Teacher Experiences

I am writing a post this week about professors and my thoughts and experiences with them from traditional school and online school.

At Winona State I would always visit RateMyProfessor.com before I took a class to see how the professor was.  I did this because sometimes when you are taking a class the difficulty of the course will entirely be dependent on the professor teaching it.  I have had some really good professors and some really awful professors at Winona State.  The really good professors taught well and made themselves available to students.  The opposite happens with the bad professors.  They always seem to have a attitude about them and make the students feel like they are dumb and the students will never be as smart as them.

At University of Phoenix I have not had any really bad professors.  I have noticed in online classes the professor is not acting in a direct professor-student relationship.  Online classes usually have a professor is more of a facilitator giving the student the information they need to teach themselves.  The relationship is more of a facilitator-student/self-teacher relationship.  This is much better for me because I learn better outside of a classroom when I can do things on my own time.

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/

Accreditation

I found this video that explains what accreditation is.  I thought I would provide some links briefly talk about what accreditation means in an academic institution.  Accreditation means the institution is providing the amount of education to the student it should and the degree which you receive means sometimes and is worth all of the work.  Employers will want degrees from accredited schools because they know the applicant knows what they are supposed to know with their degree.

http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/

This is a link to the Department of Education and you can look of accreditation to schools and it explains a bit further about what accreditation is.

http://www.winona.edu/accreditations.asp

These are the accreditations which Winona State University and University of Phoenix has and what programs.

http://www.phoenix.edu/about_us/accreditation.html

Group Work

I thought I would do a post on group work.  I have had a lot of group work lately and I have had mixed feelings about it.

At Winona State group work is relatively simple because you can meet in person and the most difficult thing is getting around school/work/sport schedules.  Also, if someone is not pulling their weight in the group it can be easily fixed by talking to them in class.

University of Phoenix is different because not only can you not meet in person half the time your group members are in different timezones so it makes it difficult to communicate efficiently.  It is a good skill to learn how to organize a project around different time zones, over the phone and through forums.

Compared to Winona State this skill is not easily learned through traditional means but the online class I am taking the students are not really participating in my group and it has become troublesome.

International Business Midterm

I have taken my first test with my online class at Winona State University.  The midterm was different from other online classes I have taken.  Most of the other classes I have taken online have been through a program called Desire to Learn or D2L.  This test was set up in a word document and we had so many minutes to submit it to a drop box on D2L instead of taking it solely on D2L.  The tests for the class did no t go very well and the class average was around a 70%.  I might be better at online classes but I received a 90%.  The test was straight out of the book and was 15 questions long.  It covered 8 chapters in the book and was a lot of reading.  The class was designed totally on reading PowerPoint’s and the book which made it difficult to study.

Other online classes I have had to take papers and have had questions due on the subject before papers were due.  I thought this strategy was a lot easier because it didn’t have all of the pressure of the test.  I do a lot better on papers then I do tests so I like writing papers for online classes.

Maharishi University of Management

I thought I would post about this school because it is a bit different the typical universities.

http://www.mum.edu/

MUM is located in Fairfield, Iowa…what makes this university different is every student and faculty member practices transcendental meditation…the university also imposes a dress code.

http://www.tm.org/

Above is a link about transcendental meditation and is interesting to read about.

I am also going to post some information on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who developed transcendental meditation.

http://www.maharishi.org/

Community Colleges

Some people might not be interested in a four year degree…I have been asked by some people about community colleges so I thought I would throw up a short post on the subject.

Community colleges can be good for people who do not know what they want to major in right away and just want to go to school for general studies…also…community colleges can be good for people looking for associates degrees, two year degree program, in any number of subjects.

Community colleges are often paired with technical schools and offer a variety of programs and lower tuition then many other higher educational institutions.

Below are links to explain a couple things about community colleges.  The first one is good and it explains six reasons why you might be interested in community colleges.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/csearch/where-to-start/8169.html

The second one is a Wikipedia page on community colleges…take it for what it is worth…I wouldn’t take away any serious information about it but if you are bored you can read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_colleges_in_the_United_States

Laptops

One of the selling points of Winona State is the laptop program.  I will post a link below that explains the laptop program at WSU.

http://www.winona.edu/it/e-warrior.asp

Students can pick from a Mac or a PC.  With each laptop programs are loaded on them and students are able to download a lot of different programs from the school.  The link below shows what models of laptops there is to choose from and what the specifications are.

http://www.winona.edu/it/laptopmodels.asp

Winona State gives every student a laptop and it is included with tuition.  The link below explains the tuition information and breaks down the costs of attendance.

http://www.winona.edu/financialaid/awardguide09.asp#Cost%20of%20Attendance

If you were to go to University of Phoenix you would have to buy your own laptop.  I looked up on the Toshiba and Apple website to see how much the actual laptop would cost without all of the programs that Winona State loads on it.

http://laptops.toshiba.com/laptops/tecra/R10/R10-S4401

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook?mco=MTAyNTQzMzg

The laptop program at Winona State costs roughly $1,000 a year for the rental of the laptop and all of the programs that come on it.

Just buying the laptop flat out from Toshiba without the programs starts at $1,550

Without the software for the Mac it is $999.99.

It is hard to decide what would be the better deal…with the support Winona State gives for the laptops it kind of makes it worth the high price for rental…I have personally already had one of the PCs crash and they just give you another one…if that would happen to one I purchased myself I would have to shell out another 1,600ish for a new one.

Private Schools!

I thought I would post about private schools…I have not talked about them too much and thought I would give information out on them!

Private schools are famous for being expensive and elite.  A group of the elite schools are known as the Ivy League schools. Below is a link to what the Ivy League schools are and some information about them.

http://en.allexperts.com/e/i/iv/ivy_league.htm

For private schools in Minnesota there is a website that has all of them listed and what majors are offered there.

http://www.mnprivatecolleges.org/index.php

I found something else out that I thought was interesting…Some public schools are called “public Ivys” which are public schools who have a good track record like the Ivy league schools but are public and are cheaper.

http://en.allexperts.com/e/p/pu/public_ivy.htm

I also found an article that explains benefits and some detriments of private schools.

http://www.gocollege.com/options/private-universities/

Some Other Online Schools

I thought I would post more about online universities since not a lot of people know too much about them.  The two that I chose to post about are Capella University and Devry University.  I am posting links to their websites so readers can get some more information.

Capella is a totally online university that is based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Below are links to the Unviersities homepage and a link to a “tour” of the school.

http://www.capella.edu/default.aspx

http://www.insidecapella.com/index.asp

Devry University is a online campus and has many classrooms around the country.  Below is also a tour video and a link to the homepage.

http://www.devry.edu/

http://www.devry.edu/tools/online-learning-experience/OnlineCourseTour.htm

In the Devry tour video it relates to a study to the Department of Education comparing the three types of learning face to face, online, and blended.  This is a press release but I have not found one with the actual numbers.

http://www2.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/06/06262009.html

Ad Campaigns!

I found these videos surfing the web the other day and it looks like a new ad campaign for University of Phoenix…they are pretty interesting and cool…University of Phoenix because it is a for profit private school has a very aggressive advertising strategy…I think it works very well for them.

I did not find any for Winona State…I was a little disappointed…I have seen commercials in the past and was sad to see that none of them were on the website.  I think the State University system is banking on enrollment through word of mouth and reputation.  I will post links to the Minnesota State College and University system website, MNSCU, for more information…I also noticed on the Winona State website is a 360 of the middle of campus which is kind of cool.

Comparing the two advertising strategies I wonder what kind off affect University of Phoenix has had on tradition school’s enrollment with the very aggressive advertising campaign.  It would be nice to see Winona State step up and engage in a program possibly run my graduating students.

http://www.mnscu.edu/index.php

http://www.winona.edu/virtualtour/