Survey: Do resident college students want to take courses online?

First, let me say that I work at a medium/smallish public college in New Jersey. The College of New Jersey is very selective. If you walk the campus you will get the impression that you are on an intimate private college. Over 60% of the students live on this very walking campus. Distance learning. or eLearning, has not been a strategic initiative. The college does utilize a learning managment system and offers a limited number of blended courses in the winter and suummer sessions. The faculty and students have been very committed to the "traditonal" face to face faculty/student relationship.

Here is where the surprise comes in. In my annual fall technology survey I asked students "Would you consider taking a totally on-line course during the fall or spring semester, if they were available?" Of the 844 students responding 62% said yes! This was a bit of a surprise because the overall tone I had picked up on around campus has been that "we don't do that here. We are committed to the traditonal classroom experience." I also asked students if they would consider taking a blended course or totally on-line course during the summer or winter sessions. Of the sample 8% said they would be interested in taking a blended course during the shorter sessions and 15% said they would be interested in taking a totally online coure in January or over the summer.

Let's step back and look at the larger numbers. TCNJ has about 6500 undergraduate enrolled. Exptrapolating the percentages this would mean that approximately 4030 students would like to take a fall/spring course totally on-line. Based on an average load of 16 credit hours and 4 credits per course, this means that perhaps 500 course sections could be offered on-line every semester. This is about 25% over the totally sections taught. What does this mean for classrooms needed, building support, utilities, and other infrastructure costs. This could also reduce the amount of on-campus needed for adjunct faculty and even effect faculty parking! As colleges struggle to maintain, and even build more, facilities what does this mean for the total cost of instruction and services. What does it mean for the budget, the number of support personnel needed, and ultimately tuition? Hmm. Worth thinking about.

Looking at the interest in January and summer session courses we could guestimate the 22% of the same 6500 students, or 1430 students, might take a class if it were offered totally or partially online. At roughly $2,000 per course, this could be up to $285,000 in potentially lost revenue. Since some blended courses are currently offered now, its hard to say exactly how much revenue is lost.

So we know that eLearning courses require less infrastructure and probably fewer staff to support physical classrooms. We can also at least see that even with minimal promotion, there is some lost revenue. With some promotion and prehaps the creation of certificate or other programs, this could grow significantly. I am in no way throwing stones at my employer. No way. At my last instution there was prehaps more eLearning going on, but there was not strategic direction or analysis done to see where costs could be cut and perhaps additonal revenue generated. I think community colleges (some at least) are much more attuned to the market than the traditonal four year residential colleges. Its probably time for many public colleges to at least dig into the possiblities.

So what role will IT play in teaching and learning in 5 years?

So what role will IT play in teaching and learning in 5 years? Now that's an interesting question. I guess to even start address this question you have to take a big step back and look at who will higher education be serving in 5 years and in what will delivery systems be like.

Who will we be serving? Look at who we are serving now. At community colleges we serve working adults and younger students with specific career goals or a desire to transfer to four year schools. This number has always been large, but will get larger with a continued need to train and retrain for careers. The more traditonal 18-22 year old student bachelor's degree seeking is not going away. At many public colleges the applicant numbers are generally strong, although some surveys show declines particularly at four year private colleges. Students and parents feel that a bachelors degree is a necessity. At private four years colleges the applicant numbers are mixed with smaller less famous schools struggling a bit to fill their classes and more elite colleges doing well in this area. Graduate school enrollments are declining according to the New York Times . It probably safe to say that this will not improve a great deal in the next five years. What we will see is probably an environment where people want to go back to sschool, but they have more critical issues to address. Layoffs of part-time students, parents or spouses has something to do with the decline, but so does the general uncertainy about investing in anything. Even if you have a job, will you have one next week? Will this still be the case in five years? Maybe.

So what role will technology play down the road a bit? I think for the 18-22 year residential student, things will not change dramatically. This faculty in this space has totally embraced in-class technology, but sadly many just use PowerPoint. There are a few innovators, but these are the few exceptions. We will see more blended courses (mix of traditonal lecture and web content including audio/video) and some additonal flipped courses (pre-recorded lectures presented online before face to face classes). The college faculty of today, in this environment still seem resistent to new modes of teaching. Blended learning and flipped courses will do very well at community colleges where the students are often older and have jobs or family responsibilities. Tech assisted courses will be a major attrraction for these students who value flexibility. I am curious to see how MOOCs (massive open online courses) will do. I am expectng that these will not offer a challenge to more traditonal programs, but they will provide access to under served groups and will be profitable. I cannot imagine someone doing an entire degree using the MOOC option. I am VERY curious to see how companies like StraighterLine will do. Straighter line offers general education courses for a monthly membership fee of $99. They have a number of accredited colleges that will take their courses in transfer. This will have great appeeal to the adult learner who needs flexibility or wants to "catch up" enroute to a degree. When you start looking broadly at the global community of learners, you have to wonder how programs like the University Of The People will do. Free college degrees for the financially challenged? Wow.

Graduate education will change quite a bit. The costs have risen and most employers are not willing to subsidize it. Going full-time is hard because of the costs and graduate assistantships will be hard to get. If the country needs for advanced degrees in the science or technology ares, there will have to be more financial aid. The return on investment for a graduate degree is just not there. For those who do go to graduate school part-time online, there will be many options. There are many online degree programs and these are not nearly as unacceptable as they once were. Colleges that are not developing online graduate programs may find themselves with few or no students in the next few years.I think this will be particularly true of the non-research colleges that offer masters in education, the liberal arts, or business. Many of these programs will dissappear.

So as we look down the road a few years I think we will see few changes on the four year undergraduate college/university, although there may be a few less of them. Graduate education will move online for all but heavily research based degrees. Enrollments will generally continue to fall. The most interesting area will be the options open to part-time learners in the North America and the online options for potential learners in the third world. Degrees and advanced education for this group will soar, thanks to the internet and growing connectivity. The landscape will change pretty quickly as more education is needed in order to find the few "good jobs" out there, but cost and the lack of flexibility of traditonal models are major obstacles.

(Special thanks to Educause Live for some of the info about alternative higher education providers.)