The Globe and Mail has an Associated Press article by Justin Pope, Classes without the commute (Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2006) about the growth in people taking online courses, including con-campus students. The story points to a Sloan Consortium survey, Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005. (The free PDF of the complete report is available.) This report concludes that there is still significant enrollment growth in online courses, though Chief Academic Officers still believe that it takes more effort to deliver online and students need to be more disciplined to succeed.
A quote from The Globe and Mail article:
At least 2.3-million people took some kind of on-line course in 2004, according to a recent survey by The Sloan Consortium, an on-line education group, and two-thirds of colleges offering “face-to-face” courses also offer on-line ones. But what were once two distinct types of classes are looking more and more alike ó and often dipping into the same pool of students.
At some schools, on-line courses ó originally intended for nontraditional students living far from campus ó have proved surprisingly popular with on-campus students. A recent study by South Dakota’s Board of Regents found 42 per cent of the students enrolled in its distance-education courses weren’t so distant: they were located on campus at the university that was hosting the on-line course.
Some of the conclusions of the Growing by Degrees survey:
- Sixty-five percent of higher education institutions report that they are using primarily core faculty to teach their online courses compared to 62% that report they are using primarily core faculty to teach their face-to-face courses.
- The online enrollment growth rate is over ten times that projected by the National Center for Education Statistics for the general postsecondary student population.
- Chief Academic Officers believe, in general, that it takes more effort to teach online.
- A large majority of respondents (64%) believe that it takes more discipline for a student to succeed in an online course.
- Although online education continues to penetrate into all types of institutions, a relatively stable minority of Chief Academic Officers (28% in 2003 compared with 31% in 2005) continue to believe that their faculty fully accept the value and legitimacy of online education.