Hi everybody- nice to meet all of you! Greeting from Pennsylvania, in the beautiful Susquehanna Valley and the heart of "Amish country". In searching for an online community, I came across this forum.
I'm a (currently unemployed) career-changing middle-aged adult student who is enrolled at Amberton University for an online Masters in Human Relations and Business. My HR focus is Adult Training & Development, and my Business focus is Managerial Science. This is my first experience with (for credit) online learning, and so far I'm enjoying it very much. The biggest downside is the tremendous amount of writing involved in the coursework - so many papers! Thank goodness for voice recognition software. Time management is also an achille's heel, and I'm still trying to refine a system to keep on track.

 

Welcome to the forums.  Amberton is a great school, good choice!  I hope you stick around and keep us up to date on your experience.

hi my name is Deborah i just won't to say hi, I'm from Mississippi is enrolled at phoenix,

Hi Deborah, how's UofP treating you so far?

Hi Kairos, this is the second time in a week I've heard about someone using voice recognition software to help them with time management.  Which software do you use and how well does it work for you?

And hi to you too Deborah!

-=Steve=-

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B.S., Info Sys, Charter Oak State College
M.A., Educational Tech Leadership, George Washington University
Doctor of Health Education, A.T. Still University, in progress

Hi Steve-
I'm using a laptop running Vista (blech - slooooow!!!!!) which comes with its own Windows VR software that has never worked right for me. So I got Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.0 from hubby.

Dragon 10 seems to get quirky on Vista - it ran much better on XP. Hubby has zero problems with the same software running on XP. Since losing Vista is sadly not an option (needed for my Adobe Creative Suite 3), I deal. What works best is to turn the mic off between dictations, rather than let it "sleep". Dragon also does not like to run too long, so I shut it off or restart after more than an hour of continual use. I can tell it's time to restart when it slows down and starts making errors.

Dragon is a great program, one my dad recommended for his disabled vocational rehabilitation clients. It has been most useful in transcribing quotations for my notes, and in writing papers, saving a huge amount of time for those of us with weak typing skills. I use a good headset mic and did not skimp on the voice training. The longer you use it, the more accurate it gets. As you correct the errors, it adds to your user files and trains itself. You can have more than one user share the program, and it will keep files for each. Or you can have multiple sets of files, such as "K_school" and "K_work research",  to accomodate special terminology.

|K|

 

Hi Cajun-
I have been enjoying my Amberton experience, and would recommend them to anyone interested in the business, counseling, and human resources fields. The hybrid MS degree I'm taking is great, and is what sealed the deal. Their cost per course is awesome. I'm paying for this out-of-pocket, and it's a fraction of the cost of PSU & Drexel.

OTOH, It's much more writing than I envisioned! So far my only complaint has been one or two profs weak in student communication. But I guess you could find that anywhere. The rest have been super.

 ps - Loved your "Why Would Anyone Want To Be An Online Student?" post!

|K|

Great to hear.  I know a couple of Amberton grads who have nothing but great things to say about the school.  Thanks for the compliment on my post, glad to have you as a reader.

Thanks for the review of Dragon.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that yet another app runs better on XP than it does on Vista.  I really hope that Windows 7 is a significant improvement over that train wreck!  And if not, I'm not switching to something inferior and I'm not waiting forever for them to get it right, so while I'm used to Windows, if that means I have to move to Mac or Linux I'm not afraid to do that.

-=Steve=-

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B.S., Info Sys, Charter Oak State College
M.A., Educational Tech Leadership, George Washington University
Doctor of Health Education, A.T. Still University, in progress

Microsoft has a very profitable business model, they push a new iteration of software on everyone and force the public to be their testers.  Jeez, I wish I could get other people to do my job for me...

 

Cool! I have heard good things about Amberton also from my friends - what is a typical day like as an online student from Amberton?

Sorry about the delay in responding...I've not been here for a couple weeks.
I'm not going to sugar-coat it, but I am working my tail off for Amberton classes, on the graduate level- can't speak about the undergraduate level. I am averaging 8-10 APA research papers, approx. 12 pages in length, per class, plus tests. Just because their degress are low in cost does not mean they are giving them away! You better believe, you earn it.

This semester I had HR Management, Public Relations and the killer: Research Methods. I had to make a tough decision to pull out of HR because the work load was more than I could handle, with other obligations, at this time. But I would rather take longer to finish the degree than to risk a lower GPA.

On a typical day I average about 6 hrs studying, researching and writing, and often work on the weekends. The Research class requires you complete an entire research project, including a survey, within the 9 week course so it is the heaviest workload so far. But as a required course for all grad students, you have to take it eventually.

Also, they are not big on interactive technology if that's important to you. Most of the delivery is more old school, using just a discussion forum. But the quality is there in the curriculum, and it works well for someone who doesn't need bells and whistles.

|K|

I've heard Amberton is pretty paper intensive, personally I dig that type of learning but that's just me.