Junior elementary education major Stacey Greene leans back and puts her bare feet up on her desk. She grabs a handful of popcorn, and she’s ready for class.
Though she’s not sitting in a lecture hall, she’s still earning credits. And she’s just one of many students learning in a virtual classroom.
Online courses are increasing in popularity thanks to their accessibility, the troubled economy and students’ technology savvy, said Chip Cassano, spokesman for the University of Maryland University College, which has been offering online classes since 1994 and offers 27 online-only bachelor’s degrees and 17 master’s degrees. And these online-only programs may continue to gain prominence, thanks to a massive federal education spending package that passed the House of Representatives on Sunday night.
The proposal dedicates $500 million over the next decade to creating open-access online courses as part the American Graduation Initiative — President Barack Obama’s goal to achieve the highest international graduation rates — and aims to create an “online skills laboratory” for students to take for credit through community colleges or other institutions. The investment in online courses, a small slice of the $61 billion total education package, comes from money saved by streamlining the federal student loan program.
to take for credit through community colleges or other institutions. The investment in online courses, a small slice of the $61 billion total education package, comes from money saved by streamlining the federal student loan program.
Although the mechanics of the program are still unclear, “however the initiative unfolds … it is important that the courses be well-designed, that they be well-delivered and otherwise supported, that they be convertible to academic credit, and that students have some guidance about how courses might fit into a degree plan if a degree is their objective,” UMUC Provost Gregory von Lehmen said.
Online courses can be as or more effective than traditional in-person classes, according to a Department of Education-mandated study by SRI International — an independent research institute.
And some said online classes can have distinct advantages over in-person ones.
In recent years, the university was criticized for low scores on the annual NCAA Graduation Success Rate Report, a measure that tracks student athletes’ graduation rates. With more online course offerings, these athletes could complete degree requirements more easily by taking courses online in time not already filled with practices and competitions.
Offering more online courses could also help mitigate the effect of a strained state budget on already overburdened academic departments facing shrinking resources.
“For brick-and-mortar institutions, online education offers a way to scale up operations to meet increased demand at a marginal cost that is lower than that which would be necessary to add physical infrastructure,” von Lehmen said, adding that expanding online resources is a step in the right direction toward the Obama administration’s graduation initiative.
“Depending on the scale at which online education is offered, the marginal costs may still be considerable for an institution making the transition from face-to-face to online course offerings,” he said.
The majority of courses offered at UMUC are online-only. Cassano said at UMUC, which last year enrolled more than 196,000 students worldwide in classes online, the flexibility of online courses continues to draw in more and more students.
“Our classes are offered asynchronously, that is you don’t have to sign on at the same time,” he said. “You may arrange a chat or conference, or if you can only sign in at 2 in the morning, that’s no problem.”
Participation also can be controlled more effectively online, Cassano added, because uploading answers is usually required and “students aren’t able to hide in the back of the classroom.”
Although some students in online courses at this university said they enjoy the convenience of having a classroom at their fingertips, they said they aren’t quite sold on the merits of an online education.
“It’s hard to keep track of things and remember to do the work,” Greene said. “Actually being there is so much better. If it’s online, you don’t get to meet the teacher; they don’t get to know your face.”
Sophomore history major Brendan McCormick, who took an upper-level history course he needed last winter session, agrees the course format interfered with his study.
“If you needed to ask your peers a question, you couldn’t really do that because you don’t know anyone who’s in your class,” he said. “When you have to log on and listen to some lecture … you’re not going to want to keep doing it.”
Some classes adapt better than others to the online format, Cassano said, resulting in better performance. In language courses, for example, he said the online environment allows students to review a little longer and build confidence before posting a sound clip.
Even with technological advances linking teacher to student, like WebTycho — a UMUC-developed course management system similar to Blackboard — Cassano acknowledged there are difficulties that can arise.
“Online education is a different sort of educational paradigm, and I think that the typical online student needs to be a bit more organized, a bit more focused, a bit more self-motivated than the student who is attending in class,” he said. “They don’t have a teacher looking over their shoulder.”
gulin@umdbk.com
