Free Evaluation

While you may have to register or buy a course, make sure there is a free evaluation period and a no questions asked money back guarantee. Working with the product is the best way to evaluate the site. A free online evaluation allows you to see if the site matches your goals and objectives from your Self-Assessment..

Free Courses

Another way to evaluate online education websites is by taking the free online classes, if they are offered. While the online subjects offered for free may be very basic or not quite what you are interested in, working with the product in real time is the best form of evaluation.

Testimonials

While these should not be your sole source upon which to make a decision, you should review these. What do they say? How many can you find? Who is providing them? Testimonials, while many times are self-serving and are provided by the website you are reviewing, will give you an idea of what individuals like about the site and what they found beneficial. Hopefully, the testimonials will highlight areas you identify in your Self-Assessment..

Reviews

Reviews, especially independent reviews, are very beneficial to your decision. Reviews will confirm the quality of the online learning website and talk about the best features the website offers.

Pricing

Does the site offer individual course pricing? Package Pricing? Bulk pricing? Review the pricing structure to ensure it is flexible enough to address any of your learning needs. Of course you should consider pricing and a budget as part of your self-assessment.

If you pick a site using the criteria discussed above and those from Part I, you will not have to worry about picking a bad online learning site.

Course Selection

This is the most obvious as you probably have a topic in mind. However, you should be looking towards the future as well. Take a look through the entire online course catalogue. Are there other courses you might be interested in? Are there other related topics to the one you are interested in that would help expand your knowledge? Do the courses offered fit in with your  Self-Assessment? You want to be sure you can grow with the site and that the site offers both diversity in online course subjects and depth from beginner to advanced courses and related important subjects that might be worth studying.

Software

While this may not initially seem like an important feature, there are a number of basic features that any online education site should offer. The most important is navigation features including but not limited to a detailed Table of Contents and Index. Bookmarking is also important including remembering your last location at logoff. Learning for most people is not just reading through material but involves looking back at other sections and making connections from prior material as you move through the course making good navigation critical.

In the next article we will examine evaluation, pricing and testimonials and how to use each to your best advantage.