How To Study Engineering At Home

Colleges and universities have responded to the increased demand for online education by making it increasingly simple for students to pursue classes and even entire degree plans online. While it is possible to locate resources online to study engineering for your own enrichment, engineering is a professional discipline that requires the completion of a degree. Studying engineering at home is possible through the various online degree programs offered by different institutions of higher learning across the nation.

Step 1

Explore the field of engineering through open courseware classes offered online. These are free classes that are offered by prominent universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In fact, there is an online consortium of colleges that offer free engineering courses as well as other courses across a variety of disciplines. You can take a few of the basic engineering courses to determine your aptitude in the field and determine whether or not it is the right instruction for you. Other schools offering free online engineering courses include Delft University of Technology in Minnesota and the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

Step 2

Take courses leading to a Bachelor's degree in Engineering. There are many different fields of engineering and some of them lend themselves well to online study while others do not. For instance, studies in electronic engineering and computer engineering are a little more conducive to online study than areas like environmental engineering. Schools offering Bachelor's degrees in Engineering online are more rare than those offering a Master's degree. Some of these include DeVry University, the University of North Dakota, Grantham University, Ferris State University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Step 3

Obtain a Master's degree in Engineering or another field like Engineering Management. Degrees at the Master's level are more common than those offered at the Bachelor's degree level for three reasons. First, online Master's degrees only require about 30 to 40 credit hours and can be completed fairly quickly. Second, students in Master's programs in engineering already have the necessary background in engineering to take these types of courses. No additional foundational courses are necessarily needed, in most cases. Third, Bachelor's degrees require a full spate of general education courses in addition to engineering courses.