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Your alarm clock rings. Today you have to hand in your History 101 assignment. You get up, go to class, and hand in your paper -- in your pajamas. You can do this because your "class" is in cyberspace. You can attend class anytime, 24/7. And although you have a Deadline to meet, it doesn't matter if you hand in your work before school at 6 a.m. or before dinner at 6 p.m. Welcome to the world of  

online education

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I found out about how flexible cyber ed is when I recently took a bio course online. I logged on twice a week to my virtual classroom, where our instructor posted weekly assignments. After doing research online, I posted my assignments and read my classmates' postings. I interacted with my professor and classmates through e-mail. I ordered books on the Internet.

Lucky for me, almost every aspect of the course was Web-related. This is typical of most cyber courses, although you sometimes have to take your final exam on campus. And if you live far from campus, it's no problem. You can often take the test at a nearby College. With its convenience, online ed is already big and getting bigger.

It doesn't even matter if your school hasn't jumped on the cyber bandwagon yet, either. Most Colleges and Universities accept transfer credits, so you can take a course at one cyber school and get credit for it someplace else.

A Leg Up -- Now and Later
Because you can use cyber courses toward your degree, they're "a great way to get a head start on attaining college credits," says Beverly Army Gillen, a spokeswoman for Mercy College (Dobbs Ferry, NY).

Those credits "can put you ahead of the pack from the start," says Ryan Musgrave, who took calculus through NetMath at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.

"Completing a course before entering college helped lighten my courseload during my first couple of semesters. This is great for freshmen, who are going through some Major life changes," Ryan says. It also helped him graduate sooner than many of his classmates, saving him a significant amount of Money and time, he adds.

Cyber ed can be a great way to stay ahead in college, too. If you have trouble fitting a course into your schedule, for instance, getting into an online class can keep you on track. Scheduling problems are "one of the main reasons on-campus students sign up for distance courses," says Kathleen Davey, dean for instructional technology at Florida Gulf Coast University (Fort Myers, FL).

Is It For Me?
You don't have to be super cyber-savvy to take an online course. If you can surf the Web, you can study online. Most virtual classrooms are pretty self-explanatory. Submitting work in my class took only two clicks of the mouse. When I did run into some snags, such as getting a "file not found" message, tech support was just a phone call away. They checked out the problem, suggested a solution, and even helped later with an e-mail glitch that wasn't related to the course. My classmates were easy to reach, too.

However, one of the down sides of cyber courses is that you're not talking with your classmates face-to-face. "Developing group identity, cohesion, and rapport among students is very difficult under these circumstances," says Ed Neal, director of faculty development in the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in a National Forum article. To help make up for this lack of interaction, you have to take the initiative and e-mail people.

Online Ed 4-1-1
Even with help from tech support and friendly e-mails from your classmates, you're pretty much on your own online. So before you sign up, ask yourself if you're self-motivated enough to study independently, without anyone to lend you their notes or remind you that the midterm is tomorrow. Self-motivation is the key to earning an Internet A.

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