Career Education

A competitive world motivates people to seek a higher education that can mold their future. Career education is a systematic program designed for students. It is a basic and increasingly relevant component of student and adult learning. It includes activities and experiences designed to increase knowledge of self, occupations, training paths, job searching skills and decision-making strategies.

Many schools and colleges provide courses as well as counseling on career education that helps in nurturing the ""whole person"". Career education programs are designed to enable students discover their potential. These programs focus primarily on three interconnected areas, learner, interpersonal and career development. Within these three areas, students acquire an understanding of their critical and analytical skills.

A comprehensive career education program enlightens students on the relevance of their school experience. It is designed to give students a jump-start in their career through exploration of a variety of career opportunities. It is also intended to ensure that each student receives a quality education to prepare for higher education and their first job in a competitive market.

The strategies of career education programs include career contextual learning, which emphasizes the application of academics in areas beyond the classroom.

The programs help students develop learning skills and strategies that they could use in the workplace. It makes them manage and become responsible for their own learning.

Online career education has grown in popularity. More and more people choose online classes over traditional education in the classroom. Universities and colleges are responding to this growing need by offering a wide variety of online programs, classes, and degrees.

Career education programs have proved to be very beneficial for students. They encompass educational plans that define their aptitudes, abilities and values. Students relate their abilities to specific careers and prepare a research project on an occupation, which matches their goals and abilities.

Education, Meaning, Aim and Function

The process of defining the meaning of Education is to problematize its lexicology and re-conceptualize it. An example is illustrated from real day-life. A multinational company involved in the making of advanced pharmaceutical products decides to get rid of its wastes in a cheaper manner rather then waste-treat them. They dump the wastes around the coast of a poorer African continent based on the company's policy of maximum profits. Are the board of directors in the company educated? They are, one can assume for rhetorical comfort. An illiterate, native-tribe living in the rainforest jungles of Papua New Guinea doesn't know the meaning of Environmental jargon: 'Reduce, Recycle & Reuse'; yet, they conserve and sustain the environment, based on the level of skills known to them. Are the people of the rainforest uneducated just because they are illiterate?

The problems connected with narrowness of meaning called Education emerge within the contextuality of the above mentioned examples, and the conceptual difficulties involved in attempting to centre meaning upon Education is by all means complicated. So the meaning of education has to emerge from this narrowness to the broadness of meaning. In its broadness of meaning Education is the process of 'stimulating' the 'person' with Experiences, Language and Ideology, beginning from the time of birth and continuing till the time of death. This meaning of Education would give rise to the Aim, as disseminating formally, non-formally, culturally, nationally, scientifically and ritually-skills, literacy, knowledge, norm and values, as pedagogies of the institutions giving rise to the aim. This aim would be directly related to the perpetuation of that Society as an ideological structure. Aim would again determine the Function of Education The function of Education would be thus related to how meaning and aims are synchronized into processes called experience of application. The thesis statement of this paper is developed on three levels-one, the meaning of education as the stimulation of person a with language, experiences and ideology-two, aim of education being dissemination and perpetuation, and three, function, as synchronized processing.

The development of the Meaning of Education as a stimulation of a person from birth to death with language, experiences and ideology makes the person, a Being of the process as an Ontology. This process starts right from birth as affective language, for example, a mother's cooing, to a process where the person becomes a cognitive structure, as I-the speaking subject or ego-subject. Here, the individual undergoes the norms, traditions of the society's culture and learns to adapt and appropriate the symbolic codes of the society. Along with this process, the individual also learns to formalize his or her adaptation and appropriation to a literacy process i.e. developing skills and competencies. Thus we find that the Meaning of Education to be multi-leveled as well as multiple -oriented, through both formalist and non-formalist institutions of society. The formalist institutions which procreate the Meaning of Education are the Schools, the Government, Law and Order etc. Other formalist institutions like family, religion and native-traditions can work both openly as well as silently to orient an individual to the meaning of experience as the educated. For example a mother's oral transmission of a folk song to the daughter is silent whereas a marriage function is a more open aspect as the performance of a culture's pedagogy. Thus language and experiences generate the codes for that society to experience the Meaning of Education, making possible for ideologies to exist.

Thus the meaning of Education would give rise to the Aim, as disseminating formally, non-formally, culturally, nationally, scientifically and ritually-skills, literacy, knowledge, norms and values as pedagogies. Dissemination would mean the spreading of the Society's cultural norms and values. It would also mean the spreading of Nationalism as democratic-pluralism, multiculturalism, diversity and celebration or its reverse as intolerance, authoritarianism through pedagogies; it is also the development of systematized pedagogies- promoted as theoretical and applied within the Society's Scientific and Technocratic institutions.

The Aim of Education would be directly related to the perpetuation of that Society as an ideological structure. The contemporariness of perpetuation would answer the questions related to the aim of Education being: empowerment, sustainability, preservation, minimization, conflict resolution, creativity and innovation.

The Aim of Education as well as the Meaning of Education give rise to the Function of Education as meaning, that is the synchronized processing of Aim and Function into a materialist, operational process. Synchronization of the Meaning and Aim of education takes places at various levels action. They are Making, Transmission and Implementation and Cultural-Simulation. At the Making level, the Function of Education is connected with 'Policy Formulation' related to the Meaning and Aim of Education. Policy Formulation can reflect on multiple issues like development, sustainability, scientific progress, promotion of rights, dignity and culture, energy management, disaster management, peace and conflict resolution. Once policies are made they are transmitted and implemented through the society's institutional structures like the legal system, the education system, the society's welfare management etc. Cultural-simulation takes place both formally and non -formally as society's religious, cultural and familial institutions. They perform many social and cultural roles within the home as well celebration or mourning for an occasion.

To conclude, it is pertinent to summarize the thesis developed that is, the Meaning of Education has been broadened to involve the stimulation of a Person, with Language, Experiences and Ideology. The Meaning of Education becomes vital to the Aim of Education as dissemination and perpetuation. The Meaning and Aim of Education becomes synchronized into the Function of education as Making, Transmission and Participation.

Difference Between On-Campus Education and Online Education

On-campus education vs. online education! Is one better than the other? Can one completely replace the other? Indeed it seems that online education is the way of the future. Educational institutions, corporations and government organizations alike already offer various forms of electronic teaching. However, can a computer truly replace a teacher and a blackboard?

How people learn

Each individual has a form of learning that suits them best. Some individuals achieve fantastic results in courses taught online, however most people drop out of 100% computer-led courses. Educational institutions, as well as companies in carrying out staff training, must recognize that there is no ideal way to carry out the teaching of a large group of individuals, and so must design programs that best suits the needs of the group as a whole.

People learn using multiple senses. This involves learning through both theoretical components of a course, as well as social interaction with both instructors and other students. Students learn from each other's mistakes and successes, not just from what they are told by instructors.

Each individual student has an ideal learning pace. Instructors are therefore faced with the challenge of designing courses that move forward such that those students with a slower learning pace do not get left behind, while not moving so slowly that students with faster learning paces get bored.

Online education

In the age of high-speed information transfer, online education is becoming a popular and cheap means for delivering teaching to individuals outside the classroom, and in some cases all over the world. Teaching can be via CD, websites, or through real-time online facilities such as webcasts, webinars and virtual classrooms. However, different methods of online education each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Online education is still a relatively new concept, and in many respects still in the teething stages. As such, various problems arrive across different online education environments. For example:

1. Lack of immediate feedback in asynchronous learning environments: While some online education environments such as webcasts, webinars and virtual classrooms operate live with the addition of an instructor, most do not. Teaching that is delivered through a CD or website, although having the advantage of being self-paced, provides no immediate feedback from a live instructor.

2. More preparation required on the part of the instructor: In an online education environment, an instructor can not simply stand in front of a whiteboard and deliver a class. Lessons in online education environments must be prepared ahead of time, along with any notes and instructions that may accompany the teaching.

In many cases it would also be necessary that the instructor not only understands the concepts being taught, but the technology used to deliver that teaching. This therefore increases the skill-levels needed of online education instructors, placing greater demand on educational institutions.

Staffing levels may also be higher for courses run in an online education environment, requiring for example:

The Instructor - able to teach both course content and be skilled in the use of technologies involved

The Facilitator - to assist the instructor in delivering content, but may do so remotely

Help Desk - to offer assistance to instructors, facilitators and students in the use of both software and hardware used to deliver the course.

3. Not all people are comfortable with online education: Education is no longer only sought by the world's youth. With an increased trend towards adult and continuing education, there is a need to design courses suitable for students over a larger age-range, as well as students from different and varied backgrounds. It is difficult, however, to design online education environments suitable for everyone.

4. Increased potential for frustration, anxiety and confusion: In an online education environment, there are a greater number of parts making up the system that can fail. Server failures may prevent online courses from operating. Software based teaching applications may require other specific components to operate. Computer viruses may infect software necessary to run online education environments. If these systems are complex, students may choose the ease of On-campus education rather than taking the additional time and effort necessary to master the use of online education systems.

5. The Digital Divide: Many people who live in remote areas and developing countries do not have access to computers, making any form of online education virtually impossible. For this reason, online education is only able to be targeted at the people lucky enough to be able to take advantage of the technology involved. Similarly, offering live teaching across the world means that different time zones and nationalities increase the demand for multi-skilled instructors.

In addition to these, there are also several legal issues associated with maintaining an online education environment. For example, intellectual property laws, particularly those relating to copyright, may or may not fully cover electronically created intellectual property. For example, information on a website is not necessarily considered to be public domain, despite being available to everyone. However, the Australian Copyright Act was amended in 2001 to ensure that copyright owners of electronic materials, including online education environments, could continue to provide their works commercially.

On-Campus Education

Still the most common form of instruction is traditional classroom-style learning. These instructor-led environments are more personal than online education environments, and also have the advantage of allowing for immediate feedback both to and from student and teachers alike. However, the classroom allows for less flexibility than courses run in online education environments.

Instructors in modern classroom environments are still able to take advantage of several forms of electronic teaching tools while still maintaining the atmosphere associated with the traditional classroom environment. For example, PowerPoint slides can be utilized instead of a whiteboard or blackboard. Handouts can be distributed via course websites prior to the event. However, on the day, students are still able to actively participate in the lesson.

Like online education environments, On-campus education comes with certain drawbacks, the most common of which is the classroom itself. This requires a group of people which, in a university for example, could reach a few hundred people in size, to gather in the same place at the same time. This requires enormous time and financial commitment on behalf of both the students and the educational institution.

However, it is this sort of environment that is most familiar to students across the world. People of all ages can access a classroom environment feeling comfortable with the way that a classroom-run course is carried out. Older students who may not be comfortable with the use of information technology are not required to navigate their way through possibly complex online education environments, making On-campus education the most accessible form of teaching.

On-campus education has one advantage that 100% electronically delivered courses can not offer - social interaction. Learning comes from observing, not only what is written on a page or presented in a slideshow, but what is observed in others. Most students are naturally curious, and so will want to ask questions of their instructors. The classroom environment allows students to clarify what is being taught not only with their instructors, but with other students.

So, Which is Better?

There is no style of instruction that will best suit every student. Studies have shown (Can online education replace On-campus education) that courses where online education is used to complement On-campus education have proved more effective than courses delivered entirely using only one method. These courses take advantage of both online education materials and a live instructor, and have produced results higher than those of students in either 100% online education or classroom environment courses. Students have the advantage of the immediate feedback and social interaction that comes with the classroom environment, as well as the convenience of self-paced online education modules that can be undertaken when it best suits the student.

It would seem that online education environments will never completely replace On-campus education. There is no "one size fits all" method of teaching. Teaching styles will continue to adapt to find the method that best fits the learning group. Using a mix of online education environments and classroom sessions, educational institutions, corporations and government organizations can ensure that training is delivered that is convenient and effective for both instructors and students alike.