by Jonathan List

Created on: September 30, 2009

When you find yourself at a stage in life where you feel that you are ready to go back to school, there are a few skills and mind-set issues that need to be addressed first. You will find that modern colleges offer many of their courses over the Internet using either Moodle or Blackboard. You will also find that the pace of college has not slowed over the years. These challenges are not impossible to overcome, but you will need to do some preparation and planning.

Online courses are not very much like a traditional course. You will be responsible for most of the information yourself. If you are a person who can stay focused on a task for a long period of time, or can pickup where you left off, then online courses are a blessing. Do not be afraid to enroll in an online course for your first class, but make sure you are ready to be learning online.

Blackboard and Moodle are two online programs that many colleges and universities use. They are generally called Course Management Systems, because they help the teachers of the class to manage the students and assignments. These are very much like a computer program that you might install on your home computer. There are always different ways to do things in an online course, and your instructors will have different takes on how the class should be setup. Make sure you feel comfortable using the web for various things. An easy and fun way to make sure you are ready for an online course is to setup a Facebook or MySpace account. Share some pictures with your friends, and enjoy connecting with long-lost family members. If you can easily navigate through Facebook, then you should be able to learn either Moodle or Blackboard.

Read something online. If you are reading this, then you are familiar with online reading. Unfortunately, your coursework will not be so enjoyable because you will be under a deadline and will have much more reading to do. Most college classes require three to nine hours of outside reading. Make sure that you can handle this much text without going nuts. True, you will be able to print out some of the materials. True, many of the classes you take will have paper-bound textbooks. The problem is that most of the classes you take will also require a lot of reading in message forums where you discuss the content being taught. It is difficult and counter productive to attempt to print out these forum postings, so the best thing to do is practice reading online as much as possible.

Reading is key. Do

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