brick-n-mortar college; I re-took classes I'd gotten 4s and 5s from AP tests. Yeah, I was bored. But that stopped by the second year. Might be a question of whether your program is the right one.
if you already know enough to get certifications in the things you want to do, do that, and get a degree in something that would differentiate you from the hordes. I can't say more without knowing what you want to do, but as an analogy, I always recommend that CS grads get a second minor (math is usually the first) in a science, whether it be biology, chemistry, physics, or something similar. Why? Because you know another field that frequently intersects with CS, making someone much more marketable. I'm not saying that particular program is or isn't right for you, but the general principle still holds, I think.
In any event, good luck however you choose to proceed.
Why go to college? (Score:3, Insightful)
US high schools make a significant effort to insure that every student has the opportunity to learn the skills the college, but most colleges are not going to make an effort to hold a students hand once in college, especially if the student is paying, especially if the student is paying with student loans. After all, there is another freshmen class next year, and they have the money from last years freshman class whether they earned it or not.
The second issue is much more interesting. The students at a college provide as much value as the professors. I did not go to any kind of high level college, but I met some good people who really enhanced my experience. People who could hold a conversation, work a problem, accept that ideas different from their own might still be valid. If one does not have such people in their college life, this beyond anything else is a sign that one might be in the wrong place, or perhaps that one is not effort in the most efficient directions.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:College (Score:1, Insightful)
Says the AC to the guy with a 5 digit ID ...
A number of the really, really bright people with whom I've been privileged to work who actually did go to college will be the first to tell you they really didn't learn anything they didn't already know or wouldn't have learned on their own, but went so they'd have the piece of paper.
Some people actually do need to go to college in order to learn things, and that's fine.
Also, In a down economy that piece of paper is a handy thing to have if you don't have experience and can't get by the HR drones otherwise.
Re:College (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing particularly interesting about a 5-digit ui. I'm pretty sure lots of AC comments come from people that have been here quite a bit longer than I have.
Stay away from for-profit degree mills (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:College (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, someone sitting down with you for 15 minutes with a piece of paper can suss out what you already know, fill in the gaps and draw parallels to the things you understand. That's why we -have- teachers to guide us, and not just inanimate rows of books.
Re:University of Phoenix (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, there's a lot of information there. Click on the "Response from Colleges" link for all sorts of stuff.
This reading is going to make me very upset, I can tell already.
I would love to see a class-action suit brought against these schools for their practices. I'm just not sure there was anything illegal about what they did.
Oh, and something I forgot to mention in my original post: very few of their classes are transferrable if you ever decide to move your credits to another university.
Re:well... (Score:1, Insightful)
"classes either weren't particularly relevant or were below-level"
Not relevant is in the eyes of the beholder. I knew plenty of people at my University who didn't think learning how to even write a program was relevant. Not that they were particularly good at, its that they figured code monkeys would write the software they designed. Never mind the fact that their designs sucked too.
If the course work is truly below level. You should blow through it just like I did. For courses that were below my level, I just flipped through the reading material regardless of what it was or how many pages. It was just to assure myself I truly already had things memorized like I thought I did. And sure enough I did. I find most people overestimate what they actually know. I've more than once met a C, SQL, Java, Visual Basic, etc... "expert" who knew very little about the language they claimed to know so well. (And I quite frankly don't claim to be an expert in any language because there's so many little features I've never used) For example, I've met experts who didn't even understand arrays.
FYI... I'd say UOP is a low end university. Not to slam you personally or anything just saying I wouldn't go there at all if I was you.
"Well what they should tell you is that you HAVE to have a family to do it because you have to have people who can do everything else in your life for you besides, eat, sleep, work, and study."
Of course. Any university where there is ANY kind of workload at all is going to be a ton of work. At the university I went to, I had projects where I had to work more hours than a full time job.
"getting fed up with the hoop-jumping and ball-playing and endless drama and politics"
You mean like... Everywhere just about? People are always indulging in drama and politics everywhere I've been ESPECIALLY those who claim to not like it. It's generally used as their excuse to run away when the going gets tough.
Re:College (Score:2, Insightful)
Math, Physics, Computer Science, Literature, Music... any one of these subjects has enough depth to keep you engaged for the rest of your life. In college they sit you down with a bunch of books (and friends, and professors) and just sort of let you go crazy... see what sticks. I discovered that I was interested in a number of different things.
I was perpetually bored with life prior to my first semester at college. I don't think I've once been bored since.
Re:Online schools are a scam (Score:1, Insightful)
--
DUH!
Nothing to do with online.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I had to take several classes where the teacher told me that I could teach this class.
That is the problem when you have been working in the field and are now trying to join a system designed to start from zero AND to make money first.
Awesome world we live in, is it not?
Re:well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who modded this nonsense informative? Proper teaching has huge benefits, not least in training you how to study properly rather than flitting around just picking on stuff you think is interesting.
Do you really think that all the studying and practical work a doctor (say) has to do to get qualified could be done better at home, studying alone over the internet? You are deluded.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
You've just described the average boss who thinks that they "know computers" because they can move a mouse on-screen and make spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations, or the average webmonkey who knows dreamweaver but couldn't set up a web server or hand-code a css file if their life depended on it (witness the earlier discussion with idiots claiming that php scripts could be linked to each other).
These are not people who are self-teachers, because they don't go beyond what they need to know to do the task at hand. They stop learning because they stop exploring - they learn a limited amount because they have to, not because of any innate curiosity.
Re:well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry, you chose wisely. You know all those classmates with 5th grade reading level? Yeah, they are why a University of Phoenix degree is worse than no degree. ;)
You most likely were not doing anything interesting enough during your brick & mortar 2.5 years. I'd have been bored studying computer science for undergrad, so I studied math instead, much fun.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Replace the word "boss" with "server admin" and I'll agree with you. I'm sometimes frustrated at times by the prevailing /. opinions that (i) bosses suck, and (ii) "you can teach yourself". Yes, you can, but one of the best justifications for learning in a formalized course of study is you get to learn from other people's mistakes and experiences.
I am thinking of two individuals right now, both very clever, both in the server admin field - one (call him Ricki) motivated to learn, the other (call him Gavin) who just got in because...well, I don't know, candidly. I suspect it's because he thought he "knew computers". Both had no formal learning in Computer Science or IT when they got started.
Both of these individuals, while I was working with them, demonstrated a lack of knowledge of something very fundamental - permissions. In Ricki's case, he didn't understand how NTFS permissions on a folder combine with share level permissions when you're accessing over the network. He was very young, had only been in the industry a year or two, and very motivated. I liked him. We took ten minutes to cover the topic, and I can guarantee he never made that mistake again.
"Gavin", on the other hand, had been in the industry for several years. The mistake he made was he didn't understand how different group memberships combine - the problem was someone could only read a file, but not write to it, they were in two groups, one with R and one with RW, and he thought the way to fix this was to take them out of the R group. He would not listen to any explanation of how permissions combined - not interested, too arrogant to learn. He'll get the desired result, eventually, but it's not because he knows what he's doing - it's because he will hack and chop and swear and guess until he gets it to work apparently correctly, and he doesn't care how he got there. So, of course, he can never reproduce it the second time, he continually repeats the same mistakes, and he introduces all kinds of underlying issues because he neither knows nor cares what he's doing.
My point - these are fundamental errors and mistakes, and if you don't understand how permissions work, then how on earth have you gotten several years into a server admin position? Next point - that is why you take structured, formal courses of study. Things like permissions, if you're doing a technical server admin course, are taught at the beginning. It's like music - if you don't understand scales and modes and a little bit of basic music theory, it's really hard to know where you're going. A well designed course of formal study recognizes this and teaches all the necessary information in a logical sequence. The danger of self-instruction is you focus on the cool stuff and gloss over the boring but important stuff. Witness "Gavin" - he's spent several years playing with server farms, VMWare, all kinds of cool stuff, and he still doesn't know how file level permissions work! It's amazing...and scary. "Ricki", on the other hand, I'm sure will keep learning - but I am convinced that a structured course of study would've given him a much better base on which to build, rather than having to figure the basics out by trial and error. Working on something and figuring it out by trial and error is a great skill, and important for a tech - but there are fundamentals (like permissions!) which are just so basic and necessary that they should be taught up front. "Here's how they work, here's how groups work, play and experiment for ten minutes to verify what I've just told you and make sure you understand effective permissions, then on to the next module."
Following on from this, and to swing back to the original question, I think you can't beat the experience of classroom learning. I recently finished my MBA, and some of the most valuable insights I've heard have been from the discussions we've had in class with various professionals who work in pharmaceuticals, banking, insurance, technology, etc. If I do another degree (and I would love to), I'll only pick online if there's no school in the area offering the exact programmes I want - I just don't think you get the quality of interaction.
Re:well... (Score:3, Insightful)
But there are people who don't learn, not because they don't have the opportunity, but because they don't want to. I love making mistakes, because that teaches me something new. Sometimes it's obvious in retrospect ("I'm having a blonde day" - my most recent one being comparing a signed char to an int while writing a utility in c to convert international characters to their html entities - duh! I make that mistake at least once a decade :-), sometimes it's "hey, this is something new, and now that I know it, how else can I use it?" Curiosity. It's the key ingredient.
Re:well... (Score:3, Insightful)
When you're learning a subject, how do you tell the difference between jumping through arbitrary hoops that have no relation to the task at hand, and learning stuff that has no immediately apparent relation to the task at hand but will turn out to be vital to understanding things later? Both can seem tedious and pointless at the time, but one is worth spending time on.
Re:Welcome to College (Score:2, Insightful)
And a college degree is slowly becoming less and less desirable to employers. At least in certain fields like programming, web design and graphics work. Quite a few of the places I've worked lately don't even ask for education info. They want a portfolio and couldn't care less if you learned your trade at MIT or in your basement on pirated copies of Visual Studio, Maya and Photoshop.
This happened at my last place of employment. They kept hiring app programmers straight out of college but it was killing them because they ended up outsourcing all the most pressing programming work because none of the in-house programmers were lasting more than a few weeks because they had a great diploma, but they couldn't actually write programs. For years our in house apps were all crappy visual basic apps and batch files. And most of it was thrown together from libraries and code snippets found online because the people couldn't write them themselves.
Eventually one of the guys in Tech Support convinced them to hire his little brother who had taught himself how to code in high school so he could make game mods. So he quit his job at Dollar General and started working there and within weeks was pumping out professional looking, stable apps from a huge backlog of requests by various departments over the years. After that, they no longer hired people based on their degree and instead required a portfolio.
Unfortunately, most companies haven't learned such a lesson and still give more weight to a piece of paper than actual competency. And of course that obviously doesn't apply to all fields (insert joke about the self trained surgeon here).
The best advice is to find some technical school with a 6-12 month training program that has worked out a deal with some local companies to hire their graduates and go that route. The curriculum at such schools usually actually teach you something as they want to pass people who are at least competent enough to do the jobs wanted by their sponsoring companies. And most companies these days will bypass their degree requirements in lieu of actual work experience. So you could spend 4 years at a college accumulating debt to learn skills that will probably be obsolete by the time you find a job and lead you to spend 5-10 more years bouncing from job to job or, you can plow through some specialized training course, move right into a crappy job, and after trudging through that for a few years, hopefully be able to parley that work experience into a real job.