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Digital Tweed: Mapping the Terrain of Online Education
4/1/2005
These data confirm that online education (single courses or complete degree programs) is now clearly part of the evolving, 21st century landscape of American higher education.
Beyond the enrollment data, the Sloan-C reports provide important information about how chief academic officers assess the role and value of online education for their institutions. Just over half of the 1,170 respondents participating in the 2004 Sloan-C survey, typically chief academic officers, agree that “online education is critical to long-term [institutional] strategy.” In contrast, just 12.3 percent strongly disagree (23.3 percent among private institutions). Similarly, just two-fifths (40.6 percent) of the survey respondents strongly agree that “students are at least as satisfied with an online course” as compared to a “traditional” course (highest in private, for-profit institutions: 64.1 percent; lowest in private institutions, at 28 percent).
Asked to compare learning outcomes, roughly half (50.6 percent) of the Sloan-C survey respondents seem to feel that learning outcomes in online education are “about the same” as in traditional, face-to-face courses. Almost two-fifths (38.5 percent) believe current online offerings are inferior to traditional courses, while a tenth (11 percent) believe online to be superior. Perhaps not surprisingly, academic officers in private/for-profit institutions seem more positive about learning outcomes than their peers in other sectors: 82.6 percent view current online courses to be the same as or superior to traditional classes, compared to 75.4 percent in public institutions and 43.8 percent in private institutions.
Interestingly, but perhaps not surprising, academic officers across all sectors believe that the quality of online courses will improve over the next three years: Almost a third (30.5 percent) believe that online courses will be superior to traditional, classroom-based courses in three years, up from a tenth (11 percent) who view online courses as superior today. Officials in private/for-profit institutions are most optimistic about the opportunity to enhance the quality and outcomes of online courses: 58 percent see outcomes in online courses as being superior to in-class offerings in three years, compared to 37.5 percent in public institutions and just 20.9 percent in private institutions.
Admittedly, I’ve drawn selectively from the Sloan-C data, which is snapshot of the landscape of online learning. The Sloan-C data document past and prospective growth, and confirm that online courses and programs are now, without question, core to institutional strategy across all sectors. Too, the Sloan-C data suggest some critical “reach & grasp” issues in the area of student satisfaction, course quality, and learning outcomes. Although quality has always been difficult to define, let alone measure, academic officers participating in the Sloan-C survey acknowledge that online (and by extension, distance) education generally “has some distance” to go before it provides comparable outcomes to more traditional, classroom-based offerings. Future editions of the Sloan-C survey will certainly help those of us in the campus community who are interested in online learning understand the evolving terrain, tracking numbers for growth while also addressing the important nuances that involve quality and outcomes.
Kenneth C. Green, visiting scholar at The Claremont Graduate University, is the founding director of The Campus Computing Project, a comprehensive, continuing study of the role of information technology at higher education institutions in the United States (www.campuscomputing.net).
View more articles by Kenneth Green.
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