DISTANCE EDUCATION

Distance education opportunities are multiplying rapidly. More adults feel the need for additional education, but have less time to commit to a traditional program. This increased demand combined with the availability of the internet has generated more opportunities for non-traditional courses and degrees.

This page will provide general information about distance education and links to colleges that offer distance courses and degrees. 

Distance Education Mailing Lists

I searched Tile.Net for mailing lists on distance education. I did not find any geared towards potential students, but I subscribed to one of the larger US lists anyway. The traffic was medium, around 25 posts per day, and usually about the technical side of providing distance education.

The list I subscribed to is DEOS-L

Joining the List:

Send an email message to: listserv@lists.psu.edu
Leave the subject line blank and delete your signature file.
In the body of the message type:

    sub DEOS-L your name
Posting to the List:

Use this address to post messages to the whole mailing list: deos-l@lists.psu.edu

Leaving the List:

Send an email message to: listserv@lists.psu.edu
Leave the subject line blank and delete your signature file.
In the body of the message type:

    signoff DEOS-L
I didn't find this mailing list to be much help with my research. A much better use of the resource would be to subscribe to a list in your field of study. There are thousands of mailing lists. You should be able to find several on any academic topic. 

Distance Education Resources on the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is the easiest way to research distance education resources. The two web browsers I use are Lynx and Netscape.

Netscape is a graphics based browser and fun when you have time to play. Another advantage of Netscape is that you can use the mouse to click on a URL that in the middle of a long list. The biggest disadvantage is time. Some web sites are becoming book-like with pages of slow, graphic, fluff before you get to anything useful.

Lynx was the only browser available from my university dial up account when I did this page.  It is text only and faster and a good choice for research. The disadvantages are having to scroll through long lists and hitting the wrong arrow key or hitting it at the wrong time. And you get tired of all that green and black after a while.

The following links are some of the most useful distance education sites I've found during months of searching and surfing:

Indexes on the World Wide Web

My favorite starting point for general research is Yahoo.  It categorizes the internet into broad subject areas and then breaks each category into smaller pieces. It's closer to a table of contents, and is especially good for broad subjects and for when you don't know a good short description of what you're looking for. The Yahoo search is limited to pages on Yahoo.  My favorite search index is Alta Vista.  It takes practice to find the best wording to use in your search, but Alta Vista has several search options and seems to come up with the most good hits.

I have a new favorite search engine:  Dogpile.  It is a meta-search engine, that can search several indexes at once, including Yahoo and Alta Vista.  It also will search newsgroups and webpages at the same time.

Distance Education News Groups

Newsgroups are unordered and chaotic. They can be a great resource or a mess of flame wars and get rich schemes.

 I started my research for this page with the alt.education.distance newsgroup. It was very helpful. There are several experts who can answer questions about distance education programs and it is a good starting place for research on distance education degrees. There are occasional flame wars, but everyone tries to stay on the topic. 


home page  trwilson@ureach.com