Online classes can be a great way for busy professionals to pursue their educational goals while balancing a full-time job and other responsibilities. They can also, unfortunately, be a big waste of time and money. Many online classes are little more than a slideshow presentation with a quiz at the end — an uninspiring format that does little to help students learn.

In this article, we discuss the features of high-quality online education programs that intrinsically motivate students to learn and deliver the most value to students.

For online classes to have lasting impact, they must have cohesive curricula that engage all four levels of learning: awareness, knowledge, skills and mastery. The best online classes will inspire students by increasing their awareness of why they need to master the course material. This creates the intrinsic motivation required for students to achieve mastery of the material so they can apply it to their daily work in their career.

In order to show why skill development and mastery are so important, we first need to define the four levels of learning:

Level 1: Awareness

This is the level of learning where you become aware of the range of knowledge possible but have not yet acquired that knowledge.

For example, many people think doing project management requires no specialized training or skills. They are not even aware there is a whole body of knowledge relating to efficiently doing projects more effectively.

When they start to realize there are in fact numerous skills they could acquire that would help them become more successful with their projects, they have achieved the first level of learning awareness.

Level 2: Knowledge

Once students are aware there is a lot more to learn about the topic of the online class and how the material can help them with their specific learning goals, they then have intrinsic motivation to acquire more knowledge about the course material.

Online classes will often teach course material by providing examples. Online classes in project management, for instance, may have students work through scenarios related to government IT projects regardless of the student's background or industry.

Learning by example, however, is not the same thing as learning in your own environment. To do the hard work of putting skills into practice in the complicated, messy reality of life, you need to move beyond knowledge to skills.

Level 3: Skill

When students develop real skills in an area, they have advanced beyond the level of being able to understand just hypothetical situations. They are now able to identify the most relevant areas of their new knowledge and make them work for their unique career goals.

For instance, in a project management program, students develop strong negotiation skills specific to their personality type by applying what they learn about negotiating in their daily work. Project managers are able to swiftly and appropriately respond to these in the heat of the moment because they developed the skills to do so in the training program.

Level 4: Mastery

Skills are closely tied to mastery. Mastery, however, is only reached when you make consistent deliberate practice with your skills and it always takes time. Online classes rarely bring students to the level of mastery of the material, let alone give students the basic skills they need to reach mastery on their own.

Online classes can be a key step to advancing your career in any field. To be effective, however, the program must be focused on application of knowledge in the student's own environment. If the online class revolves around only memorization of information or lectures with no opportunity to apply what is described, then learning takes place only at the lowest level.

When deciding where to go for online education, make sure to invest in a program that moves you beyond awareness and knowledge and into the realms that matter most skills and mastery.