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- Adult students
frequently cite the difficulty in scheduling and balancing family
and work responsibilities as one of the biggest obstacles to
continuing their education. Distance learning helps overcome these
difficulties by bringing the classroom to wherever the student is,
whenever the student needs to study.
- Coastline's accredited,
college level distance learning programs deliver an equivalent high
quality educational experience to what a student would receive if
attending school on one of the college's main campuses. These
courses can result in credits toward the Associate in Arts (A.A.)
Degree, are fully transferrable to most public and private 4-year
universities and can be used to complete a variety of undergraduate
requirements for a bachelor's or higher level graduate degree.
Additionally, many courses can be used toward certificate programs,
or can result in personal skill acquisition or job
enhancement/promotional levels.
- Another reason why
distance learning courses are becoming more and more popular is that
students are finding that these courses develop and enhance command
of many 21st century communications skills that are increasingly
important to employers. Skills such as E-mail use, computer skills,
electronic writing, file managment activities, electronic
colloboration techniques, media handling and other skill sets that
are very helpful in the business world are routinely learned and
applied in the "virtual" classroom.
- An important reason that
many students actually prefer the virtual classrom is that the pace
of the learning is controlled by the student rather than being
dependent upon the scheduled classroom meetings. Thus, students may
work ahead or skip quickly through content they are familiar with.
For working students, the ability to rearrange the study schedule is
immensely valuable.
- A reason NOT to take a
distance learning course, however, is to just to try to get an easy
grade. It is important to remember that Distance Learning courses
still have all the rigor of a regular college-level classroom
course. That is to the student's benefit, as many courses may be
prep courses for other college classes, may need to be used for
accredited transfer, or may require substantive mastery of content
for application to work. On the other hand, because faculty spend
considerable time on the organizational and instructional design
processes of these distance learning courses, and receive
substantial support from the Coastline Distance learning Dept.in the
offering of their courses, students repeatedly find that they are
pleased and satisfied with their educational experience.
- Excellent course design,
clear expectations, defined course requirements and objectives,
organized schedules, options for make-up exams, flexible course
activities, technical help, various instructor-student
communications options, electronic submission of materials,
discussion forums, multi-media support, and other course stategies
enhance the "student friendliness", and fun-level of many
of these distance learning courses.(Surveys over the years tell us
there is a 92% student satisfaction level with Coastline Distance
Learning courses).
- So for these and many
other reasons, hundreds of thousands of students have taken
Coastline Distance Learning courses since our program began in 1976.
Each year nearly 17,000 students enroll in our courses including
studnrts serving on military bases and in U.S. Navy ships at sea.
Many of our students try a variety of the different formats we offer
including Internet, CD-ROM, Independent Study, Videoconferencing,
and Telecourses delivered by broadcast and cable TV.
Self Review-
1. Can you name at least 3 good reasons to take a
distance learning course?
2. What is a reason NOT to take a distance
learning course?
3. Are Coastline DL courses transferrable?
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