Online Continuing Education: The Beauty of the Internet

The Internet, as they say, is the biggest human milestone since the discovery of fire. Why wouldn’t it? Most of the things we need to function in our day-to-day lives are online – travel itinerary, communicating with our boss and friends, and saving files among many others. As a professional, however, I have found that the best thing that the Internet has to offer is online continuing education. If you have not heard of it, you better start climbing out of the rock you have been living under and take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

Online continuing education started basically ten years ago when the World Wide Web became stable enough to handle web classrooms. In a few words, online continuing education is a classroom setting transferred on the Internet. That means everything you can learn and do in the classroom can be learned and done in the comfort of your own home or anywhere that has an Internet connection. If you think that is just a sassy way to go around studying, think again.

We all know how hectic our schedules can become these days – operations here and there, conference calls, patient rounds; there are just so much to be done and so little time. There are also times when the course we want to take up is only given in a university thousands of miles away. Think of the Internet as a portable and flexible professor who can work with you whenever and wherever.

Before you go about enrolling in every online continuing education program you see, consider these two things first:

1. Is the online continuing education provider accredited? Accreditation is key if you want to get great value for your money and honest-to-goodness CME credits. If the online CME provider is not accredited, chances are the entire program did not pass the standards set by accrediting bodies. More importantly, the course does not qualify you to get CME credits which are highly necessary if you are in a Maintenance of Certification program. You can Google it, ask around, or even ask the online continuing education provider directly if they are accredited.

2. How much time do you need to spend in on-campus activities? I could safely assume that the reason why you even engaged in online CME is because you do not have the time or the faculties to go on-campus to get your continuing education classes. However, there are some online continuing education courses that will require you to spend several hours for on-campus lectures or laboratory time. You need to know how much time you need to spend for this and when and where this will take place.

Those are only two of the most important things you need to know before you sign-up for an online continuing education course. Do not stop here though because there are still so much to learn. Check more online continuing education resources in CME-Linker.com.