'Distance learning' gets its close-up
— -- Hannah Cross, a marketing major at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, hasn't let anything derail her from her college degree — not having a baby, not having back surgery, not having to hold down a job.
The 22-year-old single mother plans to graduate on time this spring — because she can take classes online and fit her education around her life, instead of the other way around.
Cross says she often studies until midnight or 1 a.m. while her daughter sleeps.
"You have to do everything yourself because you don't have anyone feeding it to you," she says. But "I learn more this way. I have to read the book and do the work to understand it, because I don't have a professor talking about it to me."
Online education — also known as "distance learning" — has become an increasingly convenient way to get a college education, especially for students with jobs and families to support. Nearly 3.5 million students enrolled in online classes during the fall of 2006-07, according to the 2007 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, which surveyed more than 2,500 schools and released results last month. Over the past five years, the survey found, online enrollments have grown by an annual average of 21.5%.
Most colleges venturing online
Students taking online courses don't have to show up in class — or even be on campus. To glean a professor's insights, students often read lecture outlines online. Sometimes they download an audio or video file of a specific lecture. They read books on their own time, ask questions via e-mail, and complete assignments without much supervision.
At this point, most U.S. colleges offer at least some of their courses online, and an estimated 100 schools operate exclusively online. Beyond convenience, online schools aim to offer value: They routinely rely on adjunct faculty and charge less than half as much per credit hour as traditional universities do.
For all its technological innovations, distance education isn't new. In 1840, Sir Isaac Pitman, a London educator, challenged country dwellers to translate Bible verses into shorthand and ship results to his city office for grading.
That makes him the likely founder of distance education, according to Michael Lambert, executive director of the Distance Education and Training Council, a national accrediting body for distance education programs.
But even Pitman may not have been entirely original, Lambert says: Norwegians reportedly shipped assignments to and from far-flung villages almost 1,000 years ago.
Today, personal computers and fast expansion of broadband Internet access has turbocharged distance learning's renaissance.
More than two-thirds of all U.S. colleges and universities offer online courses, and 35% of schools offer programs that are entirely online, according to the Sloan survey, and 20% of the USA's 17 million college students say they have taken at least one course online.
Some faculty still skeptical
But as online education matures, the toughest obstacles to widespread usage reflect the same challenges that have dogged distance education since it began. According to the Sloan survey, the challenge is "the need for more discipline" among students. That's because some don't thrive in an environment where no one is around to check up on them.
"You have to be someone who doesn't mind studying at 10 o'clock at night at a kitchen table with a laptop, alone," Lambert says. "This is not for sissies. It's for really strong, self-starting people."
The second-biggest obstacle is another perennial thorn in the side of distance education advocates: faculty resistance. Just as professors have long questioned whether students learn as well via mail-order coursework as they do in a classroom, today's educators often doubt the merits of a system that renders their physical presence unnecessary. Just 33% of respondents to the Sloan survey said faculty at their institutions support the value and legitimacy of online learning; that's up from 28% in 2002.
"I'm not convinced by those who claim that it provides the same level of value-added knowledge that a traditional classroom does," says Philip Altbach, director of The Boston College Center for International Higher Education.
"I don't think the data is all that good yet, and as a traditionalist, I just wonder. I'm not saying it's hooey or a problem, but the jury is still a little bit out."
Despite such skepticism, universities of all stripes keep offering more courses online. That means greater competition for students, Lambert says, and "this is going to be good news for the consumer."
"When you have hot competition, they have to compete on more than just price," Lambert says. "They have to compete on quality, service and features."