If you’re stumped on an assignment or needing someone to help you catch errors on a paper, getting help may be as easy as sending an e-mail or launching an online chat.

That’s what some online students do when working with a virtual assistant, a human or an automated tutor that some schools make available to students. This extra help could be essential, especially if your classmates and professors are miles away.

The opportunity to use a virtual tutor – typically offered by the school, who contract with a company providing the service – is something you’ll want to ask about as you’re considering signing up for an online program.

Although not many online degree programs are offering this yet, says George Washington University researcher Tara S. Behrend, a recent study he conducted found when virtual assistants appear on a screen, people tend to prefer the “avatars” who look like them. Computerized training programs are integrating coaches into them – and it’s something that could be done more on the college level.

Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Fla., is one school that offers two tutoring options for its online students. The primary method is through Smarthinking.com, which has live human tutors; the company says that more than 90 percent of its online tutors have a master’s or doctoral degrees and average nine years of teaching experience. Smarthinking.com, which works with 500 schools and businesses, reported in April that it averages more than 3,000 student-tutor conferences daily, including 2,000 essay critiques.

A secondary service, offered by Grammarly, is automated.

Susan M. Colaric, assistant vice president of instructional technology at Saint Leo University, shares how both options work.

Smarthinking.com

• Students taking math, accounting, finance, economics, statistics, and writing courses can register with the service (the university pays for the cost)

• Tutors assist students immediately online using chat

• Students who want a paper reviewed for assistance with writing submit the paper and receive feedback within 24 hours

• Students can submit questions for 24-hour turnaround or schedule tutoring sessions for a particular day and time. Math tutors are available 24 hours a day; other subjects are generally available 9 a.m.-2 a.m.

Grammarly.com

• Students register with the service (the university pays for the cost)

• Students submit a paper online

• Computer-generated instant feedback is given related to grammar including sentence structure, use of prepositions, use of adverbs/adjectives, word choice and citations

• Errors are identified and explanations given as well as suggested changes

As online learning continues to grow, schools may start to realize that students need even more assistance through virtual tutors. Help such as online tutors provide more opportunities for you to be successful when participating in an online program!

-Lori Johnston

The Pell Grant – the cornerstone of the federal financial aid system – may be taking a hit this year. Will nontraditional students be the ones to pay the price?

With the explosion in college enrollments, the economic downturn, and 2008 Higher Education Act changes that expanded the number of students eligible for Pell Grants, spending on Pell Grants has reached record numbers. The program increased by about 150 percent from 2005-6 to 2010-11 – and it now faces a $20 billion deficit by the end of 2012.

How can we eliminate the shortfall? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

A Tough Choice
Preserving the maximum Pell Grant award – currently $5,550 – is a high priority for most higher-education advocates, including the president. In his 2012 budget, President Obama proposes preserving the maximum grant award by suspending the year-round Pell Grant program, which has allowed students in accelerated programs to obtain two Pell Grants in one year.

Since the year-round Pell Grant program began in 2009, it has increased summer enrollment by just 1 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

But according to a recent survey by the Council for the Study of Community Colleges, the expansion of Pell Grant benefits, including double Pell Grants, helped boost enrollment at community colleges by 15 percent in the past two years.

Last year alone, the year-round Pell Grant program enabled more than 800,000 Pell recipients to take a second grant to pay for courses between traditional semesters.

While the government acknowledges that some students have been helped by the year-round Pell, it admits that the initiative is unsustainable – the program has cost billions of dollars more than originally anticipated.

“In tough budget times, we saw it as a bigger priority to maintain the maximum Pell Grant of $5,550, rather than having a smaller number of students get $11,000,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The Ramifications
But here’s the rub – it seems that nontraditional students make up more than their share of this “smaller number of students.”

Advocates of the year-round Pell say it has become a critical resource for students who are financially independent or over age 24. These nontraditional students take summer courses so they can graduate sooner and see a quicker return on their education investment. Without a second Pell Grant, will nontraditional students make slower progress on their degrees, or be forced to drop out of college altogether?

The Department says it has found no evidence that the program is accelerating college completion time. Of course it hasn’t. Double Pell Grants have only been offered for the last two years – not nearly enough time to conduct a significant evaluation of the program’s outcomes.

Year-round education might not be suited for everyone, but many nontraditional students look to those in-between times to get ahead in their coursework and complete their degrees sooner. Without adequate financial assistance between semesters, nontraditional students could be at greater risk for increased debt and loan default.

Your turn: How do you think the proposed changes to the Pell Grant will affect nontraditional students?

-Robyn Tellefsen

The University of California’s controversial online pilot program would open opportunities for students not enrolled there to take online classes offered by the school.

At least that’s what the program’s proponents hope will happen because the university will need the revenue generated by the online classes to repay the loan needed to help start the program.

The university is showing faith in its move to online classes by borrowing at least $2 million in a time of severe budget cuts, downsizing, higher tuition and declining state support. Grants, including one for $750,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will help make up the remainder of the money needed to start the program.

Daniel Greenstein, a vice provost and the project’s co-founder, told The Chronicle of Higher Education, that the non-University of California students would be allowed to take one or two online courses at a time, mostly to complete degrees or college preparation courses.

There is opposition within the university, but Greenstein doesn’t think the online pilot program is a huge risk.

“It’s not like we’re taking student-fee money,” he told The Chronicle. “It can’t be used for anything else. I’m not shutting the Spanish department to do this program.”

The project hopes to offer as many as 20 online undergraduate courses by January 2012, giving you a chance to earn a California education from afar.

-Lori Johnston

Online learning can be tremendously freeing – there’s no commuting, no scheduling conflicts, no distractions… well, two out of three ain’t bad.

For all of online learning’s advantages, potentially disastrous disadvantages are the distractions inherent in the online platform itself. But there are ways to beat distractions’ insidious ways of creeping into online learning. Arm yourself with these tools to make sure distractions don’t get the last word.

Distracted by Email
Not only is checking email a time drain, but it can also be an emotional drain if you start reading negative news or even details about your next online class project when you haven’t yet finished the one you’re working on. Shut down your email until you complete the task at hand. And, sometime when you’re not supposed to be studying, unsubscribe from all those emails you say you want to look at but never get around to actually reading. They clutter up your inbox and waste time when you could be dealing with more important communication for your online classes.

Distracted by Location
If you’re logging into online classes at home, set yourself up in a home office and close the door. If you don’t have a completely separate space, create a workspace in an area of your home that gets minimal traffic. You can even hang a sign that says “in class” to let your family know when you’re not to be disturbed. If the atmosphere at home is not conducive to studying or you just need to look at another four walls for a while, get a change of scenery at the local library, coffee shop, or anyplace with Wi-Fi.

Distracted by Noise
Studying online is not like learning in a classroom that’s free of outside noise and chatter. And for those like me who have a problem blocking out conversation (and words in general), getting anything accomplished online can prove especially challenging. Earplugs can be helpful, and headphones work well for playing instrumental music (remember the word issue). I use sports channels like ESPN as white noise, but that’s only because I have zero interest in sports. I also just read about ChatterBlocker, software that helps you tune out nearby conversations. That’s an app I just might have to try.

Distracted by Your Own Thoughts
Sometimes I wish I had Dumbledore’s pensieve so I could de-clutter my brain. But, since the possibility of obtaining a magical basin is slim, I make do by writing an abbreviated list of everything swimming through my mind. Your list could take the form of to-do bullets or even things that are troubling you. Once you put it all on paper, you can physically set it aside to revisit later, when you’ve completed your online classwork for the day. And you can add to the list whenever more mental distractions creep in.

Distractions in online learning are inevitable. But if you acknowledge them and devise a plan of attack, you’ll find distractions beaten and online victory won.

-Robyn Tellefsen

I’m addicted to “Being Erica,” a Canadian TV series about a 32-year-old woman who gets to travel back in time to fix her past regrets. Ever since the “Back to the Future” movies, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of time travel and the potential butterfly effect of changing the past. Not that my life has been such a disappointment, but I’ve certainly had my share of “What in the world was I thinking?” moments.

Apparently I’m not the only one thinking about regrets. A recent New York Times Well Blog post highlighted new research on the subject from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In a telephone survey, researchers asked adults ages 19 to 103 to describe a memorable regret. Not surprisingly, romantic and family regrets were the most common, but education and career regrets were next on the list.

Of the adults surveyed, 13 percent expressed education regrets, and 12 percent spoke of career regrets. Those with less education regretted their lack of schooling, while those with more education were more likely to recount career regrets. And men were more likely than women to express career regrets: one in three men compared with one in four women expressed work-related woes.

“Some people said they should have studied something different in college, taken a different career path or followed their passions,” said Neal J. Roese, a psychologist and professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.

Wouldn’t it be great to go back in time to change our regrettable actions (or inaction)? But until time travel emerges from the realm of science fiction, our past is set in stone. Our future, however, is not. As long as we’re alive, we can do something about our regrets.

“There are ways regret feels bad, but on average, regret is a helpful emotion,” said Dr. Roese. “The most helpful way to experience regret is to feel it deeply, get over it quickly and move on and use it to push you to new behaviors that are going to be helpful.”

When it comes to your education and your career, you can do now what you wish you had done years ago.

This is where online education can be especially helpful. Feel like don’t you have time to go back to school? Think it’s too late to start a new career? Online learning can help you overcome career and education regrets by removing the “not enough time” roadblock, among others. With online classes, you won’t have to worry about scheduling conflicts or the potential difficulties of getting to campus. You can even stay in your current job while you take online classes to get a new one. Online learning can help you fit education into your life, instead of the other way around.

Many of us, if we’re honest, keep a running list of regrets. Why not use online education to shorten the list?

-Robyn Tellefsen