Options can make us feel powerful…or overwhelmed. When it comes to education, I believe a lot of parents, counselors, and students, feel overwhelmed.
What higher education choice should I make and why? Further complicating this, students like our Electrical Apprentices are weighing out the traditional paths of colleges and universities against the straightforward path of (Journeyman four year) apprenticeship. All of these choices take commitment and focused skill sets to make the most of their four years.
Profiling suffers from a negative connotation in today’s world, but here it makes sense: let’s profile an online “student” versus a brick and mortar “student”.
Online
· Controlling time: you study, test, and complete at a pace you set. For the right kind of student, this is heaven. This student may also need to work around complicated job and/or distance obstacles, making online ideal.
· Current job requires travel: not a problem online. Have tablet will study.
· Focus: many online programs (like our IEC Chesapeake Journeyman program) are specifically focused on training to task. It’s designed to teach you the information needed specific to the career.
· Program and content control: online can provide and partner very specific information, videos, and chat room forums for information delivery- truer now than ever.
· Materials: easily accessible. Resource materials, tests, worksheets, research. Your classroom and professors are in your tablet
Brick and Mortar
· Not all students are created equal. Not everyone thrives in the very solitary world of online. Brick and mortar schools provide the place, schedule, and accountability of attendance.
· Interaction: some students enjoy and perform better when they are interacting with teachers and with other students. The traditional classroom also offers the opportunity to hear, in real time, what other students’ questions are and best outcomes of these queries. There’s no “back and forth” online.
· Socialization and networking: some people are people people… they like the interaction and are more productive in this atmosphere. They appreciate meeting like focused peers and recognize they may want to kep them as future business contacts
IEC Chesapeake doesn’t feel it should be a “versus” decision, so much as it should be a “what’s best for ME?” decision. By the time a student is graduating high school (and certainly the older students or second career students) he or she should know which of the above profiles actually feels like them.
Four years can be a short time or it can be a long time. Your choice of education style will determine which it will be.
Be honest with yourself and choose wisely my friends- choose wisely.
*want to know more about IEC Chesapeake’s Online Apprenticeship? Look here HTTP://IEC-CHESAPEAKE.EITPREP.COM
Jenny Boone
Business Development, IEC Chesapeake
