Online College Course Forum

One of the great benefits I feel I have for my online program is that I am some 18 hours ahead of the campus with which I'm studying. I live and work in New Zealand, and the institution I'm registered with is in California. My timezone is GMT plus 12 hours, and the institution's time zone is GMA - 8 hours.

This effectively gives me a day's advantage in terms of tmelines. Today for me is my institution's tomorrow, and as they are effectively only 4 hours ahead in terms of the daytime, I always feel that I've gained a day.

Of course, I receive the assignment a day later, but somehow that doesn't count psychologically, so I feel I really have an advantage.

I had a long career session with a potential student today. They intended to apply for a traditional degree, but on a part time basis as they are working full time and cannot afford to give up their full time job. However their employer is reasonably sympathetic to their aims, and is willing to give them six hours a week study leave.

We talked through their experience and interests, which includes high discpline and motivational factors. They are very familiar with the use of computing both for personal and for professional applications. So we have put together a package of online courses and some attendence on campus to lend some real support to the programme.

We are fortunate in that we have a co-ordinated approach to traditional and online learning, so we can reasonably easily put together flexible blended learning. But this is increasingly the situation with educational establishments, and is opening up opportunities for many people who would not normally be able to up their qualifications.

I'm learning a lot about research on this online PhD, as well as changing my style of writing. I've done research in the past, but always felt that I am an amateur at it. I suppose the basis of this feeling was that I did not organise my information properly so that I could easily reference things, and find important information that I had acquired in the past.

Now I find that I need to use software to do this well, but I also need to find ways of refering back across different sources. I'm not yet at a stage where I have this sorted to my complete satisfaction, and I want to have a conversation with my supervisor about this as he has been doing this for years.

So now I'm making notes assiduously, and just hoping that I can get them to make sense later.

Well, pinning down my PhD came a stage nearer after yesterday. I worked fairly solidly on my online program for around 7 hours, a really great time to get through some really important thinking time. I also got most of what I wanted down on paper, so now this week in the evenings it's my job to go through what I wrote and review and refine it.

This process of iteration is one that I am using much more in this online program. I feel that I have to verify everything I write, which can be a problem as I am used to organizing things in my head, and then writing in a continuous stream. But in fact I am verifying all my references, and find that I am able to make my arguments much more strongly if I add to what I write over a period of time.

Another rainy Sunday. Not bad news, as I had planned to do some gardening this morning and then get on with some online program work. However gardening is now out of the window, and once I've settled the cats down (at present draped across the top of my monitor and trying to stop me typing on my keyboard) I'll be able to plan out an assignment that helps me map out my thesis that I will argue in my online PhD.

I'm sort of going through this process all the time with this online PhD, I have an idea in my head, I write it down with some outline of associated articles, and then I trawl through it trying to see if I've got the essence of the arguements down. I never have, so I abandon that statement, do some more reading, and start again.

My supervisor tells me this is the normal process that I am going through. I just hope that it doesn't go on for ever, as four years, which seemed a lifetime when I started, suddenly seems like no time at all to get this process on the way.