Versatility in Education - IV

I must say that the last few days have flooded me with a plethora of information pertaining to teaching or learning online. It is imperative at this juncture to acknowledge the professors, the techies of the incubator center, and the research scholars all from IIM Bangalore, who have been patient enough to explain to me how online education works. I am reminded of what Mr. Kettering said “People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones” We had a hearty laugh at that specific line and were indulging in the pleasures of victuals until it actually occurred to me on what I was doing, which was exactly the same thing. I was shutting myself out of learning about the online education because it never conformed to the norm that I knew all along. Education was ‘brick & mortar’ and maybe ‘correspondence’ but online how? How many emails do I get for every lesson? Well, I guess I have indicated how naive I was with this and now its ‘settling scores’ let me show you how much I have learnt in the last few days. It’s a whole new world and before starting to praise the new found learning I have decided to enroll myself in a online program to reap the benefits.

My biggest problem was that I am stuck catering to the demands of my professional life for about 12 hours every day and have to traverse traffic for about 2 hours. When I am finally done with all that and reach home there was only one learning left to do, which side of bed do I crash? There was not a program of study that I could do at 11.00 pm. Yes I could study a while then but no place to go and study (no, night school is not an option for I need advanced learning options). This Online education sounds like a plan to say the least. I am intentionally avoiding the term ‘new’ for I am given to understand that it is not new but has been implemented for a while now, close to 10 years, beat that all along I was living like a frog in the well blissfully unaware of the whole process. For me online started with e-mails and went offline immediately right after.

There are numerous courses that are available online for all levels of learning, associate degrees, bachelors, masters, even Phd’s. With so much available there will also be a bunch of folks just waiting to lighten your wallets and make a quick buck out of you quickly become a fool of sorts. So please be wary of ‘non accredited’ degrees and/or fake degrees that are available, the technical term used for something you should avoid is “degree mill”. I will detail in my next post the online process with as much as I know and in the meanwhile to give you an idea of what a genuine online MBA degree is, you can look at the Andrew Jackson University. I will also add more names as I learn more about then and am sure that they are genuine. I mentioned this one name because they also have a strategic partnership with an enterprise in India and hence can be physically met if needed.