UT studies online learning: Class via computer offers wider access, raises quality queries |
| UT studies online learning: Class via computer offers wider access, raises quality queries Posted: 22 Aug 2010 08:22 PM PDT Hundreds of students taking one of the University of Tennessee's most popular courses, remedial algebra, arrived last week to the first day of class — in their dorm rooms. For the first time the university will deliver half of its Math 119 sections, which enroll about 1,000 students each fall, online. 'It's a challenging course for us because in some sense, it's barely at the college level,' said Chuck Collins, a math professor in charge of the course. 'We've been putting a lot of resources into it without a lot of success … when it comes to matching students with their ability and doing it in a cost-effective way.' Cost, of course, is a motivating factor for the university, which will lose $112 million in funding next year when federal stimulus funds run out. That translates to fewer instructors, fewer course offerings and larger sections. At the same time, UT is trying to increase its graduation rates. Online learning is a way to do that — allowing students to take required courses at their own convenience and lending flexibility when scheduling the rest of their class load. Though online education offers potential for both financial savings and broader student access, it also leads to discussions of whether the quality is the same as in-class instruction. Chancellor Jimmy Cheek has repeatedly mentioned online learning as a potential way of accommodating popular and required courses that fill up fast, allowing the university to move students through their education more efficiently and, hopefully, on time. Even with the potential, UT is carefully considering its next move in online education, said Sally McMillan, vice provost for academic affairs. Though UT offers some graduate programs entirely online, undergraduate courses are more varied, and the responsibility for determining which courses might translate to the computer lies with the department and faculty. 'We are facing tightening budgets, and we're looking at doing things that are both efficient and effective,' she said. The math department is not saving money this year by offering Math 119 online. It's investing the same amount of money for instructors and software as it would for a traditional class — but the potential for savings does exists, said Collins. This is largely because the sections still meet once a week for a lab session with instructors. The school intends to create a baseline of information on how students do in online learning. It's delivering three online sections with three different types of software, with all Math 119 students, including the traditional in-class students, taking the same final exam. 'If we use the same amount of resources and then go look at the success rate, when we go forward and start making financial decisions next year, we have real information.' Learning from students In John Koontz's classroom, half of his students join the lecture from home. They listen to the lecture live, send questions in the form of instant messages and take quizzes from their computer. This synchronized method of delivering the same content at the same time to students in the classroom and at home has become, in some ways, research for Koontz, who has taught two courses with the dual methods. He's collecting data from the students, once randomly dividing up those who agree to participate in his pseudo-experiment and once letting them choose. At the end of the semester, both sets of students take the same final. Online students' performance 'wasn't any better or worse than the students who attended in the classroom,' said Koontz, who's continuing to collect data and may write a research paper in the future. While he thinks there's a place for online education, Koontz says he would still 'like to think there are advantages to being in direct contact, face to face.' This year, he said, he wants to give students a personality questionnaire created by a psychology professor before the class begins to determine if some students have personality traits more suitable to online learning. As a graduate student, Paimi Olsen created one of the first online courses offered at the University of North Carolina in 1995 — an American literature course limited to mostly text and links. Now she works with UT faculty to help them better engage students, including in online courses, as the assistant director of the Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center on campus. Often, she said, online learning caters better to older students who are more adept at being accountable for their own learning. 'An issue I ran into right away — and is an ongoing issue — is some students do very well and for some it's not a good idea,' Olsen said. 'Can you keep up with assignments, turn things in on time, do the reading and do it all on your own without actually going to the class? You have to be really responsible.' The question of whether students would learn at the same level in the classroom and online has been at the core of more than 1,000 research studies, said Vicky Phillips, chief education analyst at GetEducated.com, which evaluates online degrees from schools across the country. Though there's still not a straight answer, most studies show 'online education is as effective, if not more so, in terms of both learning and student satisfaction with that learning,' she said. Phillips' website judges each school and degree program on affordability, student satisfaction and public perception. In its research, Phillips said, the consumer group found that online degrees from public universities with a historical residential campus are far more credible and better received by professionals in the field than degrees from virtual universities. In Blacksburg, Va., Virginia Tech has created a brand within a brand: VTOnline. As a means of accommodating increasing enrollment, the school launched its first online graduate degree program in 2007 and branched out to create a separate portal to serve online students. The online division enrolled students in 7,300 credit classes, including students who were enrolled in more than one course online — a number that has steadily increased year over year since it began offering online classes in the mid-1990s. 'We have a lot of core curriculum courses and electives that all students need to graduate. We provide options if all in-class courses are full,' said Jenise Jacques, a spokeswoman for the school's Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning, which oversees the e-learning program. 'If they can't get in that semester, they don't have to sit out. The same teacher will also deliver the online version.' The school doesn't offer undergraduate degrees online purposefully, Jacques said, and instead has a mission of 'complementing' the traditional undergraduate curriculum. About 60 percent of students take an online course as an undergraduate. Future at UT Hybrid learning — that is, combining online learning with traditional classroom learning — particularly in public universities is the fastest-growing sector of online education, Phillips said. At UT, vice provost McMillan said she's not sure how big of a role online education will play in the future, especially given budget cuts. Online classes would not cost less in salaries because of the need for instructors, but they would allow more students to enroll online, opening up classroom space. 'We'll have to teach larger sections and make sure students have the classes they need to get through in four years,' McMillan said. The campus, though, is already using all of its large classrooms and doesn't have the resources to build more. 'We still have to be very careful about which classes we use for online courses,' she said. 'It depends on the discipline and the faculty who make those decisions on what ways we use online to help students to get through bottleneck courses and manage our resources more effectively.' Megan Boehnke may be reached at 865-342-6432.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Yahoo! News Search Results for online education degree To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment