Online winter session courses

<p>My D is a freshman and is considering taking ENGL110 over winter session, online. Does anyone have experience with the online courses? We are Delaware residents and she does not want to stay on campus for winter session. But I am worried about her commuting every day with the potential for bad weather. </p>

<p>My D took a sociology course online last winter. she has also taken an online course at our local college over the summer. As with any course it really depends on the professor. IMHO I think the ENGL110 would be a good course to take since I don’t recall there being tests it’s more about written papers handed in. Overall when my D took the online course it was well organized and fairly simple to follow along. The work load was moderate but each class and/or each professor had their own style. </p>

<p>The 194 on-line section for ENG110 has only one spot open so if your D is interested she may need to make a decision ASAP. The 195 on-line section is for OOS students. Prof Flynn (course instructor) has very good ratings on Ratemyprofessors.com for other English courses but no ratings are noted for ENG110. From our D’s experience with this course (not on-line) she found the availability of the campus Writing Center was very helpful to her in writing her papers. If you take the course on line I don’t think this would be available for help. UD does cancel classes if the weather is bad. Just some feedback. Good luck whatever your D decides to do. </p>

<p>Thank you for the feedback. Yes, I noticed the lack of spots in English110 after I originally posted here. Unfortunately, my D’s sign-up time does not begin until 9:15 tomorrow morning. I did notice an Econ100 class that’s on line that she could take to get out of the way. I know UD will cancel classes for severe weather but we live almost 30 miles away…“south of the canal” - and weather can be very different depending on which side of the canal you’re on lol. If the online course doesn’t work out, I’m actually considering letting her commute but telling UD she’s staying there. This will involve paying for a $700+ meal plan that won’t be used but at least she’d have a place to stay on campus if the weather got bad. Ugh, I hate throwing that money away though. </p>

<p>Why not do DelTech for winter? they have better offerings, cheaper, close to home, and all the credits transfer… My D did that for a few courses because UD had such poor offerings for winter. And she actually thought the courses were pretty good. </p>

<p>@airborne - I was trying to look into that. How exactly does it work? Would she need to apply to Del Tech in order to take classes there? And do you need to get approval from your advisor first to make sure the Del Tech course will count?</p>

<p>@Jberav… there is an online course matrix on the UD site… that will let your D know what the appropriate course is at just about any school in the country! Then you need to get it approved by your department. For example my D took Stat II over the summer and needed to have it signed off on by the business school for approval. You would need to do whatever type of application process there is at the school she is looking to take classes at but sometimes if you are a visiting student as in this case it’s a simple process. For my D it was our local community college so it was simply signing up, paying the fee and showing an unofficial transcript to demonstrate eligibility for the course with pre requisites. I would look into it ASAP to be ready. That’s great that your local schools offer winter courses like that. Most in NJ do no. I’m sure airborne will have much more info but I hope this helps. :)</p>

<p>Thanks. I did find the info for visiting students on del tech’s website. Unfortunately, none of the course offerings from del tech for the winter are anything she can take. I like the idea though (SO much cheaper!), so will continue to keep an eye out. Maybe they will have something in the summer. </p>

<p>I don’t remember the mechanics of it, but I will ask my D next time she calls. but she did have to go over to DelTech and meet with an advisor at DelTech. A fair number of UD students do this, even OOS. DelTech was easy to deal with, the part that was difficult was UD transferring the credits back in timely manner. UD really needs to build some customer service skills, I think the other issue is that UD relies heavily on student work study as their labor force… </p>

<p>So if you D is counting on taking a course in winter at DelTech to cover a prereq for a spring course at UD it does tend to be a pain. It will take alot of calls to UD for them to find the paperwork that they will insist they never got from DelTech. </p>

<p>However… the money part of this is not the only incentive… DelTech does a much better job at the core requirement courses… Deltech is more instructional, and a professor is always teaching the course… at UD you either have a TA “teaching” the lower level courses, or a professor who is just lecturing without providing instruction. </p>

<p>Some of the majors at UD, like EE, have a very rigid course requirement and the courses are only offered specific semesters… so it is a maze of getting the right prereqs at the right time. My D was forced to go to DelTEch because of her major and the timeline. She minored in Econ and Physics… so she really had a juggling act with finding all the prereqs at the right time. </p>

<p>Also with DelTech, you have to look at what each campus offers… My D found that the campus up north near the mall had the most offerings. Which was great because it is so close to UD. </p>

<p>airborne, your D couldn’t get her credits transferred??? that’s weird… my D has done two course with our local community college… Calc and Stat II both were reflected on her transcript within 5 days of her submitting the request at our community college. One in Summer of 2013 and one this past summer. We were shocked by how quickly they were updated… especially this summer since she took a class that ended Aug 15th and it was on her records by the 20th. She didn’t even go to the community college until the 17th to request the paperwork. Maybe it was on Del Tech’s end… Sounds like you were pretty happy at Del Tech… maybe your D should have done her first two years at home attending there with all the trouble ud has given you. </p>

<p>@lefty1 she did get them transferred. I am shocked that your D’s were transferred into UD that quickly as well, almost unbelievable. </p>

<p>Doing the first 2 years a the community college is common in Delaware since it is free if you do the SEED program. though you can’t just do it for any UD major. EE has their own core academic requirements, so you can’t just do the standard core requirements anywhere. I assume you could, but you are just adding on time to your EE degree at that point. </p>

<p>I’m thinking a lot of the transfer stuff had to be on the community college’s end… Our Local community college is RVCC and I I think they are ranked one of the top 5 community colleges in the nation… they are pretty sharp and pretty much as you are requesting stuff be sent it is on it’s way! there is a similar program in NJ called NJ Stars. Community college can be nice but as you mentioned it can be nice but does not offer the depth of curriculum to help complete a degree. I guess that’s why there are two year and four year degrees and the local colleges certainly can’t specialize in everything but a good place to go for extra classes or if you want to get some breadth courses out of the way before reaching your real degree work. </p>