* Reader comments about online training courses and how employers view them
Well, the mailbag didn’t disappoint this week as a number of you wrote in letting me know that online degree courses are just as well developed and received by employers as traditional classroom-based training. A couple of weeks ago, I asked you for your thoughts on online advanced degree courses vs. classroom-based programs. The consensus of the mailbag was that employers recognize degrees, no matter whether the candidate took the course online or in a physical classroom.
One longtime reader, who asked not to be named, wrote: “I am currently completing my last course for a Master’s degree in Information Architecture; I have completed the entire program online. I recently started a position as a project manager with a Fortune 500 and they did not care that my degree will be from an online program.”
The reader noted that the program was just as rigorous as any classroom-based program, using the same textbooks and completing the same assignments as equivalent classroom based programs. “Today’s [online] programs are not home correspondence courses of years past or that are advertised on daytime TV,” the reader wrote.
The reader added: “The major criteria for any degree program, online or otherwise, is to select a program that is regionally accredited by one of the major accrediting bodies.”
Another reader, Wes Hirschhorn, said that although he is “only working on an under-grad degree” – a Bachelor of Science degree in IT at the University of Phoenix – he had asked several HR managers and other managerial people prior to starting the course about whether it made any difference where a degree was obtained. “The nearly unanimous answer was that while there might be hiring managers who will look down their noses at an online degree, or one not from a top-notch school, the vast majority of them only care that you have a degree.”
Reader David Henson, who has experienced both classroom and online-based training, made an interesting point that working through some of the negative aspects of online training is good practice for today’s business environment. He recalled a lesson learned at an online project management course, where he was the project leader on a practice project. “After a short while, I started getting deliverables from my teammates that showed we had a disconnect … One might think that this would show why traditional classroom [training is] better and it probably would be if we lived in a 1950s world. But this helped prepare me for the ‘real’ world. Offshoring was a big topic at the time. Because I had to do business at a distance I realized that the techniques that I was using might have been good enough in the 1990s when we could all get in a room and talk. But with the new business models, we must learn new procedures to make sure we can work at a distance and still be able to communicate effectively.”
Henson believes it is the quality of the material and the way it is delivered by the instructor that determines the success of any training – whether it is online or classroom-based. “Dr. Mindi Mullett of Colorado Technical University [where Henson obtained two IT-related Master’s degrees via classroom-based learning and has taken 5 online graduate-level classes] runs the best online classes I have had. “The course materials are good but she makes the difference in the way she runs the course. If one has a ‘bad’ instructor, the experience will mostly likely turn out bad because of the miscommunication and misunderstandings.”
Because of his success with online courses, I asked Henson to jot down 10 points to think about when considering online courses – and he came back with tips for both student and course tutor. We’ll go through the points next time (thanks David!). In the meantime, please write in with your own tips on how to pick quality online courses and how to get the most out of them. Or just respond to any of the points raised in the newsletter today. I’d love to hear from you (mailto:lleung@nww.com).
