Online College Course Forum

It never rains but what it pores. Having just been invited to join the Leadership Center through my online program, I've also been invited to take a non-executive directorship for a small high-tech company. They want me because I have been a CEO of a high-tech start up company, but also because they see the need for mentorship about managing in a knowledge environment, and across cultures.

This is really exciting for me, as it uses knowledge that I am not using at the moment, and gives me some stakeholding in an industry that I know something about.

I'm really blessing the day that I decided to study online, and can see that this PhD will open up lots of new doors for me. I'll still carry on doing my day job, but the addition of these new interests makes life much richer.

Hmmmm, very interesting. Because of the nature of my online PhD, I've just been invited to join a Leadership Center affiliated to the management school of the university I'm studying at. This really helps me, because it means that some of my study will be in company of like-minded PhD students, and because the center is likely to be affiliated to other, more prestigious centers around the world.

The most exciting thing is to study with other people who have achieved things in their industrial careers, but now want to look to back up their experiences with some of the present theory, and turn their practice into theory that will help to inform the managers of the future. Co-operating online will be one of the major advantages, as we are all working in organisations or doing consultancy ourselves.

Amazing what you can sign up to when you elect to study an online degree.

It's Monday morning and I really don't feel like dwelling on the exigencies of online learning as I've spent most of the weekend working on my PhD. It's getting really interesting, but I am finding that I really want to work full time on doing the necessary (and exciting) research rather than having to sort out my department.

It's the middle of winter here (I live in New Zealand) so there's nothing I like better than to fire up the wood-burning stove, check with my tutor that I'm on target with my online courses, and sit down and read for hours - taking notes of course.

I use an old dictating machine to take notes, which enables me to go through my notes afterwards and make real sense of them, and then re-read as necessary. I find this a great technique to make sure that I understand, remember and reference what I read.