The National Center for Educational Statistics recently published its second survey of distance education programs. The survey found that 1,680 institutions offered approximately 54,000 online courses in 1998 with 1.6 million students enrolled. Public institutions lead the initiative, with 79 percent of four-year public colleges offering distance education courses, compared with 22 percent of private four-year institutions.
The survey also revealed that size is a factor. Eighty-seven percent of institutions with 10,000 or more students offered distance education, compared to 75 percent of schools with 3,000 to 10,000 students and 19 percent of institutions with fewer than 3,000 students.
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Courses in English, humanities, and social/behavioral sciences were most frequently offered in the distance education format.
The NCES report – using data collected from two-year and four-year post secondary institutions in the 1997-98 academic year – provides estimates of the number of institutions offering distance education courses, the number of distance education course offerings and enrollments, and the number of degree and certification programs offered.
The report also examines the types of technologies used to deliver education over a distance and at how tuition and fees for distance education compare with those for on-campus courses.
Cyberspace popular at URI
At the University of Rhode Island, students are jumping on the cyberspace bandwagon in record numbers.
Just five years ago, URI offered its first e-mail course through its College of Continuing Education. Seven students enrolled.
When URI offered its six Web-based courses this spring, 200 students enrolled.
”We had to turn 60 students away,” said Ed Ferszt, associate dean of academic programs at URI’s Feinstein College of Continuing Education. “The demand is outstripping our ability to offer courses. To keep pace, we’re developing strategies to convert classroom courses into Web-based ones and figuring out how to add multiple sessions of the popular ones we currently offer.”
At URI, web-based classes replaced the more limited e-mail courses last fall. Web-based courses are virtual classrooms in that they provide comprehensive resources. Course materials such as lecture notes, syllabus, and exams are stored on site. Graphics, short video clips, and pictures can be viewed and e-mail can be self-contained.
Continuing education students seem to be particularly suited to these courses, according to Vince Petronio, a communication studies professor who teaches a course that explores the growing impact of the Internet on interpersonal communications.
Petronio’s class never meets face to face.
“Students have to be self-motivated and self disciplined,” Petronio said.
He divides his students into groups to research questions. Each week the groups are required to post a written presentation by Saturday at midnight.
“There is no chance to put off studying and cram the night before a final exam,” Petronio said. “If the student doesn’t post, he or she doesn’t exist.”
Petronio said synchronous courses – meaning anytime, anyplace – are great for students because they don’t miss a class. One student participated in “classroom” discussions from a ballet company in Pennsylvania. Such courses, said Petronio, would work perfectly for student-athletes who travel during the semester – “or the harried business executive.”
This semester at URI, nursing instructor Jim Miller, who teaches human sexuality, has a student attending Springfield College in Massachusetts in his “class.”
Miller has taught human sexuality as a Web-based course for the past two years.
“It’s perfectly suited for a Web course,” he said. “The class meets the first week. Each member draws a fake name to use the rest of the course. That anonymity seems to promote honesty and openness. The level of sharing is incredible. I’ve set up chats four times a week and the conversations go on and on. I have taught human sexuality in the classroom for the past decade and no one wants to reveal anything.”
Deborah Burns taught the school’s first e-mail course. This semester, she is teaching a Web-based one.
“When I first started teaching virtual classes seven years ago, students had to be given instruction on how to use computers, and there were many technical difficulties because of the limitations of computer systems, dial-in lines, and a lack of access to computers (either on campus or at home),” Burns said. “Many people assume there is a lack of personal contact in virtual classes, but because students must participate to exist in a class, everyone participates all the time. There is a tremendous amount of interaction in virtual classrooms and lots of personal attention from the instructor.”
Burns said the best thing about the virtual classrooms is that the students “are writing all the time.”
