Study Skills - Helping You Make the Grade

Congratulations! You've been accepted into the school of your choice, and succeeded in getting a seat in the classes you need. Your books and supplies are purchased and ready. Now, as you review the syllabus for each of your classes, you may be wondering how in the world you'll ever get all the work done and turned in on time. Relax. A few easy-to-implement ideas will get you where you want to go. And, it's simple to set up. Before going any further, ask yourself if you need to get organized with a study plan, or are study skills where you need to focus your attention? What's the difference? Well, a study plan will help you know when to get started on an assignment, so it's ready by its due date. Study skills are the techniques you need to get assignments turned in on time, and be ready for tests without wasting your valuable time and energy. The rest of this article will deal with both of these topics individually. If you don't need the organization info, feel free to scroll on down to the section on study skills. Your Study Plan-Organization is the Key This simple plan requires four items: a planning calendar, a pencil, the syllabus from each of your classes, and any other standing appointments you may have. Once you have these items: Go through each syllabus, and highlight all due dates. Using a pencil, (so corrections and rescheduled events are easy to deal with) write each item on its appropriate day on your calendar. List all other standing appoints on their respective days. The following step will be easy if you've already worked your way through a semester or two. If this is your first semester, don't worry. After your first assignment, you'll have a better idea of timing. Look at each of your assignments, determine how long it will take you to accomplish each one, (don't forget the reading assignments, and research required to write those papers) and count backwards on your calendar. The day you land on is the day you will begin working on that particular assignment. Of course, depending on your course-load, you may want to allow more time and schedule earlier start dates. Study Skills Once you've gotten your semester organized, a few study skills may be just what you need to make the most of your brand new study plan. The following five suggestions will go a long way in helping you get the most from your classes. Follow the syllabus directions exactly. Spend time making sure you understand what the professor wants, and don't deviate from it. Get to know your books. The text can be a valuable source. Take a little time to check out the appendix, index, and glossary, along with any other study aids the editor included. Use a good note-taking system. There are lots of good ways to take notes, and Cornell Notes is one of the best. It's easy to learn and extremely functional. Join a study group. Having others to bounce ideas off of, and compare notes with, is invaluable. If a group doesn't exist, start one! Create a study space. This doesn't have to be large or elaborate. A chair in the corner of a quiet room works just fine. You want to establish one location that tells your brain, "Now is the time to put everything else aside, and focus only on your studies."

How to Earn a Degree Online - 3 Tips to Succeed in Your Career

Do you want to know how to earn your degree online so you can be successful in your career? Each one of us wants to have a good life for us and our family. Getting a great career that will give you a good life will need a degree to back you up. A wide variety of online degrees have been made available by many colleges and universities to offer a varied selection of programs to suit your requirements. From certificates to bachelors to master, even doctorate degrees are available. Because of these, those who are new to the system will often get confused and wary when trying to find the perfect fit. Here are a few tips to help you get started. 1. Ask yourself, what are your interests? If you're not sure, try browsing for online programs being offered and check out catalogs posted on websites of colleges and universities, to give you an idea as to what that course offers. Courses being offered may be as traditional as the arts, literature and history to nursing and engineering or the nonspecific area of general interest. 2. Determine the type of degree that you need. Is a certificate enough? Or do you want a bachelor or an associate degree? Or better yet, the more prestigious masters or doctorate? Evaluate which program you want when you choose you earn your degree online. Each degree level has a prerequisite for admission. Be sure to check them out prior to making the decision, to make sure that you qualify for the degree that you're applying for. Never the less, a quick check with the admission department of the college or university where you want to enroll will be a good idea. 3. It is important to find out if the earned credits from one university are transferable to other colleges in case you want to pursue higher learning in the field that you have chosen. This is also applicable to online colleges. This will prevent repetition of certain courses in case other colleges or universities will not consider them valid. Would you want to learn more about how to earn your degree online?

Two Linear Equations in Two Variables

Suppose you want to solve a system of two linear equations in two variables. I will discuss elimination method. So, you have following general system: ax+by=c dx+ey=f Elimination method works as follows: express x (or y) from first expression and plug result into second. I will express x from first: x=(c-by)/a Now, plug result into second: d(c-by)/a+ey=f dc/a-by/a+ey=f y(e-b/a)=f-dc/a y=(f-dc/a)/(e-b/a) Now, x=(c-by)/a=(c-b(f-dc/a)/(e-b/a))/a A bit messy, right? But on practice it is more clear. Example 1. Solve the system 3x+2y=12 4x+5y=23 Solution. Express x from first equation: x=(12-2y)/3 Now, plug this result into second: 4*(12-2y)/3+5y=23 Multiply both sides of equation by 3: 4(12-2y)+15y=69 48-8y+15y=69 7y+48=69 7y=21 y=3 Now, x=(12-2y)/3=(12-2*3)/3=2 Thus, x=2 and y=3 Example 2. Solve the system x-4y=-3 y-3x=-2 Solution. Actually it doesn't matter from which equation to express variable and what variable to express. Let's express y from second equation: y=3x-2 Plug this result into first: x-4(3x-2)=-3 x-12x+8=-3 -11x=-11 x=1 Finally, y=3x-2=3*1-2=1 So, x=1 and y=1. Probably, you know that system of two linear equations in two variables has either one solution or no solution or infinitely many solutions. Let's see how elimination method works when we have two special cases: no solution or infinitely many solutions. Example 3. Solve the system 2x+3y=2 4x+6y=4 Solution. From first equation x=(2-3y)/2 Plugging this in first yields: 4(2-3y)/2+6y=4 2(2-3y)+6y=4 4-6y+6y=4 4=4 Wow! All variables have canceled out. Since 4=4 is correct equality then this system has infinitely many solutions. Example 4. Solve the system 2x+3y=1 4x+6y=4 Solution. From first equation x=(1-3y)/2 Plugging this in first yields: 4(1-3y)/2+6y=4 2(1-3y)+6y=4 2-6y+6y=4 2=4 Again all variables have canceled out. But, since 2=4 is incorrect equality then this system has no solution. Geometrically all above three cases have following meaning: System has one solution: lines intersect at one point. System has no solution: lines are parallel and don't coincide. System has infinitely many solutions: lines coincide.

Myth: Buy a Degree Online, Fact: Earn an Online Degree

No, seriously. Avoid scanning this if you happen to truly believe that anyone can actually buy a web-based degree. If you're the other 99 percent of the sensible individuals who recognize that an online degree is earned with just as much work as a traditional college, then keep your eyes trained on the screen. Preferably you're still reading through. You've probably already begun a very difficult online college pursuit and came across plenty of intimidating articles or blog posts about degree mills, "predatory" recruiting tactics or gainful employment guidelines that the united states government just implemented. The selection compiled here has one primary goal: To convey to you, the future college student, that with the precise data and ideas for online college achievement, an ideal education is possible. Easy methods to detect a degree mill: Strikingly alike names to other known universities. Unaccredited or unlawful claims of certification. By way of minimal or very little work, you will be able to "earn" your diploma in several weeks or even less. Academics have earned degree from same college or university or other diploma mills. Junk e-mail techniques and cell phone calls. Programs that can't be confirmed by competence or traditional coursework. Virtually all mail is redirected to a P.O. Box or non-U.S. address. Credit for everyday life or work practical experience. Enormous advance "educational costs" expenses, implemented per degree rather than per credit/term. Printed materials consists of evident errors in spelling and punctuation. After you've done your research and have discovered a number of diverse online college or university possibilities, it is time to inquire questions of your self to figure out if you are geared up for this responsibility. Have a glance at the course regimen. How do you anticipate on fitting in required session and debate periods into your work and family time? Do you have at the very least a few times a day that you may entirely invest to reading, studying, posting and contributing? (One specific and one that is put into use in case the 1st selection is unavailable due to individual situations.) Does the college offer budgeting aid by way of the governing administration and other reputed financing companies? If that is so, exactly what can they present you to lower the costs? Do you possess the up-to-date products and software to wholly get involved? Otherwise, have you got it accessible to you in an alternative approach? Does this match into your conclusive career aims at a company/industry that you are in or wish to be in? The bottom line is this: an online degree is not the "effortless" strategy out. It is engineered to be just as demanding and complex as a classic college or university, but with the training systems and requirements tailored to accommodate working adults that have full-time demands. Thus, to believe that you can spend money on a degree online is either absolute folly, or a promotion that has its desired final results. Don't lower into either of those mousetraps - don't obtain a degree online. This situation is not just a waste of hard-earned cash, but also an unsafe resume killer. Rather, EARN an online degree.

Making the Best Use of Web Based LMS

E-learning is different from conventional learning, since it involves the usage of advanced technology for creation of educational software. This method of learning actively engages the users and makes the process interactive. However, for every organization or institution to benefit from this, it is necessary that custom e-learning solutions are developed, which can translate into tangible goals and objectives. Reduced training program costs, sales and customer satisfaction are some of these objectives. For rolling out custom e-learning solutions, it is necessary that the outsourcing firm is familiar with the needs of one's organization. For some, effective management of resources may be the primary goal, whereas for others, sales figures are critically important. Outsourcing firms need to work in close coordination with subject matter experts, such that relevant content can be delivered. However, it is also important that innovative and value-added services are used to keep costs under control. One of the methods in which e-learning can be implemented is through game based learning, Various educational games are created by outsourcing firms for one's organization, that help to enhance required skills through a virtual environment. Over this framework, employees or students are given opportunities to compete against each other. This allows them to develop a healthy competitive spirit, while learning critical strategies at the same time. After playing such interesting games, the scores of learners are recorded. Over a period of time, these scores, along with used skills are monitored, which help trainers evaluate learning patterns. This type of program which is capable of monitoring changes in each individual's play is known as Web based LMS (Learning Management System). A skill gap analysis tool can also be used to determine the gaps between theoretical learning and application. Today, an LMS can be created in such a way so that it can be made flexible as per the organization's requirements and standards. Requirements do change from time to time, and these systems can be modified accordingly. It is also possible to integrate some LMS with the existing learning program, making the overall process time saving and cost effective. E-learning applications can also be downloaded on mobile gadgets such as phones, net books and tablet PCs, so that learning can take place irrespective of geographical location. This lends flexibility to the overall learning process. At the same time, many individuals can log on simultaneously and share their ideas and experiences through forums, discussion boards and blogs. The above process is known as collaborative learning, and is tremendously beneficial due to the availability of different perspectives.

Medical Billing and Coding Online Training Courses: What Are Your Choices?

Training for specific job tasks is a little different today than it was in the past in that in the past you really had to be hired for a job to be trained or physically go to a school and take a class. This was not a terrible way to go about being trained and since it was all we knew, it was about as good as we could have expected it to be. Then came the computer age and the dawn of the internet and online training soon exploded in to the marketplace with a vengeance. This is true with the medical billing and coding field and the training opportunities that you will find online in relation to it. The following are a few courses you may be offered online for medical billing and coding training, though some may go by a different title.  Basic Health Care: If you are going to be working in medical billing and coding and you haven't ever worked in health care before you will want to take a class like this. Health insurance is a different world all by itself and you need to know the basics before you start billing people like you know something. Privacy Protection: The government gets more and more strict about patient privacy as the possibility of identity theft continued to grow and grow across the world. You will be taught when you can and cannot provide certain information to patients and how you can protect the information that you do have. Customer Service: As someone with a job in medical billing and coding you will likely have to have a lot of interaction with customers, about their money. What you need to do is get some basic training in this and how it relates to your role before you get started. Diagnostic and Procedural Coding: Few things in the medical field and in medical billing and coding specifically are more important than this. Offices function off of notes being coded correctly and payments are handled appropriately when this is done. Paying attention in this kind of class will be vital to your success. Billing and Reimbursement: A little information on how to bill insurance companies and how to reimburse the customer that you may have overcharged for any particular issue. Not overcharging your customers will allow the practice to keep them as customers, therefore saving your job from harm. More courses may be available online for medical billing and coding, but most will look similar to these courses.

MOOCs: Where We've Been, Where We Are, and Where We're Headed

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have rocked the world of education probably faster than any other innovation in history. In just over a year, MOOCs have gone from being viewed as a panacea for all that ails education to being seen as an imposter: a cheapened form of education. Now the pendulum is swinging back to somewhere in the middle. Several pundits and observers have noted that MOOCs are following the Gartner hype cycle for emerging technologies, and most agree that we are now somewhere between the "trough of disillusionment" and the "slope of enlightenment," on our way to the "plateau of productivity." As we move toward an environment where MOOCs are considered neither cure-alls nor curses, but rather tools that can be used in many different ways to improve education, it is useful to take a few steps back and examine where we've been and where we are so that we can make some reasonable predictions about where we're going. Cathy Sandeen of the American Council on Education colorfully described MOOCs in a recent Huffington Post article as having "splashed on the higher education scene in sensational fashion" when Coursera and Udacity launched in early 2012. But, as she notes, the history of MOOCs goes back to 2008, when George Siemens and Stephen Downes offered "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" online for students at the University of Manitoba as well as for anyone else who was interested. The paying students at the university received credit for the course, and about 2000 additional students participated for free but not for credit. The theory behind this initial MOOC viewed knowledge as distributed and education as a process of building personal learning networks. Consequently, the course was based on open educational resources and peer learning. It wasn't until the big names, like Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, came on the scene that the hype cycle really started to accelerate. In the spring of 2012, both Coursera and Udacity opened their virtual doors, with edX following a few months later. The courses offered through these platforms were fundamentally different from the 2008 MOOC experiment, more closely mirroring the traditional classroom experience, with lectures, discussions, and tests that consisted mostly of multiple-choice questions. Because of the elite universities associated with the courses, students started to sign up by the thousands, then by the tens of thousands, and then by the millions. The huge response to these courses ignited a fire under the entire education community - many people praised MOOCs for their ability to offer unprecedented access to education at a low cost, while many others criticized them for unsound pedagogy and lack of student accountability. But students continued to sign up and universities continued to jump on the bandwagon. MOOCs gained credibility when the American Council on Education recommended some for credit, and the California and Texas higher education systems started to look for ways to use MOOCs, especially for over-enrolled and remedial classes. By that time, it had become apparent that MOOCs were a force that could not be ignored and that they could be powerful tools for solving many problems facing education, including the exponentially rising cost. Inevitably, there came some bad news, and MOOCs crested the "peak of inflated expectations," starting a headlong dive into the "trough of disillusionment." The bad news came from a couple of different fronts. First, although top universities were offering MOOCs, none were accepting them for credit. Also, the dropout rates were very high, with less than 10 percent of enrolled students actually completing their courses. In addition, many educators attacked the pedagogy of MOOCs, particularly those with no interactive component. To top it all off, San Jose State University recently put a partnership with Udacity on "pause" after initial results showed that students in the MOOC section of a class performed worse than students in the traditional section. Predictably, there have been a few "I told you so's," and educators across the country are breathing sighs of relief that their jobs are not in imminent danger. But now, MOOCs are moving along the "slope of enlightenment" as we examine what works and what doesn't in the current MOOC format and use these discoveries to improve education. For example, instructors in many settings are using the flipped classroom model and incorporating MOOC elements into blended learning programs. So what does the future look like for MOOCs? Due to their popularity as well as the massive resources that have been invested in them, it is safe to say that MOOCs are here to stay, at least for now. So the question becomes how we will use them. Joshua Kim of Dartmouth College suggested in a recent edSurge article that MOOCs will promote investment and innovation in education because they "focus attention on teaching." MOOCs have changed how we look at teaching and learning - they have shifted the focus of education away from the transfer of knowledge and toward what students can do with that knowledge. This change is in line what has been framed as a shift from a knowledge economy to a creative economy. With information at our fingertips 24/7, the new focus is on critical thinking, problem-solving, judgment, and decision-making - which incidentally are also the workplace skills that are currently in the highest demand. MOOCs and their elements are also starting to be incorporated into different areas of education, like corporate training, workplace skills training, and continuing and professional development. The goals of training programs are different than those for higher education - organizations' main focus is performance outcomes that result directly from employee training. For these programs, MOOCs have the potential to deliver the necessary training effectively and at huge cost savings. In fact, some writers have suggested that the early MOOCs were barking up the wrong tree - the ideal target audience for these courses is not Stanford students or leisure learners; it is workers who need to acquire new skills and competencies to upgrade their skills and perform better in their jobs. Several MOOCs are already aimed at this audience, such as Coursera's continuing education programs for teachers and Aquent's recently opened Gymnasium, which offers coding courses for creative professionals. As MOOCs move toward the "plateau of productivity," the focus will shift from whether or not they should be used to finding the best ways to use them. New tools and technologies will become available, new audiences will be engaged, and new innovations will improve the learning experience for everyone involved. Only then will MOOCs live up to their promise of disrupting and transforming education.