College at Home for Nurses and All Healthcare Professionals

What Is College At Home?

Basically, college at home means that the students do not take their courses in a regular college classroom that they must travel to. College at home is called distance education or distance learning. Distance education means that the student, professor, and college location are separated in some fashion. Generally this means that the student completes most of their course work in the comfort of their own home.

Distance education is simply a delivery method. Rather than come to class and hear a lecture from a professor, the class is delivered in another fashion. Distance education is not new. Many authorities feel that the first home study course consisted of lessons in shorthand offered by Caleb Phillips and advertised in the Boston Gazette in 1728. This was before the U.S. was a nation. In 1891 International Correspondence Schools was born and offered vocational level courses. By 1913 ICS had enrolled over 1.6 million students from around the world in one of their 150 courses. ICS remained in business until just a few years ago when it was sold to a large book publisher. Over the years ICS offered a variety of subjects like jewelry making, pet grooming, animal care, early childhood education, teacher assistant, and dental assistant. They also began offering high school diplomas and associate degrees. You may have seen advertisements on television for ICS over the years. Colleges began establishing correspondence divisions starting in 1891 with the University of Chicago. (Information for this paragraph taken from "We Succeed Through Home Study" by Howard Poteet, 1986).

Correspondence, Radio, and TV Courses

Distance education has taken different forms over the years. The correspondence model is very popular to this day. The US Postal Service is used to get mail from the school to the student and vice versa. Students receive their books and a study guide by mail when they register for a class. The study guide is like a blue print for the course. It spells out exactly how you are to proceed. It lists reading assignments in the text as well as some type of assessment like a quiz or written assignment. Students mail the assignments to the instructor who grades the assignment and then returns feedback to the student. Some correspondence courses have a separate text book and sometimes the reading material or lessons are written by the school's faculty. College courses frequently require one or more proctored exams. The school sets up a criteria of who may serve as a proctor but usually it can be a librarian, certified teacher, local college professor, education officer, or clergy.

In the past courses have been offered over the radio. Students listened to lectures delivered over the radio and completed assignments and a proctored exam. This lost its appeal as other technology developed. College courses are offered on television sponsored by a local college. Students might be required to come to campus for a short orientation at the beginning and a final exam at the end of the course but in-between students watch the course on TV. The lectures are generally shown on a public station very early in the morning. Students who can not watch when they are shown on TV can video tape the programs or rent/borrow the tapes at the library. These TV courses are still very popular and the ones that I have seen are very well produced.

Courses can also be delivered by some type of satellite connection at a specific facility. For instance, a company can set up such a program where employees can watch a course on closed circuit television at their place of work which can be far from the actual college. This is great for company sponsored educational programs but not good for an individual learners.

Internet Courses

The newest innovation in distance education is college courses delivered over the Internet. Students use their computer and their Internet Service Provider (ISP) to access their online classes. When a student registers for a course they are provided with a sign on name and a password. Most online courses are similar to a regular 15 week semester. Some colleges also offer compressed 6 or 8 week semester. The college usually provides some type of orientation for "newbies" so they know what to do and how to navigate the system. Online courses are completely different and unfamiliar to students who are not familiar with the online format. There is no room number that you find by walking down the hall and no teacher sitting at a desk to greet you.