There is a wide range of advantages to be had from learning and advancing your education and qualifications. Better career prospects, better pay, and all the better lifestyle spin offs from that. However, there are significantly even more advantages for individuals who choose to pursue their educational goals via online courses and distance learning.
Top of the list is convenience. Convenience is a modern buzzword. It’s convenient to drop into the local takeaway and buy dinner instead of having to cook something when you get home. It’s convenient to download movies to watch at home instead of driving to a picture theatre somewhere. It’s convenient to order your groceries, and many other purchases, online and have them delivered straight to your door. And so on.
Many people are also discovering that it’s convenient to complete or further their education online as well. Just as picking up that takeaway, or signing for a home delivery of groceries is convenient, being able to study in your own time, at your own pace, and in your own home is also convenient.
There’s now a growing number of colleges and other educational institutions catering for this convenience by making versions of their courses available online. In most cases, these online classes are not just more convenient than the on-campus versions but they’re also cheaper. This means more and more professionals can conveniently and affordably further their education, and advance their careers. More and more retired people can conveniently and affordably learn more about subjects they’re interested in. Likewise, more high school graduates can opt to study online for their degrees whilst they work to support themselves instead of taking out student loans they’ll be paying back for the rest of their working lives!
An online education is also extremely flexible. Classes can be done wherever and whenever they can be slotted in. Many people with families choose to study at night after the kids have gone to bed. Busy professionals can choose to fit in a lesson during their lunch breaks. Further to this, mobile technology like smartphones makes studying pretty much anywhere possible. This means you can sit in the car studying whilst waiting for the kids to finish training or a game. The possibilities are endless!
The best part of this is that just because you’re slotting your studying in around your lifestyle instead of the other way around doesn’t reduce the quality of the degree or certification you’re studying for. It also doesn’t remove your obligation to put in the study time and get your assignments done. You also still have to get the work done in whatever time you have available to you. The only difference is that studying online gives you the flexibility of being able to arrange these to suit you.
Last but not least studying online is also about location! If you have the Internet and a device that can be hooked up to the Internet, you can study. Wherever that happens to be. It could be your favorite coffee shop, at work, at home, in the park, or as we’ve suggested, in the car waiting for the kid’s sports game or training to finish. Even if you’re renewing or obtaining a professional certification in an important industry like the fire services, you can still be doing the course work ie Fire Service Instructor 1 (Fire Instructor 2) or similar, at your convenience instead of sitting in an uninspiring classroom on some boring campus somewhere!