My Elearning Online Experience

I’ve wanted a master’s degree since I was in high school. But since my parents can barely afford my undergraduate college fees, I’ve been forced to set aside my dream to work in the corporate world right after college. While I live from pay check to pay check, the dream inside my head dimmed but it didn’t die. Life happens and before I knew it, I had 3 kids and a husband to take care of.

I started looking at universities but the long commute and expensive fees made me hesitant to apply. I finally learned about open universities or elearning online courses that were available in the Internet. This is great, I thought. I control my schedule and not have to commute to and from the university. I decided to apply.

I found the learning interface to be a pleasant surprise. Most of the courses have text you have to read, of course but there are parts where videos and photos are included. The content is not boring, I think it’s because I’m very much interested in the course. The discussions are clearer because it is in written form. My classmates became my friends online. It’s like a real campus; the only difference is that the campus is on the Internet. We use social networking like Facebook and Twitter to keep in touch. We can even Skype each other if we needed to talk face to face.

There are drawbacks of course. We have testing whenever lessons are finished and we have to get our own proctor to witness our exam. The possibility of cheating is very tempting. Being online, it’s easy to Google the answers. There are times, too, when I tend to procrastinate because it seems like I don’t have anyone to answer to. I can pick up wherever I left of but it’s hard to do that sometimes.

What I realized is that going through this elearning online experience, the result ultimately depends on your effort just like in a brick and mortar school.