Babyboomers.com

New Opportunities Abound to Fill Need Among Working People

A young female cable installer with two small children wants to get a college degree but cannot leave her children alone in the evenings to attend classes. A middle-aged construction worker wants to take college courses but there is no campus nearby. A female executive needs to get her master’s degree in order to get promoted, but is too overworked to attend a three-hour evening class two times a week. Are their educational goals out of reach

Not at all, according to D. Quinn Mills, Harvard University professor and chairman of New Promise, a Web site supermarket (www.newpromise.com) that helps people find the college courses they need on the Internet.

Cost, convenience and accessibility are driving a cyberspace revolution in education. Thousands of college courses are now being offered on the Internet, allowing people to attend class at home or while taking a break at work, at a very affordable cost.

Today, you can find more courses under more topics on the Internet than on any one campus anywhere, states Professor Mills. And new methods of Internet teaching are improving at a rapid pace, including perfect audio, real-time and 3-D images.

Soon course texts will include frequent updates from the author of the text, as well as the professor who is teaching the course, and you’ll be able to key in questions that come to mind as you’re reading the assignment. New software will immediately answer your questions as well as search the entire course reading assignments in search of possible themes.

Students across the nation are embracing education via the Internet. Eighty-five percent of the students taking classes on the UCLA Extension Internet say their learning experience is as good as or better than that of the on-campus classroom. Many prefer the e-mail chat groups with fellow students that help them explore assignments together, as well as the ability to view a lecture or a visual demonstration again and again. Many students also find it less intimidating to ask questions through e-mail than in a traditional classroom setting.

Online courses are also a great alternative for physically challenged students, traditional students who have a conflict in their class schedules, and individuals who simply can’t afford the usual tuition fees.

But, how do individuals who want to pursue their education locate and sort through the thousands of college courses being offered on the World Wide Web? This dilema prompted the creation of the New Promise Web site, which helps people carefully select the appropriate college courses by describing and rating them, then listing them by title, topic (math, economics, etc.), college or university, and degree program.

“We’ve positioned New Promise at the forefront of the coming revolution in cyberspace,” notes Mills. “It’s the portal to higher education on the Internet.” He adds that New Promise lists only fully accredited schools and is the only comprehensive source of its kind. Currently New Promise lists over 600 courses, including ones from Harvard, UCLA, and Michigan State University.

Certainly, online education is only expected to increase, as the quality of Internet education skyrockets and the cost of computers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) continues to decline. Today there are more than 100 million users accessing the Internet; in the next seven to 10 years, experts predict the numbers will top one billion.

For more information on cyberspace education, contact the Carol Nashe Group at 888-562-2874, or visit the New Promise Web site at www.newpromise.com.

Courtesy of Article Resource Association, www.aracopy.com