Having ready access to the internet means you have a wide assortment of resources at your fingertips. If you have a smartphone or tablet then you’re probably always connected in some capacity. Where do you go when you’re not attending classes? An easy answer might be news sites, Facebook, shopping, or your favorite DIY blog.

What if I said you could access a bevy of super informative webcasts without paying anything, and they would take up as much time as a short lunch break? That’s exactly what we have as a resource, an�archive of webcasts from American Public University (APU) subject matter experts.

Here are some topics you can use for your programs:

• Revealing North Korea – our newest webcast recording; great for intelligence students
• Nurses for Change – ideal for students in Nursing programs
• A Nuclear Middle East – great for homeland security students
• Predators and the Constitution – a great topic for legal studies and criminal justice students
• Inside the Terrorist Mind – a great study for counter terrorism majors

Check out the APU webcast archive with over 30 topics for students to choose from.

Balance, it’s something that we often seek in many aspects of our lives; whether we seek it in family tasks, school work, or our jobs, we often find that we are striving to find some aspect of balance in our lives.  Balancing course registrations can be a difficult task to accomplish; however, I have included a few tips to consider in regards to balancing your course registrations.

[related: Tips for Online Learning Success]

Tip #1: Try not to pair two writing intensive courses together; this will likely cause you to devote more time to school work than other obligations.  Writing intensive courses are courses that have heavier writing than other courses; typically, a writing intensive course is defined as having a research paper and heavy research projects throughout the course in addition to regular course work (reading, discussion forums, replies to peers, etc.).

Tip #2: Unless you are seeking a career as a detective, try not to pair two analytical courses together.  Analytical courses have a focus on the logical and systematic approach to learning; analytical courses often have complex problems/situations that need to be addressed by a student which requires some investigative thinking on the student’s behalf.  

Tip #3: Consider the readings that you will have in the course from the text books and additional readings assigned by the instructor, additionally, you need to also consider the assignments each week that will be assigned including quizzes, research proposals, exams, and discussion board forums. 

I encourage you to try some of these combinations:

• Math and English
• History and Science
• Literature and Math
• Social Science and History

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses will help you to divide your time in your courses each week.  Now that you know which courses to pair together, let’s look at how to break down your schedule when you attend an online university.  Typically, if you’ve ever attended an online university before, you’ve noticed that you have a decent amount of freedom in regards to submitting your assignments.  You mean, you can turn the assignment in on Sunday at 11:54 p.m.?  You sure can; however, you are encouraged to review your assignments on a weekly basis so that you’re not staying up until 11:59 p.m. each Sunday on your third cup of coffee attempting to submit all assignments for your different courses. 

If you have assignments that are due at the same time each week, you could possibly focus your attention on two courses during Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the other two courses during Tuesdays and Thursdays (for a longer period of time since it’s only two days a week).  This aligns with the traditional college schedule; you can ensure that your work is done on certain nights of the week.  Weekends can be devoted to catching up on assignments or even reading ahead for the next week!  Another alternative would be to set deadlines for yourself.  While your instructor may not provide specific deadlines, setting deadlines for yourself will allow you to see a “due date” despite the fact that there is really no due date. 

All in all, balance is fundamental to doing well in an online environment.  While you may have more freedom in an online course, remember that you need to ensure that your courses are paired well so that you don’t burn out too quickly, and you want to ensure that you have a schedule in place for your assignments so that you can remain organized throughout the semester!  I wish you luck!

By Melanie Dougherty
Academic Success Advisor at American Public University

John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War

When: Monday, October 31
Time:  1 p.m. ET
Where: Your computer
How (do I attend?): Register today!

Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry ruptured the union between North and South. Yet few Americans know the true story of the militant idealists who invaded Virginia before the Civil War. Now, Midnight Rising paints Brown’s uprising in vivid color, capturing a nation on the brink of explosive conflict.

In this riveting book, Tony Horwitz probes the troubled soul of Brown, the desperate passion of his followers, and the spirit of a sundered nation. The result is both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a fiery time that still resonates in our own. Join American Public University’s live webcast as Tony Horwitz, New York Times bestselling author of Confederates in the Attic, presents his view on the daring insurrection that put America on the path to the bloody Civil War.

[Passionate about the Civil War? Learn more about a Graduate Certificate in Civil War Studies]

Accompanying Tony will be Dennis E. Frye, the Chief Historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. A writer, lecturer, guide, and preservationist, Dennis is a prominent Civil War historian. Dennis has made numerous appearances on PBS, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and A&E as a guest historian, and he helped produce award-winning television features on the Battle of Antietam and abolitionist John Brown.



Here’s a quick history refresher. In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote, “The Jungle,” which publicized unsanitary food processing conditions in the meatpacking industry leaving countless Americans dismayed and wondering, what’s in the sausage?

The novel sparked the Meat Inspection Act, regulations that paved the way to the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. Now, we have detailed nutrition labels on all foods. We as consumers get to know the tidbits of every product right down to those long laboratory words like maltodextrin or hydrolyzed corn (and yet strangely we’re still wondering, what is that?).

As prospective college students, shouldn’t we also have the right to know exactly what we’re buying upfront?

Read the full story