Whether you want to get a degree or update your engineering knowledge, you might want to look at taking your engineering courses online. Whether you are a traditional college student or a busy professional, online learning has significant benefits over traditional brick-and-mortar college learning. This is especially true for a discipline like engineering, where electronic learning is the norm rather than the exception.
The advantage of distance learning is the distance. Distance learning means that you can take classes without being physically present where the class is taught. This is even truer of online distance learning, where your classroom is wherever you can find a computer with an internet connection. In addition to being convenient, that means that you can learn from the best of the best, no matter where you are.
Learning from the Best
For example, say you want to learn a little bit about mining engineering, and your school doesn’t offer any mining classes. You can take engineering courses online at Colorado School of Mines or Montana School of Mining and Engineering, the two best mining engineering programs in the country. Those classes will transfer to your current school and count toward your degree.
Or maybe you are working on a computer engineering project, and you read a journal article about some work that MIT is doing in that area. You can take engineering courses online from MIT to learn the latest advancements in computer engineering. You can probably even take a class from the people who did the work you read about and pick their brains in the process.
Adult Learning
It goes without saying that online learning is easier to fit into your schedule than traditional classes, but there is another reason taking some engineering courses online might be better than taking them at a regular school: online learning is structured around adult learning, whereas traditional learning is structured around pedagogy, or child learning.
Adults learn differently than children do, and distance learning programs were developed for adult learners. Online learning starts with different assumptions about how students will learn than traditional learning does. The content of the classes may be identical, but the way learning is structured is not.
Adult learners are self-motivated, independent learners. They bring life experience and professional knowledge to class with them. They prefer hands-on learning and they don’t like learning irrelevant things. They want to be able to use what they are learning.
Taking some engineering courses online capitalizes on all of the advantages of online learning: portability, flexibility, learning from the best and learning the way you learn best.
