Online materials and equipment
Online degree students need to use the worldwide web even more than
conventional students. The Web presents a host of new challenges to
online degree researchers accustomed to the more rational world of the
library stacks. Web sites are not organized like books in a library, and
it would be impossible to catalog all of its sites. No one, after all,
owns the Internet, there is no central organization in place to enforce
quality or editorial standards. Within the Web pages themselves,
finished prose mixes freely with conversation, art with advertising, and
careful research with reckless hearsay. Information is often published
on the Web which no serious online degree instructor would touch. For
this reason, Web sites are considered less authoritative research
sources than printed articles and books, even when you're studying an
online degree.
Yet, the flexibility of Web presentation makes new kinds of publications
possible. The Web may be the only place where some specialized or
time-sensitive information can be made public, for no other reason than
that it would be too difficult, or unprofitable, to put it into print.
So along with the rubbish that a Web search inevitably churns up, there
are those sources which make Web research invaluable to online degree
students, and in some cases essential.
For further information on web materials and how to search for the right
ones, we recommend you to talk to your online degree instructor or to
visit McGraw-Hill's "Introducing the Internet".
Online degree computer equipment :
About the computer equipment you will need for an online degree program,
it's usually the following (minimum):
Pentium III Processor or better
56k Modem
20 GB hard drive
128 MB RAM (256 recommended)
Windows 98 or better
Sound Card
Plug-ins as needed
MS Office 2000 or higher
Internet Explorer 4 or Netscape 4
