Online Education

Welcome to the Ojai School of Massage Online Education Home Page.

Distance Learning for Human and Animal Massage

Whether you are a student whose wish is to learn animal as a profession or someone who wishes to learn about animal to enrich your life we hope to provide you with an comfortable and enjoyable experience learning online. Anyone who visits this site is free to use any of the documents that we make available as learning tools for our students. For students of the school you will need to purchase the required texts for the program before you enter into the Evolve website where the class assignments and tests are posted. Live online lectures for classes are also recorded for those students that for some reason have to miss an online lecture and students will have access to the recorded lectures to view at a later time.

Once you have registered for the course you are taking the instructor will register you as a student on the Evolve site and you will receive an email with your class id, your login id, and your password for the class.  For the Holistic Small Animal Massage and Holistic Equine Massage students your access to the Evolve website will be through the Clinical Anatomy and Physiology for Veterinary Technicians where you will find the tests banks that you will need to complete before graduating from the class. The required texts for this class can be purchased through us or you can search online for copies of these texts.

The hands on portion of the program takes place at the schools physical location in Ojai. We work with the incoming students to find out what the best days and hours for the hands on classes are for each student in each class. Online tutoring is provided for students and can be scheduled with the instructor at times that fit the students and instructors schedule. Students can use any chat program that they are comfortable with to chat with the instructor. The online tests can be taken as many times as necessary to achieve a 75% grade that is the minimum grade to pass the test. There is no time limit on the test so no stress. Tests should not be stressful. Tests are there to let us know that the material that is necessary for the student to know is sinking in and being retained. Tests are a learning tool as well. Massage is in the medical field and for most students this means that they will be learning a new language. The language of medical terminology. Reading and speaking this new language will require practice and patience. We suggest that when you study at home you schedule a time that you will have the least distractions and keep a disciplined schedule. You will need to be self motivated but when your motivation lags you can always set up times to talk to the instructor and get help.

The schools program is designed to meet national massage education standards in both the animal and human massage fields. Each student is encouraged to contact the appropriate regulatory agencies in the state or locality in which they wish to practice to make sure that the schools curriculum will be recognized by the regulating agency. In each state that is regulated there is a massage board that can easily be found by doing a google search for massage regulations in that state. For animal massage students the regulations are harder to find because the veterinary boards control who can work with animals and each state has different laws that effect animal massage. The instructor of the animal massage course will help you find out the requirements for the state you wish to work in. In some cases massage for animals can only be done by a DVM so before you register in the animal massage program contact the instructor to find out if the state that you wish to work in will allow animal massage to be done by someone other than a DVM.

For human and animal massage courses online we use the best prepared online courses from Evolve/Elsevier, the leaders in medical and massage education text material. The text books we use are recommended by the NCTMB and MBLEX national human massage certification organizations and are complete learning systems for the massage profession.

Before purchasing textbooks for the human massage program you should contact the massage instructor for information about your options in terms of interactive courses for Mosby’s Essential Sciences for Massage Therapists and Mosby’s Pathology for Massage Therapists. Both these texts have standalone courses online that are very interactive and the course text is included in the course so you would not need to have a physical textbook. Also for Mac users all text books are available on Pageburst which is Elsevier’s e-book program for IPhone, IPad and all other Apple computers. You may also decide to purchase the books online and have a physical copy on hand. If you do decide to purchase used texts make sure the the CD that comes with the text and the access codes for the CD are intact and useable.

If you have any questions about the online classes please contact the instructor.