Sally studied pre-medicine during her four undergraduate years at a local university. She really enjoyed her classes, especially the zoology and anatomy ones. However, after graduating, Sally interned at a local hospital and discovered that she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. She realized that she did not want to pursue a career in medicine after all, but would rather teach anatomy to high school students. But wait a second, how in the world can she do that when her degree is in pre-medicine?

It’s a more common situation than you might think: What do you do if you graduate college, enter the work force in the field that you have studied, and realize that you picked the wrong field for you? Well, you could suck it up, decide to stay in your chosen field, and forever wonder if there was another field that might have been better for you. Or you can take action and change your future, without having to go back to school for another four years of schooling. Here are some ways you can change your career path without having to go back to school full-time.

1. Look for alternative certification. There are many fields that require a bachelor’s degree. However, many of these same fields also accept alternative certification. For example, in Oklahoma, if you want to become a teacher but do not have a bachelor’s in education, you can take several ACT-style tests, go before a board of educators, and eventually receive a certificate that says you are qualified to teach. Usually, this process is much less time-consuming and less expensive than going back to school for another bachelor’s degree. Read the rest of this entry »

My boyfriend is constantly on Reddit.com, so I finally caved and decided to check out the website that has a cute little alien as its mascot. Like most websites whose content is user-generated, there are a lot of cute pictures of animals, funny videos, and…oh wait, that’s not normal…a free university where you can learn about anything from art to languages to philosophy.

The University of Reddit is a new website that was created from a sub-Reddit. On UReddit, users can create their own courses and teach other users about whatever they want to teach. Some of the classes are introductory type classes (example: Hindi 101), while others are more advanced and specific (example: Vertebrate Palentology – The History of Vertebrate Life).

According to the creators, UReddit is “the product of free intellectualism and is a haven for the sharing of knowledge. Teachers and students are free to explore any subject that interests them. Unlike a convential university, University of Reddit strives to make its course offerings free, varied, and easily accessible. …Students don’t have to worry about attendance, grades, or tuition – this isn’t a regular university.”

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Does a little piece of paper ever really mean that much? Usually, the answer has been no, unless that piece of paper is a college diploma. However, according to some, these colleges diplomas that people spend thousands of dollars and countless hours pursuing might become just another piece of paper in the near future, thanks to the advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

MOOCs and other higher education courses that are available online are changing the future of higher education.

“Who needs a university anymore?” David Wiley, a professor at Brigham Young University, asked. “Employers look at degrees because it’s a quick way to evaluate all 300 people who apply for a job. But as soon as there’s some other mechanism that can play that role as well as a degree, the jig is up on the monopoly of degrees.”

Wiley thinks that this change will be coming sooner than you might have thought, maybe by the end of the year. He proposed that it will become common place for people who studied through MOOCs to have high-paying jobs at companies like Google.

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Imagine a free university where students from all walks of life can learn from professors during 10-week intensive classes that are taught on the Internet. Now, imagine that this university sets up computer centers where students need them – such as the earthquake-ravaged Haiti in the weeks after the natural disaster struck – so that students can continue learning. Well, you do not have to imagine anymore because the University of the People is making this dream a reality.

“They don’t have electricity, they don’t have computers,” said Shai Reshef, the creator of the University of People about the students in Haiti that use his computer centers to continue their education. “They come in two shifts, for four hours a day, to study. Their need waste the point that we began a feeding program.”

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More and more traditional colleges are offering classes online, challenging the traditional divisions between online schools and brick-and-mortar colleges. Some students are even allowed to take classroom-based courses, but are assigned to online classes.

“When I look back, I think it took away from my freshman year,” Kaitlyn Hartsock told the New York Times, of the online classes she had to take as a freshman at University of Florida, Gainesville. “My mom was really upset about it. She felt like she’s paying for me to go to college and not sit at home and watch through a computer.”

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Today the online learning resource Examville announced the launch of its new educational market place, which aims to connect students and teachers virtually. The new marketplace creates a virtual learning space that’s widely accessible and affordable, where students can find one-on-one tutoring, study guides and review materials. They can also submit questions to be answered by specialists and take online classes.

“Examville is committed to creating an all-encompassing, participative online learning platform that will benefit everyone – from students and teachers to publishers and corporations,” stated Nilanjan Sen, founder and CEO of Examville in a press release. “We’re excited to launch these new capabilities and to help users connect with the resources that will help them achieve their educational goals.”

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What does the typical high school classroom look like to you? It maybe has some desks, some students, and a teacher, right? At least, that’s  how the typical classroom looked a few decades ago.

According to the Sloan Consortium, more than one million students attended classes via the Internet in 2008. Of those million, around 200,000 were enrolled in full-time virtual schools, meaning they attend all of their classes online.

“If students have their own computer, it can travel with them from home to school,” Karen Cator, director of the office of education technology at the U.S. Department of Education. “There can be software programs that help the student, or there can be an online teacher, but the technology can also augment a teacher in a face-to-face classroom.” Read the rest of this entry »