Online Education: where is it going? what should we know?

This is an interesting article I found on the future of online courses. The author did a survey to look at successes and failures of online courses in the past, then looks at what administrators are going to have to do to make online courses in the future successful.

Interesting Quotes from the Article:

"Online learning is an increasingly prominent and legitimate presence in higher education—nearly one third of full-time and part time students at nonprofit and for-profit institutions took one or more online courses in 2009." (PG.1)

 

"launching and supporting effective online courses and programs involves more than

simply migrating old course syllabi to the Internet." (pg. 3).

"Successful, quality online education requires a major investment training, instructional services and personnel, and student

services—to support those courses and programs." (Pg. 3)

"New data from the fall 2010 Managing Online Education Survey, sponsored by our two organizations, The Campus Computing Project and the WICHE Consortium for Educational

Technology (WCET), point to robust growth in online programs at many institutions across the country. Fully half of the survey participants report that online enrollments at their institutions grew by more than 15 percent over the past three years, and two-fifths expect online enrollments to jump
by more than another 15 percent over the next three years."(pg.3)

"the number of students taking at least one online course grew from 1.6 million in fall 2002 to over 5.6 million in fall 2009."(pg.3)

 

"Almost half (44 percent) of the participants in our Managing Online Education survey, typically the

senior operating officer for an institution’s online programs, said that their programs were profitable. In fact, more than 22 percent reported that profits—defined as total revenues minus all expenses—were better than 15 percent for the past academic year. Yet just as many of the respondents, 45 percent, reported that they did not know if their online programs were profitable this past academic year."(pg.3)

 

"What attributes, metrics, methods, and materials will adequately document the performance of each aspect and attribute of the rich mosaic of learning experiences that we want to provide for our constituencies? For example, is the institutional strategy for assessing online education similar to or different from the strategy for on-campus courses and programs?" (pg. 5)

Citation:

GreeN, KeNNeTh C., and Ellen Wagner. "online education: Where is it Going? What Should Boards Know?." TrusTeeship (2011).