Earning a degree from the comfort of your own home

By Ashleigh Viveiros

The post-secondary experience can come in many different forms. For some students it means packing up and moving across the country to attend school; for others, it simply means catching the bus to the college down the street.

Increasingly, though, university and college students are opting for a much more closer-to-home scholastic experience - literally.

As you read this right now - be it at noon, midnight, or any time in between - somewhere out there is a distance education student sitting in their pyjamas and fuzzy bunny slippers 'attending' their classes.

Some of these distance ed classes may still follow a purely traditional correspondence route, with printed course packages and assignments being mailed back and forth between student and school.

Others programs may include a mix of print and various multimedia components, including videos, televised lectures, and video or audio conferences.

But with the Internet boom of the last decade, the face of many distance education programs offered by schools across the country has changed dramatically.

Today, thousands of students are earning their diplomas and degrees online, often without ever having to set foot on a real campus or talk face-to-face with a professor or fellow student.

Instead, these students log on to a virtual classroom to receive their assignments, take part in message board class discussions, do group work with fellow students using e-mail and private messaging, e-mail their teachers with any questions, and then do the readings and assignments from the comfort of their own homes. The only time students may have to leave home because of school is to write exams or tests at a local school-appointed examination centre.

This is the route 22-year-old Debbie Klassen chose five years ago, when she began working towards both her Certified General Accountant designation and a Bachelor of Commerce degree through a joint program at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.

When considering her post-secondary choices, Klassen says the prospect of being able to remain in her home town in Southern Manitoba and work full-time while earning her degree appealed to her, mainly because it costs less overall.

"I didn't have to move away - that's what brings the cost down," she says. "And I can work while I do it."

For her first CGA courses a few years ago, Klassen received her course packages - which sometimes included CD-ROM learning aids - in the mail, and sent her assignments back accordingly.

For her current courses at Laurentian University, Klassen does everything online from her home computer, which continues to allow her a great deal of day-to-day flexibility in her school schedule.

While the deadlines in online courses are just as strict as they are in campus courses, students can attend classes whenever - even wherever - they want to, says Klassen.

"You do have your deadlines, so you do have to get everything done," she says. "But you can do it at ten to midnight, you can do it whenever you feel like it. You can take time off when you need it."

Case in point: for a recent family funeral, Klassen's sister - an architecture student at the University of Manitoba - had to contend with missing an entire day of campus classes - and all the notes and materials that goes with it.

Meanwhile, Klassen simply checked in with her online classroom when she had time the next day.

"You still have all the material (online)," she says. "You're not missing all the day's material."

Flexibility also comes into play when it comes to how many courses Klassen completes in a year. Since she's also holding down a full-time accounting job, Klassen never does more than one three-month course at a time, completing three courses (18 credit hours) a year.

"I think they're supposed to take about 20 hours a week," Klassen says of the courses. "But you don't necessarily have to work full-time when you're doing it."

If that's the case, than an unemployed student could do considerably more courses at a time, as long as they were confident they could handle it, says Klassen.

"Don't overload yourself," she says.

With the scheduling freedom of distance education courses comes a great deal of personal responsibility - since there's no real-life classes to attend it can be very easy for students to slip into procrastination mode, says Klassen.

"You do need discipline, because just because you're taking it at home doesn't mean that you're not going to have to do the work," she says.

A course's day-by-day outline - complete with assignment deadlines - can go a long way towards helping a student stay on task, but you also have to have the motivation and discipline to focus your efforts throughout the week, says Klassen.

"Deadlines help because you're going to have to do stuff by a certain time. But you do need discipline," she says. "For an average week, you do 'X' amount of reading ... you have to do it throughout the week."

For her part, Klassen says she works on her studies for a few hours every day, usually taking Sundays off.

Keeping up with assignments aside, a dedication to regular 'attendance' online is also important to demonstrate good classroom participation, says Klassen, which can be worth a small chunk of your final grade.

While you can't exactly raise your hand to show participation, students are expected to get involved with the daily or weekly course-related discussion topics on the message boards, she says.

Looking back, Klassen says she's glad of the choice she made to pursue her post-secondary education from afar through distance ed, rather than moving away from home to attend school.

Getting used to learning in a non-traditional classroom environment took some time, but, Klassen points out, adjusting to regular university or college programs can be just as difficult.

"Sure, it was a change from (high school)," she says. "But so is (going away to) university...I don't know which change would be more drastic."