During our on-campus residency at Oxford Graduate School, we are expected to have our laptop or netbook computers with us. I assume that during times of on-campus residency, most distance learning graduate programs will ask its students to do the same.
We used our netbooks in class because they are easier to lug around than our 17" laptops. The netbooks fit easily in a backpack and they don't weight very much. I had purchased long-life batteries so we could go all day on a charge. So, the netbooks were convenient for class.
Throughout the OGS campus, the WI-FI signals were strong. We could download, search, and use the local printer with ease in all the buildings in which we tried to access the net.
But, in our hotel room it was a different matter. The hotel's WI-FI was not very strong and we often could not find a signal. However, there was a LAN access in our hotel room and I was prepared with a multi-port networking switch and all the LAN cables we needed. So we were able to have our laptops and our netbooks online whenever we were in our room.
OGS is a small distance learning christian college offering a doctoral program. Because it is small, we have access to some online databases for scholarly journals. I assume that large universities provide their graduate students with more and larger databases of scholarly journals. But, the OGS library is comprehensive, so the periods of on-campus residency are an excellent time to catch up on reading and research.
For our research, we are taught how to use a software package called "Citation." This software is designed for us to track and manipulate the results of our reading and research. We might purchase our own subscription to an online research database, which gives us access to a different citation managing software online.
What have been your experiences with computers, netbooks, WI-FI, and software with your graduate degree program?
