Hi, I will be taking some real estate courses soon and will be looking at all of my options. What would you suggest? I work full time during the day adn there is a school that offers 3 packages, but only two can fit my needs; Online and weekend classes.

I like the weekend classes because you can get the 30 hours done in one loooong weekend, but the online courses are probably better for me because I am a mother of 3 as well.

What did you do? Unfortunately I have perfected the art of spacing out even while reading and am afraid that if I select the online classes, I may not "get it" as well as I would if I was in front of an instructor.

For those of you who did online courses, how did that work for you?

Also, has anyone here used Austin Institute? If so, are they any good?

Thanks in advance for the replies!

Steph

I took online courses for continuing ed because it was the best thing I could do at the time.

If I had my choice though I would always always opt for a real class - the interaction and questions/discussion is almost as valuable, if not more so, than the actual content itself.

Plus the initial real estate courses can be so dry and boring you'd be better off in a GOOD class.

Why don't you take a class online and see how it goes? You can switch to classroom for other courses if online doesn't work out. With kids, you can interrupt your online course and come back to it at your convenience.

I was trying to decide between classroom and online. I took the first course in a classroom. Boring. Lots of time wasted with the teacher answering questions which shouldn't have been asked if the students had read the text. Took everything after that online. Never regretted it.

I'm with Perky on this one. If you really need to retain the knowledge in the course to pass a test, I would attend it in person. If you are just looking to "get it done", online would be the most efficient use of your time.

I personally prefer online and do better on tests. You can still "space out" doing them online. Nice thing is though, if you missed something, you can just go back and re-read it.

Classes in the room have their advantage in that they offer quicker answer to questions and also open discussion about issues in RE and you can find a study partner.

I took the classes online (Pennsylvania), and they were more of a challenge than I'd expected. Although I'm on very solid footing academically, nearly everything the classes taught was new to me, and some insight from an instructor and from classroom discussions would've been helpful. An instructor might also have prepared me for the fact that the courses cover only an outline of material we need to know for the exam. I purchased an online review, and on my first pass through the first lesson, I got a 50% -- just after having gotten a 96 and 98 on my course finals.

Thank goodness for Real Estate Practice by Dearborn Press. If there's a version for your state, I highly recommend using it to supplement your coursework.

I'm not sure I'd have gotten a whole lot out of a weekend-long, 30-hour marathon. There's just too much stuff to know, and cramming it all down in three or four long sittings is the least effective way to master it.

At least the On-Line Classes have some form of Examination . . . . to test the knowledge level of whoever is sitting in front of the "keyboard" at that time.

Our Continuing Education Classes, on the other hand, are a JOKE. You receive a Certification . . . . certifying that you sat there for 8 or 16 hours. They Certify that you're still breathing and didn't die of boredom; and were still capable of picking yourself up and walking out of the Classroom at the end.

For economic reasons alone, I think On-Line Education is going to get a foot-hold. The cost of Bricks and Mortar Schools; Heat and Air Conditioning; School Buses; redundant Administrations; mandated Special Education offerings at every dinky school; inconsistent and widely varying Cirricula; obsolete 8 Month School Years; and escalating Teacher Salary and Health Insurance costs are making many communities candidates for replacing traditional classroom education with less intensive institutional schooling supplemented with sophisticated On-Line Coursework. It will impact Real Estate Taxes where the School Tax portion typically dominates the make-up of the Tax Rate.

It may take 10 years; but On-Line Education is probably going to make our current school systems almost unrecogizable. Even now, Home Schooling supplemented with On-Line Education is making headway Nationwide:

[quote=Cave Man]Why don't you take a class online and see how it goes?[/quote]

That was what I was thinking of doing. I am probably better off doing online, maybe 2-3 hours a night during the week and then the remaining over the weekend

>>At least the On-Line Classes have some form of Examination . . . . to test the knowledge level of whoever is sitting in front of the "keyboard" at that time.<<

This is true. Every section of my online courses had two reviews, the second was meant to mimic the licensing exam somewhat. I found them to be enormously helpful for reinforcing topics I'd struggled with because explanations were given for wrong answers.

It sounds like you should go with the weekend class. Some of this information isn't going to to thrill you, so you should pick the medium that you can stay the most engaged with.