Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Why Studying Online Degrees Are A Better Option For Aspiring Learners?

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Are you preparing to earn a college degree? But are you ready to take a heavy student loan to pay for your college education? Let's face it, with continuously increasing tuition fees in universities and other higher education institutes worldwide. It is becoming highly challenging for most students to earn an accredited degree. Not only you will have to repay your student loan for the rest of your life, but due to lack of effective employment opportunities you will face several financial and professional problems through out your life.

Is a college degree worth all the money?

Apparently, most aspiring students and young professionals do not feel so. It is perhaps for this reason they are opting for more affordable and better learning opportunities. With the growing gap in initial funding, even more number of students will move away from traditional classroom learning due to limited access to education. Read on....

  Narrowing the funding gap
Recently, the Louisiana’s legislative session for 2015 was held and proved to be among the most testing sessions in memory. As health care and higher education are likely the sole “unprotected entities for budget cuts,” along with the fact that a $1.6 billion budget gap was in place at opening of the session, most members were concerned about finding a “reasonable solution” during this 9 week session.
It has been estimated that the initial higher education funding gap was around $608 million. This amount was needed to accomplish a similar funding level that was present during 2014-2015 term.President of Louisiana Tech University, Leslie K. Guice, said “For Louisiana Tech and other public universities, there was the possibility of more than an 80 percent cut in our base state funding. This level of cuts would have been devastating to all of our state institutions of higher education and would have had negative economic impacts that would have reverberated throughout all our communities.”
Developing bold plans
Guice added “Even before the official start of the session, our legislators began developing a plan to close the budget gap with a particular focus on placing higher education at the top of their priority lists.”
He claims that they are now identifying their particular responsibilities and looking for ways to best use the resources to meet the essential academic requirements of the state. He said “Now is the time for us to begin even bolder plans to reinvest in higher education to ensure that we have great educational opportunities for our children, economic prosperity for our citizens and long-term competitiveness for our state.”

However, I believe that we will still need to overcome many obstacles before we can actually close this funding gap and increase educational opportunities and access to all our students. Moreover, making bold plans, implementing those plans effectively and accomplishing the desired outcomes are completely different things. You simply cannot wait around for the scenario to get better. What you need is a better and more effective solution that allows you to earn a recognised degree now, without feeling the burden of student debt.

What is it?

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If you ask me, the most feasible and suitable solution for aspiring learners to pursue higher education in a cost-effective way is studying for an online degree . If you are planning to start your career or if you are already a professional looking to boost your career, then pursuing online education programmes can be highly beneficial for you. These online degree courses not only cost a fraction of traditional college programmes, but these allow you to work an study at the same time. With flexible schedules, you can opt for doing a full time job and gain relevant work experience, while studying for your degree at your leisure directly from the comfort of your home. You can access all the content directly from the internet and easily interact with your faculty and fellow learners via online forums; hence there is absolutely no need to visit the campus physically.

When you study the best online degree program available for your preferred discipline, you can be rest assured about receiving high quality education without emptying your wallet. You will acquire the necessary skills and knowledge, which will fetch you excellent employment opportunities and empower you to build a great future, both professionally and personally.

So what are going to do? Wait for the funding gaps to narrow down or go for an online degree now? Let me know what you think by commenting in the box below I would love to hear from you.

Source-http://bit.ly/1C4qNlb

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Why We Need Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose For Encouraging Learners

Daniel H. Pink has analysed and studied the aspect of motivation in the world of business for several years. Now, he has reached a remarkable conclusion where he claims that conventional ways of motivating and encouraging employees through financial incentives simply does not work anymore.

Motivating Businesses

In several studies, social observers and scientists have discovered that external rewards tend to limit the focus of employees and narrow possibilities. This makes it even more challenging for individuals to work on creative solutions for complicated problems. In fact, one of the times that incentives proved effective was only when the difficulty was mechanical and there was a clear and straightforward the path to the solution. It was found that most businesses across the entire globe have expressed that employee motivation tends to enhance when individuals are offered autonomy. This is works as a driving purpose and creates a strong desire to further hone their craft.



Dan Pink is renowned author of 5 books on business and management which have sold over 2 million copies globally. He is also the host of a National Geographic Channel show called Crowd Control. During his recent TED talk, he spoke about the state of business, but it was clear that his arguments were also relevant to education and schools. Nowadays, educators are teaching learners to prepare them for a world, where jobs are increasingly needing problem solving skills, critical thinking skills as well as creativity.

Transforming Education

The fact is that most schools are attempting to follow this thinking and approach in their classrooms in order to enable their learners to practice with solving complex problems. However, most students do not have the needed autonomy, purpose or mastery which can empower them to build intrinsic motivation and find a suitable solution.

Pink's book 'To Sell is Human' talks about how education has become one of the most rapidly expanding job categories in the nation. This level of development brings an excellent opportunity to transform the manner in which teachers envision and imagine their roles as well as their classrooms. Established by findings in neuroscience studies and educational research, the focus on cognitive skills, like memorisation and computation, is transforming to incorporate less tangible and non-cognitive skills, such as improvisation and collaboration.

Pink said, “The premium has moved from problem solving to problem finding as a skill. Right now, especially in the commercial world, if I know exactly what my problem is, I can find the solution to my own problem. I don’t need someone to help me. Where I need help is when I don’t know what my problem is or when I’m wrong about what my problem is. Problem solving is an analytical, deductive kind of skill. The phrase ‘problem finding’ comes out of research on artists. It’s more of a conceptual kind of skill.”

Then how can teachers help students to be problem-finders even when they do not have any idea about what the problem is? Pink added “A lot of people hate this word but I think we have to take it seriously, which is relevance. There’s something to be said for connecting particular lessons to something in the real world.”


What do you think? Feel free to share your own thoughts and ideas on this topic by commenting below. We would love to hear from you.

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