The Online Degree Dorm Room

engineering degree online : my historical distance learning experience

Posted by bposton on October 27th, 2006 — Posted in engineering degree online

When I was in high school back in the stone age…

There was this thing called “coorspondence school”

I used to get stuff in the mail about schools that would teach you things
by sending you information in the mail.

My memory is great - it’s just short - so I don’t remember it well, only
that it had a certain stigma to it. Sort of like leparodsy.

Well, later on, the 1980’s gave way to a new version of the coorspondence school, called “distance learning”.

But you know what? The stigma got a little cleaner. That’s because some
real honest to goodness colleges started to get in on the act. One was Liberty
University in Lynchburg, VA. They are a Baptist College. You may know their founder,
Jerry Falwell?

I actually took some classes from Liberty University. Of course, it wasn’t online.
I signed up for classed from a catalog they sent in the mail, and they sent me VHS video tapes with the lectures, the books, the syllabus, and the testing.

The tests were “proctored’ which in my case meant that my friend John (best man at my wedding) would give me the tests and made sure I didn’t cheat or use the book.

I’d mail the test in and wait for the grades to come back…

and wait, and wait, and wait.

And then I’d get the grade and go on to my next class.

The courses themselves where not cheap, especially since you had to pay for the postage for all of the material. The other thing was that there was a residency requirement. That meant I would sooner or later have to spend two weeks on campus (during the summer) taking an excelerated course. That was the killer for me. I couldn’t do that at the time, so I eventually stopped taking classes with them.

The good new is that to this day Liberty and I are in good standing; I am officially and “alumni” since I took classes in the past. They even invited me to their homecoming football game this year

So I do have some experience with this online degree thing - and I hope I can help you have a good experience and to chose the right program for you.

Ben