As business becomes more global in scope, online education is being developed as a cost-effective vehicle for capturing information and training employees. As corporate teaching sites begin using network-based technology to deliver content, the pressure on traditional institutions of higher education to make similar changes increases.

Industry is not the only source of pressure forcing education to adapt. Within the post-secondary education community, there is increased competition for students. Those institutions with distance education programs have an advantage; they are not limited to enrolling students in their immediate geographic area. Other changes are reshaping the nature of education. Only one-fourth of the undergraduate population fits the traditional image: 18-22 years old, attending full-time, and living on campus. The rapidly growing student population is becoming older and more diverse, and they are demanding flexible schedules and off-campus learning opportunities. The pressure is clearly on higher education to change.

In an effort to respond, many colleges and universities now require their faculty to participate in some form of what they refer to as "distance learning" or "online education." These terms, which have been bandied about for some time, are used to describe everything from correspondence courses and classic television delivered lectures to email-based classes and web pages. The most common online activity in higher education today is the posting of a professor's lecture notes to the Web, something which shouldn't be called online education. A more appropriate term is a "web-enhanced" course. This method allows large numbers of students access to the information, but provides little or no opportunity for a collaborative classroom environment. While web-enhancing a course can be the first step in moving to more interactive distributed online education structures, there are many higher education faculty who have yet to grasp the full potential of online education.

Change is taking place in public schools as well. At one end of the spectrum are virtual schools with the objective of providing a complete curriculum of courses and a high school diploma to students who will never enter a brick and mortar school. At the other end of the spectrum, there are traditional schools who believe the role of technology is merely to enhance traditional courses held within the local school.

Given the phenomenal growth of online education, it is ironic that there is not yet a body of research that can tell us just how effective online education is. Its detractors paint all approaches with the same negative brush. But synchronous and asynchronous methods should not be linked together and discussed as online education. There is as much variety of approach within each of those categories as there is across them. Nevertheless, the growth in online education will take place with or without the research. Those of us developing it are looking at the anecdotal and practical feedback from the students and teachers as indicators of its success.

At The Concord Consortium, we run the Virtual High School, whose philosophy is somewhere between the extremes currently operating in public education. VHS, the largest virtual school in the public school arena, does not aspire to compete with the local school curriculum, but seeks to augment course offerings with subjects that are not generally available in high school, courses such as Connecting Mathematics and Science Through Technology, Environmental Ethics, and Ethnobotany.

VHS students consistently report feeling closer to and better acquainted with their online teachers than with their local teachers. I have heard similar reports from higher education faculty who teach online courses. We also have had reports that VHS has kept potential dropouts interested in school. VHS teachers say that their online teaching experiences have positively affected their face-to-face teaching. On the other hand, asynchronous course delivery, which is the VHS model, consistently has a 20% dropout rate which needs to be investigated. Hearing impaired students are currently participating successfully in VHS, but visually impaired students have hurdles to clear before they can join VHS. We are just beginning to explore the impact VHS is having on education. Clearly, the effectiveness of netcourses needs more research.

Another of our programs, INTEC, was proposed as an alternative to the summer institute version of professional development familiar to many teachers. INTEC's development was based on school improvement research and the direct experience of online instructors. The resulting seminar-based model requires small, local teams of teachers, who participate in occasional face-to-face gatherings, to also take part in substantial online discussion with participants in study groups at distant sites. Only the local study group meeting is synchronous (everyone meets at the same time). The online course segment is constructed around the seminar (netseminar) model as well, with participants taking an active role in discussions. To do this, activities require participants to work on the same content during the same time period, something we call scheduled asynchronous instruction.

INTEC has been successful in providing a quality professional development experience for a large number of teachers. There are significant online discussions taking place between teachers across the country. It is clear that the project is having an impact on teaching and learning. But INTEC has also experienced an attrition rate that is higher than the average for asynchronous courses. We need to do more research to address this important issue.

Both INTEC and VHS are on the bleeding edge of online course delivery. Many people watched and waited to see what would happen, while others joined in. Online education is here to stay, and we look forward to discovering its full potential for expanding educational opportunities.

Raymond Rose is vice president of The Concord Consortium and director of the Educational Technology Lab. Ray@concord.org

Copyright © 1999 The Concord Consortium, All rights reserved. Last updated: 29-May-99
Questions and comments regarding this site can be sent to webmaster@concord.org