kuranamann: Online Education - Key Facts

Online Education ? Key Facts

This integrative review of literature on online educational best practices is intended to provide a quick reference for those interested in designing online educational courses and programs. This review may be helpful for institutions seeking optimal online course designs that foster quality learning experiences comparable in outcomes to traditional methods. Paramount in this review are the emphasis on consistency, cohesiveness, and assessment.

Industry Statistics

Analysis of the online education market reveals interesting trends. Although online students comprise a relatively small percentage of the total American higher education market, key indicators show tremendous growth potential (Roach, 2002). A recent study of chief academic officers, financed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, found overall online enrollments for U.S.-based institutions increased from 1.98 million in 2003 to 2.35 million in 2004, an 18.2 percent increase (Sloan Consortium, 2005). This growth rate is similar to the 19.8 percent found from 2001 to 2002 and the 22.9 percent found from 2002 to 2003. These growth rates are between 10 and 20 times the National Center for Education Statistics? (2005) expectations for growth in the entire United States higher education market. Most institutions have accepted online courses as an educational medium. For example, 62.5 percent of institutions that offer traditional undergraduate courses also offer undergraduate courses online (Sloan Consortium). Additionally, more than half of institutions believe online education is critical to the long-term strategy of their institution, with 74 percent of public institutions and 41 percent of private institutions agreeing (Sloan Consortium).

To date, it appears that the biggest winners in online education are the propriety institutions, even though they serve a minority of online enrollees (Sloan Consortium, 2005). However, for-profit institutions serve over 20 percent of students in online degree and certificate programs, and because of increasing name recognition and efficiency, will probably continue to make significant in-roads in the market (Roach, 2002). The Sloan survey supports this trend, finding that for-profits continue to have the largest growth in the online education component, and are expecting rates greater than 40 percent, dwarfing the 15 percent expected for public institutions and 22 percent expected for private, non-profits (Sloan Consortium). It is clear, then, that institutions wanting to build or sustain enrollments face nimble and differentiated competition from proprietary institutions.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The research body on online education is extensive, analyzing multiple facets of the medium. Since the intent of this review is to suggest standardized, best practices, there is no compelling need to fully develop the tangential literature. We present only a cursory review as a foundation to satisfy our primary intention.

The advantages and disadvantages of online education have been well documented in the literature. The anecdotal advantages include: graduating technically literate students (Chisholm and Carey, 2002), flexibility, ameliorating the projected instructor shortage (Green and Gentemann, 2001), alleviation of overcrowding, reduced spending on construction, bolstering enrollment, large profits, extending the reach of elite universities (Roach, 2002), a more friendly learning environment (Sullivan, 2001), ability to work at one?s own pace, reduced bias (Thornton, 1999), possibilities for reusing or reselling course materials (Manzo, 2000), access to the developing world and those geographically isolated (Durden, 2001; Symonds, 2001), reduction in costs associated with technology (Bruno, 1997), minimizing revenue loss due to transfer credits, increasing academic integrity by limiting transfer credits, improving graduation rates, allowing students to work according to their learning style (Benton, 2005), and reduction of costs associated with commuting and more demanding work (Jana, 1999).

The anecdotal disadvantages include: poor quality, lack of name recognition for some for-profits (Symonds, 2001), professor training costs, faculty resistance to change (Arnone, 2002; Manzo, 2000), financial aid constraints (Carnevale 2001; Symonds, 2001), lack of interactivity (Hereford, 2000), skepticism by employers (Carnevale, 2005), difficult medium for subjective course content, (Jana, 1999), online work loads and class size (Roach, 2002), technology gaps (Chisholm and Carey, 2002), high costs of entry (Gagne and Shepherd, 2001), administrative problems (Higgins, 1999), loss of unplanned interaction between faculty and students (Benton, 2005), loss of geographic competitive advantage (Strugatch, 1999), loss of scholarly control, and cannibalization of existing traditional programs (Mangan, 2001).

Conclusion

Considering the inevitable growth of online education, the constant need of business employees to ?re-tool? in the knowledge society, and the necessity of business programs to offer quality educational experiences, this is a critical and worthwhile endeavor.

There are several useful summaries of online education best practice. Swan (2003) synthesized several other researchers? work on principles of good habits in undergraduate and online education to arrive at a set of organizing principles for online developers and instructors (Janicki and Liegle, 2001; Chickering and Gamson, 1987). ?They include: