The Financial Aid Counselor – You must meet with or make an online appointment with your Financial Aid Counselor for your online college or university before enrolling in courses. This is an absolute MUST! Do not skip this step for convenience. Do you think you know everything about financial aid and have all the necessary steps covered? Set a meeting with the financial aid counselor anyway! I have lost hundreds if not thousands of dollars by skipping this one small step.

Program  Advisor – Meet and converse with your advisor. Make sure you are taking the “best choice” of courses for your chosen online degree program. Often classes have to be taken in sequential order and involve prerequisites. You can lose much time and funds by missing steps, taking classes out of order, or not taking enough classes. Your advisor often can also advise you on courses that may transfer or be substituted for other courses.

Former Student – Try to find a former student. This is an especially good idea if you can find a student in your program or that has already taken the courses that you plan to take.  Gather advice on the best instructors, best classes, and even more valuable information. They may also be able to sell you used textbooks and help you find the best study materials online.

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Most college textbooks have wonderful companion sites that feature quizzes, flashcards, podcasts, or PowerPoint presentations of textbook material. These are the best study companions for online college courses because the material is identical to your textbook and supplements your required reading.

The majority of Thompson Course Technology and McGraw Hill textbooks are now charging fees to access the companion site if you do not purchase the textbook new from the store. This is frustrating to those of us who routinely purchase used textbooks from Amazon to save money. The sites now cost around $50 to access without keys that come new from the manufacturers. Just keep this in mind when purchasing your new textbooks and purchase more difficult course textbooks new from Amazon.com or the  manufacturer.

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0073052337/student_view0/chapter3/multiple_choice_quiz.html – This is a great example of an online college course textbook’s companion site. The site features quizzes, learning objectives, chapter outlines, PowerPoint Presentations, Case Studies, Templates, Mobile Resources, Software Options, Systems Architect Tutorials, and an MS Project Tutorial. It is a must have for the Systems Analysis course, and a very valuable study tool.

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072880082/student_view0/ – This is the companion  site for my Discrete Mathematics course. Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications With Combinatorics and Graph Theory by Kenneth H. Rosen is not the easiest book to comprehend just by reading it. If  your online instructor does not provide much content outside of the book you really may be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Luckily my instructor provides sample practice quizzes and lecture notes, but additional resources can be found here that are great for extra practice. 

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This is my latest, greatest online college video find. It is a series on Operating Systems hosted on Google Video from the University of Notre Dame. 

These are the basic steps that I use to learn my online college course material while attending school online.

1. Read the book. This is a very important step. Sometimes it can be omitted in a traditional classroom setting, but never online. Well, if you already know the course material…

2. Peruse the teacher’s material. Usually teachers will post lecture notes and sometimes videos or podcasts for online material.

3. If you still don’t understand the material, search like crazy for videos on:

• Google Video
• YouTube
• Personal Professor’s Websites from other institutions.

    Normally I can find teachers teaching from my books. Then, it feels like a real classroom setting.

Don’t forget your videos!

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 Still worried about racking up debt at an online college and not being able to repay it? No worries. Income based repayment is here. What this means is that, if you qualify, your online college loan payments could be as low as $10 a month. Family size, income and Federal Student Loan debt are all factors that determine your eligibility and loan repayment amount. To preview your loan payment information, estimate the lowest amount of money that you might make after college, place that amount, your family size, and your federal student debt in this free online calculator: http://www.aie.org/College/Calculators/IBR/index.cfm and view the result!

IBR caps your monthly payments based on your income. Also, any remaining debt, including interest, will be forgiven after 25 years of payments. Non-profit employees, government workers, and teachers will be forgiven after 10 years of payments. IBR is available to anyone with a student loan. Even those who have acquired student loans in the past. A family of three earning $26,000 will pay nothing at all! For more information, IBRinfo.org is a great place to visit and learn more about Income Based Repayment.

This is great news if you’re still trying to contemplate college online, but you just don’t want the hassle of the loans afterwards. The idea of $40,000 in debt after college was a deterrent to my college ambitions. Imagine, $300 monthly payments on a $28,000 salary. Hopefully, I’ll make more, but there are no guarantees in life. Now, worry less, pay less, and finish college. To find out how more information on Income-Based Repayment, go here:

http://www.ibrinfo.org/how.vp.html.

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Taking 5 classes online is not simple. It takes a lot of discipline. This is usually my daily schedule, although I vary it. I do work from home for a website at the moment, and I work around 2-3 hours a day. I often stray from the schedule, but it takes this much effort at least 3-4 days a week.

As to the interface for my classes, it is easy to navigate, accessible from anywhere, and fun. My class members and I often hold conversations via live chat and discussion boards moderated by teachers. As an IT student, I learn hands-on. We don’t just read about Photoshop, we use it. This semester, I learned how to make my own server from home. The classes are educational and the teachers are professors and doctors from nearby universities who have elected to teach college online. I hope that this has been a decent introduction to the world of college online.

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