1. Decide what you want to study.  This is important.  If you simply jump into classes completely undecided, there is a higher liklihood you’ll leave college with a variety of credits and no degree.  In our Guide we provide you with resources to answer the question of what to study.
2. Research your options. Don’t simply enroll in the first program of study you find by a google search or limit yourself to the offerings of the closet college or university to you geographically.  Check out our program search – a listing of highlighted programs from our partner institutions.  Each of the programs listed will provide you with a description of what you will learn in the program and how well recent students have demonstrated they have learned those concepts and skills.  But what do you do if the kind of program you’re interested in isn’t listed on our site?  Use our 21 Questions to Ask Before Enrolling to make sure you fully understand the program and institution you’re considering.
3. Don’t get pressured into making a quick decision.  This is an important and expensive decision.  Be sure you feel comfortable that you’ve weighed all of your options before enrolling.
4. Make a degree plan.  Once you’ve chosen a major and degree you’ll pursue and the institution you’ll attend, be sure to make a detailed plan of what courses or competencies you need in order to complete the degree.  Most institutions will provide you with an advisor or mentor to help you make this plan however, it works best if you come to that meeting (whether in person or virtual) with a preliminary plan.  Keep in mind your advisor or mentor should offer advice but only you know what will work best for you.  If you can only take 1-2 classes a semester, don’t feel pressured to take more than you can handle. Or vice versa, if you plan on committing yourself full-time to your studies to finish more quickly, don’t feel pressured to only attend part-time.
5. Prepare yourself, your family, colleagues and friends for your return to school.  There are many considerations when you return or go to school, especially if you will also be balancing full-or-part-time work, a family and friends with your school work.  We provide tips on how to be a successful adult learner in our Guide. But you’ll also want to make sure that the others in your life are on board to support your goal.  It may mean missed recitals or a reduced travel schedule or more help with household chores.  If those in your life understand why this is important to you and how they can support you, it will become a shared success.

We’d love to hear currently enrolled students tips for going to or returning to college OR questions from those of you considering going to or returning to college in the comments.  Happy New Year!

• As we’ve said before, the physical space you use for studying can be quite important.  You’ll want to minimize distractions, be comfortable and have all of your study materials handy.  Make sure your family and friends know that you need this space, and time, to study.
• Don’t just read and cram through your text book.  Make yourself a study guide.  This can be as simple as an outlined list of the important topics to understand or if it works better for you a concept map of the topics from the course and how they connect.   The most important point here is to be conscientious in your studying – we’ve all ‘read’ a page, or even a chapter, in a book and realized that not a single concept was absorbed.  If your system is key points on sticky notes, rock it – find what works for you.
• Make a schedule for yourself.  Work backward from the date of the exam, the due date of the paper or project and be realistic.  Don’t overschedule yourself.  Explain to friends and family that until you’re complete with this course, you’ll need a little extra help, and you’ll have to say no to some things you’d love to do.
• That said, be sure to include SOME fun in your schedule or you’ll burn out.  DVR your favorite show and watch it between study sessions, skipping the commercials.  Take your kids and dogs for a walk.  Break out the crayons and playdoh, not just to distract your kids while you study but hop in there and color a page yourself or build a clay snowman.  There is various research that  indicates that both adults and children can only maintain sustained attention for 20 minutes at a time.  Adults can revisit the same subject over and over again, but a short break every 20 minutes will help retention of material and maintenance of attention.
• If you’re confused about a topic or need more information, ask for help.  Ask your instructor.  Ask the other students in your course.  Ask your local librarian for help finding other materials than your textbook on the subject.  Remember, there are no stupid questions.  If the answer, or even the process of asking the question, helps you think about and learn a concept more deeply, it is worth any hit to the ego in asking it.
• This may seem like a no brainer, but be sure to eat properly and get enough sleep.  Skimping on either can leave you cognitively drained, making studying near impossible.  Just like Popeye, spinach and other leafy greens are good for you too.  Instead of a candy bar, reach for an apple.  The spike in blood sugar with that candy bar, or energy drink or 18th latte, will leave a crash after that’s hard to recover from.  So, be kind to your body.

What lessons have you learned that you would share with others?

Photo Credit: Notes by English 106 on Flickr

Thank You - Danke by AlicePopkorn on Flickr

Take a moment over the next couple of weeks, when you’ll likely have at least a tiny break from school, to reflect on who has helped you get to the point you are in your journey to a credential – be that a certificate or a doctorate, a bachelors or an associate degree.  Then reach out with a simple thank you.  It can be a phone call, an email, a Facebook, tweet or even a handwritten letter.  Whatever the format, know it will be appreciated.

I’ll close with a great quote from Oprah Winfrey - Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.

Cali Morrison is the project director for Transparency by Design which powers the College Choices for Adults website.  She holds a bachelor of arts in public relations from Western Kentucky University and a master of education in adult and higher education from Montana State University. In December 2008 she was awarded a graduate certificate in women’s studies which she completed fully online through Western Kentucky University.  All of her post-bachelor’s work was completed while working full-time, volunteering in her community and taking care of her family.  She understands adult learners because she is an adult learner.

Photo credit: Thank You – Danke by AlicePopkorn on Flickr

My dog is special.  He has a college degree. A graduate degree that he earned online.

I wish the little pooch had buckled down and earned his paper pedigree the old fashioned way, by taking a bite out of some thick juicy textbooks, but alas, my pug gave in to temptation and bought his college diploma cheap at a degree mill site.

Poor Chester the Pug, he fell for one of those flashy online ads that promised him an “affordable online degree fast,” based on a review of his life experience.

Chester faxed in a copy of his resume — which truthfully declared he had substantial life experience in food tasting and bowl licking –  to an online school named Rochville University.  Ten days later, he received an express mail packet of college credentials from Dubai.

Chester Ludlow, MBA dog

Total cost of his online MBA degree $499.

Rochville University kept its word.  My dog had an instant, fast degree. It was also a very cheap degree, considering the average real online MBA degree program costs close to $25,000 for tuition and fees.  The instant degree package sent to my dog contained a gold-embossed MBA diploma, two sets of college transcripts with decent grades, a certificate of distinction in finance — apparently my little pug is especially gifted in corporate number-crunching — and a student council certificate of participation. Also included were official signed letters from Rochville University officials and faculty that Chester was instructed to use to impress potential new employers.

The highly embossed “college” paperwork says my smart little pooch graduated with a GPA of 3.19 (for an additional $100, he could have graduated with honors).

Chester also also received a flashy Rochville University window decal for his car (though we are at present refusing to let him drive).

Rochville University is one of scores of online universities operating from foreign post office boxes that advertise cheap, fast degrees online for one flat fee. The university advertises (truthfully) as being “fully accredited.”

The trick is that they are accredited by the “Board of Online Universities Accreditation” and the “Universal Council for Online Education Accreditation.”  The scam lies in the fact that neither of these agencies is recognized as a college accreditor by the U.S. Department of Education or the Council of Higher Education Accreditation. In fact there are more than 30 fake online college accreditation mills, that attest to the “authenticity” of bought diplomas and transcripts from more than 300 reputed diploma mills.

Chester’s tail — er, tale? — should alert everywhere to the dangers of falling for high pressure ads from fly by night colleges that only exist in the form of web page pixels.

All degree mills are accredited — but by fake agencies. Believe it or not, degree mills create fake accrediting agencies so they can say, “yes, we are indeed accredited.”  They rely on consumer ignorance about accreditation to keep them safe. Since few people other than higher ed nerds know the names of real college accreditation agencies the scam often works.

Want to ensure your fellow online students aren’t real dogs?
Make sure your online college is properly accredited by a recognized agency.

To help combat degree mill fraud, Chester is now a watchdog for the free consumer protection service, The Diploma Mill Police,
This free service will help you verify the accreditation status of any online college.

If that “fast” online degree smells too good to be true it probably is.
Be safe. Get Educated before you enroll.

Photo by Lantente http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-coli/2316945309/

I can almost guarantee, your “best” coffee and the “best” coffee of the guy sitting next to you on the train are completely different.  He might think

Sanka is the best because it’s so easy to prepare and relatively inexpensive.  While you might enjoy the complexity and smooth flavor of cold-pressed iced coffee which must sit for 12+ hours in a coffee press to achieve the perfect flavor.  Different criteria yield different results.

This is why we here at College Choices for Adults do not produce rankings of the “best” college.  Because the “best” college is different for every person.  It’s a complex choice that must take into account each individual’s professional goals, personal time commitments, finances, and learning styles just to name a few factors.   Many of these things cannot be standardized in a manner that will still create a ranking that has meaning for all people.  Instead we provide you with data on our featured programs that no one else does – program level learning outcomes, assessments and recent results of those assessments.  With these you can match your professional goals with those learning outcomes, understand if how those learning outcomes are assessed and how well recent students have performed therefore allowing you to deduce if that program would be a good fit for your learning style and goals.  While many rankings actually make the choice for you, we empower you to make your own choice.

That said, all rankings are not a bad thing.  What you’ll want to look out for:

• How the rankings are produced?
• What criteria are used?
• By whom and how are those criteria rated?
• Is the ranking independent or do the schools themselves provide information?
• Are the rankings tied at all to any kind of revenue for the site that produces them?
• Do you have any input to what rankings are shown (i.e. if you say cost is most important, does it produce that list? Or if distance from your current location is important, does it produce that? etc.)?

And finally, be cautious about providing your personal contact information.  Know that many times when you provide that on a third party site, a rankings site for example, it is then forwarded on to recruiters who will call and email and even snail mail you information about colleges.   One site that does not ask for your information is geteducated.com which ranks “Best Buys” in colleges using publicly-available cost information collected independently.  They also have rankings based on ‘student satisfaction’ and ‘public perception’.  Just be sure to read how those are created.

All in all, the important thing to remember when looking for an online program or college, is that you need to be sure that the program will fulfill your personal and professional goals in a manner that fits into your lifestyle and is affordable.  We’d love to hear how you chose or are considering an institution and if you used any of the rankings to assist in that decision.

First, learner progress is a measure of learner retention and learner completion. Learner retention looks at a group of students – a cohort – to see if they are still enrolled or have completed a degree one year after joining the cohort (for most that means one year after enrolling in the institution).  That means that what ever percentage is listed, that’s how many students remained enrolled or graduated.   Learner completion looks at how many students from a cohort completed a degree within 150% and 200% of ‘normal time.’  ‘Normal  time’ is defined by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) as 2 years for an associate degree, 4 years for a baccalaureate degree, 2 years for a masters degree and 4 years for a doctoral degree.  The cohort for both of these measures includes part-time and transfer-in students in addition to first-time, full-time students. The only other similar data are NCES IPEDS retention and graduation rate measures currently found on College Navigator, however, these only measure first-time, full-time students.

So, what does this mean for you?
It means that we have provided you a more valid measure for how adult students persist and complete degrees at our partner institutions.  Opening our cohort up to include part-time and transfer-in students (those with credit hours from previous college experience), is more inclusive of the typical adult student.  Therefore, this measure lets you gauge how learners like you – those going to college part-time while balancing the many demands of adult life  – perform at our partner institutions.

Crayons by Ginger Me on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/rednut/3108121178/

What about for the adult learner? What tools should be on your back to school list?

• Organization.
• Not to be cliché but there’s an app for that.   If you don’t already have a calendar system set up, it would be wise to set one up for tracking all of your assignments as well as keeping the rest of your life organized.
• Organization extends beyond the digitizing of your schedule into keeping your workspace for learning organized as well.  We’ve written before about the physical space for your online learning, but just as a reminder, you want to set the right environment for learning.  Taking small steps to setting up and keeping this space organized will help you stay motivated to study.
• Of course, a piece of organization is making sure you have all the supplies you need.  Check your syllabi to see what supplies are listed.  These can range from notepaper and pencils to laptops and digital cameras.  Ensuring you have what you need ahead of time will save precious time in scrambling for what you need later.
• Motivation.
• Why are you back in school?  For personal satisfaction and learning? Career advancement? Whatever the reason, write it down and keep it handy for the days your motivation wanes.     Reminding yourself of why your skipping the 4th girls night out or  2nd basketball game in a row to study will help keep you focused and motivated.
• A fun tip from our friends over at the online learning tips blog, is to Create a Playlist for Motivation.  As an online learner you will often be learning in a physically solitary environment.  Adding a soundtrack can help keep you motivated.  If you’re not feeling particularly inspired by your personal music library, check out services like Pandora or Jango and look for genres you like.

What have we missed? What else is on your back-to-school list?

By John Connell Originally posted July 28, 2011

Licensed under a Creative Commons licence – see below for details.

I am learner.

Just as no one can see the colours I see, just as no one can hear the music I hear, just as no one can feel what I feel when I hold something in my hand, and just as no one can sense the world as I perceive it around me, no one can teach me.

No one can teach me.

I am learner.

I am not taught. I learn. I am human and a social animal, so I learn with others. I do learn from others, but what I learn is rarely, if ever, what is taught to me, and rarely, if ever, what others learn at the same time from the same teachers. Often I learn entirely alone.

I am learner.

I perceive. I use my senses to know the world around me. I discern patterns. I shape my understanding through metaphor and analogy. I seek to create purpose in my life. Sometimes I conceive purpose where there is none; often I accept others’ conceptions of purpose in life, others’ conceptions of purpose in the universe.

I am learner.

I build a universe in my mind and I live there, a universe that changes constantly as I learn. All people, including the people I love, live alongside me in this constantly shifting universe. I see only glimpses of the lives they lead, because, just as they are players in my world, I am a player in all the universes created by every other person alive.

I am learner.

I connect. I connect with people and ideas in the physical and virtual worlds and discern no boundary between the two worlds. I learn in, across, through, with and from the networks in which I live, work, play and interact. I continually extend my own potential through my connections. I make connections between what I have already learned and what the world chooses to present to me through my own interactions with the world and through the interventions and actions of others.

I connect therefore I learn.

I am learner.

I am able to recite facts, echo the opinions of others, assume the attitudes of so-called authorities when urged to do so, but I prefer to seek real knowledge of the changing world in which we live, genuine understanding of the realities of the human condition, authentic insight into our intrinsic dependence on one another. My need to know for myself is stronger than my need to recite from or imitate others.

I am learner.

I imagine. I reach beyond the reality of my senses and there I build my own dreams and visions; sometimes I welcome others’ wishful thinking and create my own place in their fantasies, accepting the values they place before me, filtering and refining them to fit my universe. Often, by accidents of time and place and birth, I am conditioned by those around me to accept their social, moral, religious and political values. In these circumstances, I still create my own truth but I struggle to do so freely, constrained by the strictures imposed on me by others.

I am learner.

I listen to stories from others; I tell my own stories, to myself, to others; I participate in stories, mine and others’. I determine who I am through a prism of dramas, tales, myths, histories, lies, assumed truths, rituals, games and a complex and intricate narrative that I weave around the realities of my life. I live and learn from the drama of the now and I recall and learn from the narratives woven out of past dramas.

I am learner.

I am not taught.

I learn.

A plain text version of I Am Learner can be downloaded here.

I Am Learner by John Connell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.johnconnell.co.uk.

By licensing I Am Learner in this way, I am encouraging others to share it (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to remix it (to adapt the work) in any way they wish with the following conditions:

• Attribution — You must attribute the original work to me, by linking or referring your work back to this blog post at http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=2697 (but you must not in any way suggest that I endorse you or your use of the work).
• Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get my permission as the copyright holder

The full licence can be read here.

Photo by D'Arcy Norman on http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/3199486108/

Especially insightful is the comment from “S” – “You only get as much out of an online degree as you are willing to put in. Online isn’t easier except for the fact that you don’t have to find parking.”

What would you add to the list? Please post your comments here, on our twitter (@college4adults) or on this blog on Inside Higher Ed’s site.

Photo by SlinkyDragon http://www.flickr.com/photos/wayy/2692892363/

First, follow the tip from our friends at onlinelearningtips.com – avoid distractions, study in a neutral area.  Studying where you sleep, eat or watch TV (aka the couch) can be distracting, even if all the appliances are turned off and no one else is around.  You can combat this distraction many ways.  First, you can set up a space in your home or office dedicated to your studies – check out our post on setting up your physical space for your online studies.  But what do you do if even that space is stifling your ability to concentrate?  As onlinelearningtips suggests, get the heck out of dodge.  Visit a coffee shop with a wireless internet connection or your local library if you need to be online.  Or, take advantage of the great weather and take that book and a blanket out to the park and read there.  If you make the most of your time and do it in an enjoyable space, it will help improve your productivity, freeing up more time for fun!

Speaking of fun, be sure to look for good excuses TO finish your work, rather than rationalizing why you can put it off.  You probably know that BBQ at the park is coming up.  Make a deal with yourself that if you finish all your reading, you can stay for an extra round of bocce ball.  Or if you want to spend the weekend camping in the wilderness with your family sans computer, use that as an excuse to get all your discussion posts done early.  Or, as online learning tips suggests pretend there is some odd consequence if you don’t finish your work on time, like your computer starts spitting fire at you – the more ridiculous the consequence the better!

So, now we’d love to hear from you – how do you stay on top of your online learning game when the float at the end of the pier is calling your name?