Students can work or take care of other responsibilities while earning school credits by taking high school or college courses through online distance learning. Internet classes allow students to learn quality information from a variety of geographical locations as long as the credits are accepted as equivalent to those earned at traditional on-site schools. Picking online classes that not only work with the credits or skills you need to gain, but also fit into your schedule, is the best way to go. Not only must enough time be set aside for homework, assignments, studying, and taking tests, but not all online courses are self-paced.
Students can access self-paced Internet classes at any time of day or night. These courses provide the most flexibility because the student can schedule the classes around his or her personal schedule. However, because self-paced online classes require a great deal of motivation and initiative on the part of the student, a strict schedule should be created and followed. To meet school deadlines and requirements, some assignments and exams must still be completed.
Because the goal of this type of learning is to have a group of learners working through the material together, paced online courses limit the amount of time a student can be logged in working on classes. Students may benefit from the questions and ideas raised by other students, which is an advantage of this type of distance learning approach. Because each aspect of the course has specific dates and times, the student does not need to spend time planning how to fit the online classes into his or her work and personal schedule. Paced online high school or college courses have the disadvantage of requiring the student to commit to working at a much faster or slower pace than self-paced Internet courses.
When deciding between paced and self-paced online classes, class size is an important factor to consider. To ensure that each student receives adequate course help and attention from the instructor, there should be no more than 25 or 30 online students per class. Working online with large groups of students can be difficult in terms of organization and communication, as many distance learning classes have clearly defined group assignments. For example, if even one student in the group cannot be reached by email or phone in time to discuss the project’s progress with the other members of the group, the assignment’s quality and completion may be jeopardized.