| Online college courses meet an obvious need of busy | | | | the search engines. The so-called 'invisible web' is |
| people - a way to fit a college education into a life | | | | available to human visitors to many web sites, |
| which is already filled with family, work and other | | | | especially educational ones, but not to search engine |
| commitments. | | | | spiders. This is because many of the pages are not |
| The Internet has also provided the means to pursue | | | | static, but dynamic, created on the fly from a |
| an online college course - it doesn't matter where | | | | database of information, such as a course timetable. |
| you live, you can sign up online, then access your | | | | This means that they will not appear in any search |
| preferred online course by the web, email, and | | | | results. Or a web site may require that a form has to |
| webcast, with possibly one or two trips to sit the | | | | be filled in or registration required before information |
| formal exams at the end. | | | | on college courses is made available - search engines |
| Online college courses - everything is sweet then? | | | | will miss these sort of resources too. |
| Well, it would be, if there were an easy way of | | | | In the old days, if you wanted information, you |
| locating the college which offers the course in the | | | | asked a librarian. If she didn't know the answer, she |
| subject you want, online, and at a reasonable cost. | | | | could direct you to the resources you could use to |
| But where do you start looking? | | | | find it. |
| This is where the overwhelming amount of | | | | Likewise, to find information about the online college |
| information available online, and presented to you by | | | | courses you want, you need some human input - a |
| way of the search engines, becomes more of a | | | | list of what is available, created by an intelligent |
| problem than a benefit. You have probably | | | | human or a team of humans, who use their |
| discovered this for yourself already. You just want a | | | | experience to group relevant sites. |
| list of colleges that offer the course you want, online. | | | | Ideally this list would give you the names of colleges |
| You don't need or want to scroll through a million | | | | and the courses they offer to students to study |
| results, and you know some college must offer what | | | | online. Or it would give you a list of specialist |
| you need, but where is it? | | | | resources covering only online education. |
| The problem arises not just because of the volume | | | | You may have guessed that we have created such a |
| of information a search engine might return for a | | | | list. |
| search, most of it irrelevant, but because a lot of the | | | | Sometimes the old fashioned methods are the best, |
| pages which contain the information about online | | | | even for the busiest people. |
| college courses you need is not even accessible to | | | | |