Guest Author - Andrea Andrews

Coastline Community College, based out of Fountain Valley, CA is one of Orange County California’s best distance learning programs. The institution itself is not completely online, but the school offers many courses for the distance learner.

While many distance learning programs or courses offer many of the same benefits – one thing that sets Coastline apart from the rest is the great support from the staff in both the distance learning center as well as the admission, registration and counseling staff for the entire school. They seem to have catering to distance learners down to an art – something that not every school can claim.

One of the best resources that the Distance Learning program has to offer is the great list of Frequently Asked Questions. It answers basically any question that you may have regarding online courses from how to petition an online class, how to contact an instructor and suggestions on how to overcome some of the challenges of being a distance learner.

As a distance-learning student, one of the challenges is knowing if a course will be a good fit. Not only is continuing education a difficult task, but when distance is added to the mix, it gets even more challenging. One way to help tackle this is to be able to do research about specific courses prior to enrollment. More often than not, there is not a lot of information about a class before you take the time to enroll in a class. A benefit to Coastline College is that you are able to access a class page and much of the content prior to taking the time and effort to enrolling and possibly finding out that the class is not a good fit. Some of the information available is a brief instructor bio, required class materials, and a general feel of how the class will be run. This can be one of the most important decisions in deciding if a course is right for you – so if this feature is available, definitely take advantage of it.

Last but not least, one of the greatest features of Coastline’s distance learning program is the distance learning self help module. It is a self-paced guide in deciding if distance learning is a good fit for you. As a new distance learner, you wil have many questions, before you even start a class and this module can help most, if not all, of those questions. If you are currently a distance learner, there are some great resources to improve as a student as well.

One thing to keep in mind is that a few, but not many, courses require that you go to a campus to take some of the tests. You may be able to arrange a proctored exam or some other arrangements, but in other cases, it may not be a possibility. This is not exclusive to Coastline, so keep this in mind in any distance program.