Online Courses at Community College

[sue]

Has anyone had high schoolers that have taken online community classes rather than classes on the campus?

[Jenn in CA]

My son's currently in his 3rd online CC class. It's through our local CC but it's online. They've all been great... I can be more "in touch" with what's going on, since I have access to all materials. Much easier for me to help him w/organizing due dates, etc. No more "What did you learn today?" "Oh, nothing much......" :-)

 

If you have specific questions let me know.

[Jane in NC]

My son is taking a hybrid class which meets once a week; the rest of the work is online.

 

Personally, I would avoid an online course if it is your child's first CC experience. Expectations depend so widely on instructors. This might be a hard thing to determine online. In the case of my son's hybrid course, it is the second semester of a sequence begun in a traditional classroom course last fall. He knows the instructor, understands how his tests work, etc.

 

I formerly tutored a student who took an online college algebra course. She spent a great deal of time learning how to enter information online. Unfortunately her time would have been better spent learning the mathematics.

 

Caveat emptor.

 

Jane

[Mommyfaithe]

My son is doing 2 online classes this semester. DD did online classes her first year (2 on campus/ 2 online.) per semester. I intend for ds 2 to do online

classes for 11th and 12th grade. The CC is 45 minutes away, so driving a non-driver to classes and cutting 3 hours out of my day in travel time is not going to happen...not if I want to homeschool my younger children. I have found the online classes quite rigorous (More writng intensive than in class classes,) and my children have benefitted greatly from the.

Faithe

[Pamela H in Texas]

My daughter takes both online and in person classes through the local college.

 

ETA: I have taken several online courses (and on campus courses) with one of the local community colleges. I have found through experience and talking with other students that the online courses are actually much more difficult. For example, Philosophy online was Eastern and Western (not positive the time frame as it's been YEARS). In the classroom, it was just Western and for a shorter time frame). I made my first C EVER in that class but I worked harder in that class than I had in any class in my life.

Edited February 24, 2009 by 2J5M9K

[G5052]

I've taught online and taken online for some five years now through local CC's. The CC where I work now is very careful on screening online professors, checking up on them all semester, offering training/tools, and basically trying to do what they can to give students a good experience. I'm very careful with my online courses and provide a lot of details, reminder emails, and quick response to emails.

 

Classes I've taken elsewhere have been mixed. I took one this summer where the professor basically stopped responding to emails a month before the end and gave me an "A" despite never grading my last assignment and final. When I repeatedly contacted the college about this situation, they claimed that they called her and that she said she'd catch up soon. She never did, and she's still teaching online.

 

This summer I'm teaching a hybrid with 8 class meetings and mostly online work. To me, that's the ideal, but it doesn't work for everyone.

[MamaT]

My son is currently taking an online course through our CC. It has gone well. The only negative is that the deadlines seem to not matter as much to him, as he doesn't have a teacher to face. I have had to stay on top of this with him.