Online degrees have changed the game for working professionals. Today you don’t need to take time out from your career to pursue another degree. Instead you can choose a remote, part-time degree that allows you to make progress with your career in ways that working experience alone simply could not.

You may be interested in expanding your skillset, or you may want to become an expert in a field of interest not yet offered. In one instance gaining a relevant masters in a new skill can help you broaden your abilities and knowledge. In the other instance you will be best off earning a doctorate and conducting a research project.

How to Choose the Right Higher Education Path

There are many excellent ways that you can progress your career. Taking a moment to really work through what skills you want and need, and how you can earn them is essential, especially if you are considering higher education.

One thing to remember most is that there may not be a perfect fit for you and your goals. You may want to become an expert in a multidisciplinary topic that does not have a master’s program equivalent because it has never been done before. In this case you are best off earning a doctor of business administration online. In such a doctorate you will be taught key research methods and be assigned one or more student advisors to help guide you through your own thesis.

In this example you will get the answer and information you were specifically after and walk away with a doctorate under your belt.

Regardless of what path you choose, however, always aim to find the one that either aligns most with your goals, or alternatively can be tweaked or altered to suit them better.

Online Study Tools Your Degree Needs to Offer

Ensuring that the degree covers the right curriculum is just the start. You will then want to investigate what tools, programs, and teaching method they are using to help translate a campus experience into a digital one. Online degrees have been around for decades. The first online program launched in 1985, and the first online doctorate was available in 1995. Online degrees, however, were not popular until recently. This is because the infrastructure was behind the times, and only recently did massive new investments refresh the field and give students new ways to learn online.

With that in mind a few of the most common and effective tools that universities today use include:

• Podcasts
• Vodcasts
• Directed reading
• Online tasks
• Online quizzes
• Video conferencing
• Live discussions

At-Home and Personal Study Tools to Consider: Hardware

You will want to upgrade your own setup as well. Audit your work from home space in advance. If you already work from home, you have likely done this months ago, but if you are just now starting to use it then check internet speeds and consider how you can easily see all the information you need in one place.

A few hardware upgrades can include:

• Second monitor

A second monitor for example can allow you to watch a vodcast or live discussion on one screen and type up your notes on another.

• Printer

Not everyone works well with digital formats. If you find that reading online or spending lots of time staring at a screen strains your eyes or makes you uncomfortable then investing in a printer that can handle high volumes of printing can be just what you need.

• WI-FI Booster

If your office is in a corner of your home that does not get strong or consistent internet connection then consider getting a Wi-Fi booster. Alternatively, if your wired internet is not always reliable you may want to see if there is a data-booster option that works to minimize downtime by using a data plan as backup.

At-Home and Personal Study Tools to Consider: Software 

When it comes to the tools you use to study at home, however, your options will primarily be digital. Not only should you look into finding a great option for your operating system you should aim to find one that has cloud-syncing and, if possible, is also available as an app for your phone. This way you can learn on the go and keep all your notes in sync with ease.

• Note-Taking App

You will need a great note-taking application. While a simple document will do in a pinch, they tend to be difficult to format. One of the best and most popular tools today is also free, making it an easy choice for everyone on macs, PCs and even on mobile devices. This app is OneNote. OneNote is designed by Microsoft and allows for easy notetaking across subjects and even makes it easy to add multi-media elements. A new upgrade add-in to OneNote even allows for collaborate notetaking. You and several others in your degree could add to one note document, making it easy to get the key points from multiple readings all at once.

• A Smart Document Reader

In some degrees older PDFs and scans will be included in your recommended reading lists. These cannot be clicked on or annotated without first being put through a smart document reader. While the technology to scan and extract words and numbers from images is now old news there are new document readers that can even analyze a text and give you the key notes automatically. These smart tools can make it much easier to get the important parts of any document and reduce your overall time spent on reading.

• Reference Organizer

From essays to dissertations to your doctorate thesis or project you will need to reference. Referencing can become a nightmare, especially if you are not organized from the start and are left with a paper that is full of claims without any reference to back it up. Avoid this issue from the start and find a reference organizer that works for you. There are several options from free to pro that allow you various tools and features. You can keep all your references in one place and have them automatically sorted in the referencing format of your choice and then printed alphabetically.