Find some space. If possible, try to dedicate a whole room to your new library or home office. Otherwise, it may be easier just creating a dual-purpose room like a guest room and home office, or setting up a home office area within an unused portion of the house (like the attic or basement). Make sure your room has a door that closes; this will help cut down on noise and interruptions (like the people passing by behind your back). By identifying a specific area or room as your home office, it sends a clear message: “When I am in here, it is because I am studying.”

Pick a quiet location. Road traffic is noisy, so try to pick a room that does not have a window facing a main thoroughfare. The kitchen is also a hotspot for noise: clanging dishes and pans; cupboards swinging shut; the refrigerator door being opened and shut. You may not notice small or repetitive noises now, but when you are reviewing for an exam or drafting a 15-page paper, these little distractions can have a big impact on your concentration.

Because the Internet has become available almost anywhere, the availability of distance learning has grown tremendously.  A student can now achieve education through the Internet from the comfort of his or her home.

An online college is essentially an online portal, or otherwise known as a website.  Through web 2.0 technology, a student can interact with other students and a professor through online chat rooms, bulletin boards, virtual classrooms, conference calls, webcam conferences, and much more.

This essentially turns their website into an online campus, one that is accessible from any Internet connection in the world.

What does an online college do better than a campus-based college?

There are plenty of advantages that an online college has, namely the ability to hand in assignments easily.  Campus colleges are starting to adopt this practice of uploading documents that get sent to the professor.

Imagine you have a thesis due on Friday.  If you attended a campus based college, the professor may require you to print a document and have it turned into their office by 5pm on Friday.  But with an online college assignment, you can simply log into your online college website, upload the thesis, and then you are done.

Furthermore, exams and quizes are online as well.  Often times this means that grades can be immediately returned to the student after the exam is finished.

Online College Accessibility

Would it not it be nice to attend college in your pajamas?  What about the comfort of your desk at home?  What about the ability to attend class on your own time?  These are just some of the advantages of attending an online college.

For many people, the time commitment that comes with attending college is not feasible.  You may be working a full-time job that prevents you from attending college.  Or you may be a stay-at-home mom.  There are literally thousands of reasons why college may not be available to you.

But the beauty of an online college is the fact that they can work with your schedule.  In fact, online colleges are becoming the go to solution for working adults.  For many online colleges, they do not have specific times that you must be present for class on a daily basis.  The coursework can be completed when time is available to the student.

Online Colleges – So many choices.

It is true that there are now hundreds of online colleges available to almost any kind of student.  Here are a few of the top online colleges that offer a wide range of programs and are considered to be the most popular online colleges.

• University of Phoenix
  This online college is arguably one of the largest due to the large amount of programs that they offer.  With a list of over 100 programs, there is a good chance they offer something that the average student is interested in.
• Ashford University
  Ashford has a great web presence.  If you spend anytime researching an online college, you will find hundreds of references to Ashford University.  With their wide range of programs, they also offer something that the average student would be interested in.
• American InterContinental University – AIU
  AIU is renowned for their business programs.  With an extensive list of MBA’s, AIU has become the best online college for business programs.
• ITT Technical Institute
  As their name implies, ITT offers a plethora of technology programs for all types of students.  With locations all over the nation and an extensive online college division, ITT remains the leading online college for technical programs.

If you’re still not sure if an online college is right for you, consider speaking with an college advisor.  They can answer any questions you may have about what to expect with an online college.

You may already be interested in a online college but do not have the financial aid to pay for your tuition.  Take a look at our scholarships tool that will help you find money for your education.

Your future is waiting for you.  Take advantage of all the things an online college has to offer you.

About Colorado Technical University

Colorado Technical University is located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It is a premier technical university offering a broad range of degrees in fields such as computer science, business, information technology, health services, and management.

For convenience, Colorado Technical University offers campuses located throughout the Midwest in the United States and a popular online college that offers a plethora of online degrees for students who are interested in distance learning.

Accreditation

Colorado Technical University or CTU is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. This independent corporation was founded in 1895 and is recognized by the US Department of Education and the Council on Higher Education Accreditation.

Is CTU Right For You?

Colorado Technical University structures its programs and degrees around the idea that their students will be going from graduation directly into the industry. They provide valuable mentoring to students graduating from their university to help them achieve success through networking and job placement.

A few facts about CTU:

• Outcome-focused Degree Programs
  The programs and degrees are a direct reflection of the need for career-motivated professionals
• Education From Almost Anywhere
  Campus locations and a robust online campus that offers access to mentors, chat with instructors, join clubs, apply for financial aid, and network with other class members.
• Enhance Your Resume With Academic Certificates
• Commitment to the U.S. Armed Forces
  CTU is a DANTES-affiliated university and member of the Servicemembers Opportunity College.

Paying For Your Education

Finding ways to pay for your education can sometimes determine which college you attend. Colorado Technical University takes financial aid very seriously. They offer a financial advisor dedicated solely to helping their current and prospective students develop an education plan that fits into their budget.

By developing a financial plan from the start of your education to the finish, the financial projections will let you know exactly what you can expect to pay for your education. It will also solve the problem of how you are going to pay for your education by exploring options such as scholarships, federal student loans, private student loans, government assistence, grants, federal grants, and many other opportunities for students to get money for their education.

Most importantly, their financial advisor will help you secure monies for your education.

Most of what I have heard was good and there were a few things that were not so good. Though, I took these with a grain of salt because every university has current and past students that are hell bent on cutting them down.

I found numerous articles written on the University of Phoenix that demonstrated why the University has gained so much popularity. These of course were simply theories, but if you look at the sheer size of the University of Phoenix, there has to be something to the buzz.

The University of Phoenix is the working adults higher education.

Quoting a recent comment on an article I found about the University of Phoenix MBA:

I received a UOP MBA in 2006. I started my MBA in 2004 but my work commitments along with my travel scheduled meant that I could no longer continue my degree with a traditional institution. My department director was attending UoP and recommended the program. After some research by my husband (a 3 time Rice alum and an education snob) he determined that the UoP MBA was just as good as the University of Houston MBA. So I switched to UoP and started going to the Friday evening classes.

The Friday classes were working well for me until my husband was transferred to London. Luckily I was able to switch to the online program and continue my education. And frankly I feel like the online classes were much better and taught at a higher level than the courses taught in the classroom. My online classmates were more organized, finished their assignments on-time and delivered a better quality product than the students in the classroom. I also found online students “caught on” faster than students in class and the average age was higher which meant the students had more professional experience.

As you can see, this particular student had a great experience with the Online MBA Degree. As I researched this article, I found many stories like this one.

The idea of an online degree is relatively new, with Universit of Phoenix being one of the first to offer an online degree back in 1989! Which if you think about the condition of the Internet, this is extremely progressive.

As A Working Adult

There are certain things that you do not have a lot of, mainly, time. A friend of mine is married with two kids. The kids are only a year apart, one is 18 months, the other is almost 3. She often explains how hectic her life is managing the kids, her job, and working on improvements to their cabin on the weekends.

I once asked her, “When do you have time for YOU?” and as you can imagine with a busy lifestyle, her response was “I don’t.”.

For her, enrolling in a campus based program that requires one to attend a class at a specific time and at a specific place, is just not feasible with her busy life. However, she does have a computer with Internet access and the motivation to succeed in an online degree program.

Their online programs are a perfect solution for the working adult.

For Further Information

For more information, please visit our online degree information request form.

Flashback to 1964, the year that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. An Act of Congress that would prohibit discrimination of race, religion, national origin or gender. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave all citizens the right to enter libraries, parks, public restrooms, theaters and schools.

The prospect of schools being segregated today, seems unconscionable. But segregation of schools was once a commonplace happenstance. The aftermath of the famed lawsuit, Brown v Board Of Education deemed that “segregated public schools were ‘inherently’ unequal and therefore unconstitutional.” The “separate but equal” aspects of life that once applied to so many for almost a century, suddenly became a societal bias many were not prepared to dismiss. With time, the racial playing field would find a better balance. But undoubtedly, the cultural damage created by racial inequality had been recorded in history.
Fast forward to 2009. Where higher education choices available seem endless.

College,…so many choices? Where to go? What to study? How to apply?

When choosing an institution to further our life’s studies, we often forget the historical events and individuals that never had the privilege to choose a specific scholastic environment. The Civil Rights Act, opened up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities to numerous individuals who were previously denied an education of their choice, simply because of their race or ethnicity.

College,…so many choices? Where to go? What to study? How to apply?

It is remarkable to live in a world today, that makes it possible to share thoughts within a sightless, non discriminating universal forum,…the Internet. Surfing the web, has become the new ‘Civil Rights’ foundation for higher education. Scholastic possibilities on the Internet are countless. Dreams can now become realities, simply by clicking “send!”

There are online institutions that can further anyone’s education from the comfort of home. Age, race, religion, gender, and disabilities aside, no one can be discriminated against for seeking a higher education. Scholarships and financial aid are available to online institutions, just like any other university with a campus.

The beauty of online studies, is that working individuals, and parents can accentuate what they do best,…”multi task!” Having a family, and a job often become part of the online educational equation in fulfilling dreams. Reflecting back on history, one can appreciate the struggles that so many endured. But today, in 2009, the Epiphany of the Civil Rights Act reaches a colorless, faceless conclusion in the wondrous ’surf’ of the web!!!

Whether you are looking for journal articles, monographs, factual information, or high-quality publicly available resources, the same principles apply. Narrow your topic, make sure your search terms are relevant and focused, make sure your articles and your topic are in alignment, examine your sources for bias and distortion, and finally, make sure that your online class provides sufficient support and background for your argument. Let’s expand the steps and look at them again. It is useful to look at each of the stages individually and to think about how and why you will be engaged in activities.

Create an annotated bibliography. As you download and read your articles, you can keep track of them by creating an “electronic notebook” which would consist of a citation of your sources. Create an entry for each source. Use the appropriate style (MLA, APA, CBE, Chicago, etc.). After you have completed that, be sure to write a one-sentence overview/summary of the article and how it relates to your topic.

Update your outline. Re-examine your thesis. Look at your argumentation structure. Does each paragraph and subsection help support your thesis? How does your research fit? Determine where you have gaps, redundancies, or where your sources take you on a tangent.

Fill in the gaps. Make a list of the places in your paper where you need additional support for your argument. Then, after eliminating redundancies, map where you need to fill gaps, and where your argument needs additional support.

Organize your sources, articles, and notes. After you have found your articles, be sure to organize them so that you have a sense of where they will go in your online class paper. Keep your primary thesis in mind, and the points you are trying to make and will support with evidence and research findings from your articles. This is a good time to return to your outline and to start mapping out where you plan to use your sources and citations.

• Weblogs and personal/corporate Web sites. Some are absolutely brilliant. Others are dismal. One can use the information, but it must be approached with care and extreme caution.
• Term paper repositories. Needless to say, we have not mentioned termpapers.com and other places that will sell you a term paper, or will allow you to share term papers with others. These are not the only unreliable sources of information in the Internet. It goes without saying that you should not use these, unless you’re just determined to commit academic misconduct. You could cite them correctly, but they probably aren’t the best source, unless your paper is about the traffic in term papers online.
• Summaries, overviews, and study guides. I, like everyone else, love Pink Monkey. However, I would think twice before actually citing it in a paper. I think that the best way to use Pink Monkey, Cliff Notes, Wikipedia, etc. is as a point of departure. Use them to gain an appreciation of your subject and to orient yourself. However, the information can be very imprecise and inaccurate, particularly in their plot summaries. They leave out details and discussion points that may be precisely the ones that you need.
• Student postings, peer-to-peer downloads of notes, texts, etc. These are excellent if you’re interested in seeing how students write papers, and they can serve either as guides or as cautionary tales.
• Parody Web sites. Believe it or not, some students have actually cited information from parody sites as fact! The Onion.com comes to mind. This is a site that masquerades as a legitimate news site, but is, in fact, pure parody. How can you tell if a site is a parody, or so biased that the information it contains is unusable? Compare the information with others. Does it seem outlandish or extremely biased? Look at least three or four sites.

If it has advertising or links indicating that the owner is a member of an affiliate program on it, does such activity automatically make the site untrustworthy? In the past, it might have been an automatic disqualifier to see links to advertising, sponsors, or affiliate programs that pay the Website owner a few cents for referrals. However, one can not make such assumptions now. In fact, the presence of affiliate links may indicate that the Website is a labor of love, and that there are no ideological or commercial ties. Further, the lack of commercial ties may actually be a negative factor because it may mean that the enterprise is so profitable, or the ideological motivations are so strong that there are numerous well-endowed backers, or a highly successful business model.

Here are a few considerations as you evaluate your distance learning sources.

• Refereed journals. This is an academic journal that requires all articles to be reviewed by experts in the field. They require revisions and will reject articles if they do not meet standards.
• Books and serial monographs. In this case, it depends on the publisher and whether or not they evaluate, judge, and critique the material to assure that only the most reliable are published.
• Series sponsored by an association or reputable group. These are very common in the humanities, particularly in the hosting of content in the public domain.
• Wikis and collaborations. Variable quality. They can be extremely good and reliable, but the quality, quantity, depth, and breadth will be variable, as will be the scope of the contributions. There can be bias, distortion, or gaps (lacunae) in information.

Make a list of items that interest you about the topic. For example, you may be required to write an essay on an aspect of Hamlet in your English class. At first, you feel overwhelmed. Later, however, you think about the characters and situations that most interested you and you recall that Ophelia’s speech and then her subsequent death were interesting to you. You wondered about the psychological state, and how she was perceived by the others in the play. Does her situation illustrate something essential about the human condition? You don’t have any idea, but you’d like to explore it. So, you start by looking into what others have said about Ophelia in Hamlet. You find that her madness and death reflect and reinforce the overall themes of death, madness, murder, and betrayal. How does Ophelia’s madness contrast with Hamlet’s? You start jotting down ideas and key words. These will help you develop search terms and to focus your search by going to the correct types of journals and publications.

Narrow your topic. This requires another round of brainstorming, but this time you will be focusing on what others have written. List terms, ideas, and concepts that occur to you, and then focus on the subcategories that you find most interesting. Then, use the list to narrow your topic. Avoid worn-out subjects and ones that are too narrow or too broad.