by Nevaeh Cohen

Created on: October 20, 2009

When I decided to start taking online college courses I was a little bit skeptical. I did not understand how someone could receive their entire college education online. I had heard so many people make negative comments about in the past as well. But, with no other options I decided to give it a try. After some careful research, I narrowed it down to three schools and started making some phone calls. In just under 48 hours I made a decision and applied. The process was easy and my adviser was so helpful. Now that I am enrolled in Axia College at one of the largest universities in the United States, I understand and I love it!

With Axia College I can log in and complete my reading and assignments when it is convenient for me. Axia College utilizes Asynchronous Communication. All this means is that my classmates, professors and I all log in to the classroom at different times and post messages for each other. These messages can be read at anytime. We can each log in whenever it fits our schedule and still have a great way to communicate with each other.

Our classroom is a forum. It is just like any other forum. The instructor creates threads and we post replies to the threads and to each others posts. This is called a threaded discussion. This is how we post our assignments and earn class participation. For some assignments we use an individual forum. When I post an assignment to my individual forum the instructor is the only other person who can see what I post. This is also where the instructor leaves me feedback letting me know if I met all the requirements for the assignment. This is also where I receive any grades or scores. It is great to know how you are doing in a class.

Although it was a little confusing at first, after a couple of days I got the hang of it. It was just like using any social forum. It is simple to use and it is fun to get feedback from other students on discussion questions. Sometimes we have friendly debates on a subject and this is how we earn participation points! It is a pretty heavy work-load, but not any more than a traditional brick-and-mortar college. Now that I have experienced distance learning for myself I see that you can truly earn a degree online. I feel like I am getting a great education with the convenience of getting it on my own time in my own home!

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