Giving Accredit Where It's Due
“Are you sure it’s accredited?”
If I had a nickel for each time someone asked that about my online master’s program, I could pay my tuition through 2009. Honestly, despite three decades of advancing technology, people still see distance education as tacky correspondence courses -- or worse, as diplomas from some seedy boilerplate mill.
If you’re reading this blog, though, you have more savvy than that. You may interact regularly with perfectly legitimate online vendors whom you trust. Colleges are no exception – check them out.
More to the point, though, if you can access a blog, you have what you need, technically speaking, to take an online program. You are even more advanced than Microsoft Inc. because, gauging from the red, squiggly lines, my new Word 2003 recognizes neither “blog” nor “Weblog,” and you do.
But let me introduce myself, since that was my assignment. My husband and I have three adult children, two awesome daughters-in-law and two perfect grandchildren. Most of our extended family lives within five miles of our home in a Denver, Colorado, suburb.
My chosen pursuit is a Master of Family and Consumer Sciences/Gerontology through the Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (GP-IDEA), a consortium of Midwest universities that includes Iowa State, my “home” university. My career links inevitably to that. I now work for nearly anyone who will pay me as I pursue my degree, but before that, I worked for 15 years as a business and technology journalist in magazines and on the Web. I left that field for college, finished a bachelor’s and now, here I am. With a master’s, I hope again to make good money at work I enjoy, and maybe inspire my grandchildren’s pursuits, as well.
Meantime, distance education is rewarding, but rough, with constant schedule conflicts because I have deadlines, but no set class time. Should I spend time visiting with my 70-something parents, or should I study for my aging program? Should I spend the day staining a high chair with my daughter or do my homework for that course on family interactions? Ironic, isn’t it? I can do coursework at midnight, if my 49-year-old self can manage to stay up that late. But more likely, I’ll be cramming somewhere down the road.
Online courses also inherently mean you work alone, and you can feel it. No one really knows what it’s like – except online classmates. I’ve found that students speak their mind and their hearts through their writing, and it creates a bond among us that is in its way, more personal than those with my other friends.
A caveat: Anyone who uses e-mail knows to rethink a note before sending it. We do the same with postings in class because unedited words can be misinterpreted. Similarly, I think we give each other a huge benefit of the doubt when we read the seemingly odd in someone’s words. This is how we foster rapport in cyberspace.
Chit-chat with profs doesn’t occur in the minutes after class on campus, but can take hours for a response. Yet when it arrives, invariably my profs have mastered the art of soothing e-mails, and their easy, uncomplicated explanations belie their doctorate-level learning.
Finally, the work is just plain intense. I never go anywhere without my textbook, hoping to catch a chapter during a wait. On campus, I would miss a class for travel. Now, wherever I go, so goes my laptop. I love it; I hate it. I need it; I don’t need this pressure. But one thing I am sure of. My program is accredited.