As we live in a time-consuming society, the online environment is always a solution to spare some precious time once in a while. From online shopping to online education, everything is possible at the moment just one click away. If you ever thought about going to university, and you think that you don’t have the necessary time to do it, an online degree is something that you need to consider. To understand how an online university works, we can highlight some differences that can help you in choosing the right approach.

• Teaching methods

  As the main purpose of an online school is not to be time-consuming, most of the courses will be attended in front of your computer. Using their platform you can access all the tutorials, library and assignments. The main difference in teaching method is that you can?t basically interrupt the teacher and ask for a more elaborate explanation. That is why all the online programs will take much more time than the classic teaching method. Courses are structured in a way that will be easy for the student to understand, while being actually inside a classroom you can learn much more in the same amount of time. So basically online teaching will be structured in small steps.

• Costs

  An online course will much cheaper as there is less personnel involved. One course will be registered and then spread for hundreds of students, without the teacher to be actually in the classroom every day. Of course, you will have a teacher assigned to your project that will always supervise you and he can answer questions via email or live chat. On the other side, the main problem is with financing. As online education is considered to be a distance learning method, even if involves less money, it is harder for someone to get a scholarship, grant or student loan for online education than someone that will apply for the same loan or scholarship for a traditional degree.

• Accreditation

  In the end, all that matters is for your diploma to be recognized after you take it. As accreditation process is difficult for traditional universities, it becomes much difficult for online institutions. In present more than 40% of the online universities are not fully licensed. Before choosing a specific online university, check every type of accreditation released by the government. For example, an online university can be accredited in the US, but not on the rest of countries. If you are from outside the US ask them in the first place if you can use the diploma in Europe for example.