The best practice to do so may take in consideration certain concrete things. Some of these may follow as under:
The first thing you must know is to see your characteristics, which will tell you whether or not you have the potential and are you self contained, because you must not be self driven to excel as an online student. On the other hand nor is it true that you can find all what you wanted from the resources located on the internet, but you may find a lot of assisting material to your course away from computer in a very similar way as you do while attending a course in traditional class. The other major issue is whether or not you are technology savvy. You must make sure you have concrete internet skills to research information, maintain communication within the learning community or outside it.
When this nitty-gritty is taken in consideration, your real issue "how to select a school online?" arises. In general you can't depend on name recognition alone and price is not a consistent indication of an online university's worth and value. The question "what they offer and how they deliver education?" matters a lot.
To purse answer, the basic you must do is start with statistics about a chosen online university. Overlooking the glitzy ads, you must track records. If the retention rates are low, get an indication about students not taught well. Check out how old the university is, the older the institution, the best designed courses, trained faculty and students it will have. Make sure to check the student-to-teacher ratio as this will clearly determine the value of the university. Also remember to check the adopted standards of the online university.
Once you are satisfied with the accreditation of the university, check whether or not the chosen university is strong in offering the courses you want to excel in. Decide well before choosing any university on the basis of its strength and course as does it meet your needs?
Also, make sure you check the university's transfer policy. Although transferring credits is no more an issue these days since online education has become more accepted, you may not accomplish doing so easily. Therefore, it is best to review their credit transfer policy.
In addition to this you may also consider facts like
• Student-teacher interaction
• Expertise level of teachers
• Design of the curriculum
• Difference between well-designed and poorly-designed course
• How often can you communicate with the teacher?
• Extensiveness of available resources e.g. library, content etc
Mary Solomon is a career consultant, providing focused career consultancy both online and offline, aiming to guide students to authentic and accredited online universities and colleges. She administrates websites including http://www.onlinenursingdegree.ws - http://www.vocationaldegree.net
