Telecommuting Education: A New Model for K-12 and Higher Ed

Online education expands for U.S. need, awaits innovation

2010-02-20T10:41:00.000-08:00

By Andrew Stern, Reuters
10/4/2009

CHICAGO — When Janice Barnwell decided to boost her career by obtaining a master's degree in business, the working mother chose an online university because of the convenience and the low cost.

The 44-year-old's educational experience exceeded her expectations, and her new employer paid for her to take four more courses online to sharpen her skills.

"At first I was very intimidated (by taking classes remotely). It's something I've never done," said Barnwell, who works as a wealth management liaison. "But it quickly changed for me because the interaction I had online with my classmates and professors felt real."

The online education sector grew 13% last year and had been growing at about 20% in previous years. Nearly one in four students take at least some college courses online, up from one in 10 in 2002. Two million students, most older than the traditional 18-22 year-old undergraduates, take all their courses online and two million more take one or more online course.

President Barack Obama pledged $500 million for online courses and materials as part of a multi-pronged plan aimed at expanding access to college.

Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults have a college degree, fewer than in many other industrialized nations. Only about 40% of Americans who start college graduate. The price of higher education, which rises by an average of 8% a year, contributes to the high dropout rate.

"All along that education pipeline, too many people ... are slipping through the cracks. It's not only heartbreaking for those students; it's a loss for our economy and our country," Obama said in a recent speech.

Jeff Conlon, chief executive of Kaplan Higher Education with some 59,000 online students, said traditional colleges could not meet Obama's goals for higher education.

"Obama wants to make us first again by 2020," he said.

"In order to do that, we need to create 63 million college graduates over that period. The higher education system as constructed will come up 16 million degrees short. There's not capacity in the system."

Proponents of online education cite a recent Department of Education study that concluded course work is better absorbed online than material presented in live classrooms.

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Among the heavily marketed for-profit online educators, the leader is the University of Phoenix, a unit of Apollo Group Inc, whose enrollment rose 22% to 420,700 students in the quarter ending May 31, with revenues rising 26%.

Both Kaplan, a unit of Washington Post Co, and Phoenix are accredited universities. Employers increasingly see degrees earned online as equal to those received from brick-and-mortar schools, experts say. Some managers believe students who earn degrees online while also holding a job are likely to exhibit more self-discipline and determination.

Bells and whistles?

Richard Garrett of Boston consultant Eduventures Inc. said interest in online education may have plateaued for now, awaiting innovations that will transform the experience beyond screen imitations of the brick-and-mortar curriculum.

"We're still at a pretty rudimentary stage," Garrett said, noting educators rarely employ video, unique links, or other technological innovations.

"Will it be games? Will it be simulations? Will it be social networking? Will it be something we haven't yet come across?" he said.

TO FRIEND OR NOT TO FRIEND? College admissions in the age of Facebook

No one has yet figured out how nursing students can practice drawing blood online, Conlon said. But there have been enhancements such as virtual laboratories where budding chemists can conduct experiments that might be too dangerous or too costly in the real world.

Most online course offerings tend toward vocational subjects like business, legal and health care training. Students needing hands-on experience go to Kaplan's campuses or its partners.

Most Kaplan classes are capped at 25 students because faculty can be subjected to communication overload. Students who might have been intimidated to speak up in classrooms often find their voice online.

Professors, most with doctorates, are hired for their teaching ability and not for their research, Conlon said.

The cost at Kaplan for a four-year college degree is around $65,000, compared to up to $150,000 or more at a private college. Online library access is provided by the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

By studying online, Barnwell saved on the time and travel to the university nearest her New Jersey home. Online tuition was less than $30,000, one-third the cost of the university.

Roughly half of the 4,500 U.S. brick-and-mortar colleges and universities now have online programs. Some have proven so popular that schools have had to restrict enrollment by on-campus students because they were taking slots away from off-campus students, said Jeff Seaman, who led a survey on the topic for the Sloan Consortium.

Online education is also making inroads in schools, with one million U.S. elementary and high school students, or some 4% of the total, learning online.

Some take remedial or advanced placement courses not available at their schools, and some are being home-schooled or live in isolated rural areas.

"You're able to learn at your own pace and you also can have help whenever you need it from the teacher," said Christopher Cox, 12, a child actor in Columbia, Maryland.

Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen predicted half of kindergarten through high school students will attend school online within the next decade.

This worries people like Laurie Fendrich who wrote a response to a Washington Post article on the subject.

"If we want our kids to end up sitting alone in isolated little rooms when they're 18 and 20, staring at computer screens instead of facing other real human beings, thinking in a way that turns thought into nothing but bits of information ... we could insert them into comfortable little cocoons in their homes from the age of, oh, say, seven."

U.S. Department of Education Study Finds That Good Teaching can be Enhanced With New Technology

2010-02-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

Published By The U.S. Department of Education
Posted 2009

Providing further evidence of the tremendous opportunity to use technology to improve teaching and learning, the U.S. Department of Education today released an analysis of controlled studies comparing online and face-to-face instruction.

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified over 1,000 empirical studies of online learning. Of these, 46 met the high bar for quality that was required for the studies to be included in the analysis. The meta analysis showed that “blended” instruction – combining elements of online and face-to-face instruction – had a larger advantage relative to purely face to face instruction or instruction conducted wholly online. The analysis also showed that the instruction conducted wholly on line was more effective in improving student achievement than the purely face to face instruction. In addition, the report noted that the blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions.

“This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We must take advantage of this historic opportunity to use American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to bring broadband access and online learning to more communities.

“To avoid being caught short when stimulus money runs out, school officials should use the short-term federal funding to make immediate upgrades to technology to enhance classroom instruction and to improve the tracking of student data,” Duncan added. “Technology presents a huge opportunity that can be leveraged in rural communities and inner-city urban settings, particularly in subjects where there is a shortage of highly qualified teachers. At the same time, good teachers can utilize new technology to accelerate learning and provide extended learning opportunities for students.”

Few rigorous research studies have been published on the effectiveness of online learning for K-12 students. The systematic search found just five experimental or controlled quasi-experimental studies comparing the learning effects of online versus face-to-face instruction for K-12 students. For this reason, caution is required in generalizing the study’s findings to the K-12 population because the results are for the most part based on studies in other settings, such as in medical, career, military training, and higher education.

“Studies of earlier generations of distance and online learning courses have concluded that they are usually as effective as classroom-based instruction,” said Marshall “Mike” Smith, a Senior Counselor to the secretary. “The studies of more recent online instruction included in this meta-analysis found that, on average, online learning, at the post-secondary level, is not just as good as but more effective than conventional face-to-face instruction.”

The study was conducted by the Center for Technology and Learning, SRI International under contract to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Policy and Program Studies Service, which commissioned the study.

The full report can be found here.

(republished from US News & World Report)

Western Governors University: Personal Experience

2010-02-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

I am currently attending Western Governors University. I'll be finished with my degree in education (B.A., Interdisciplinary Studies k-8) in the fall.

I got involved at WGU when a mentor from my community college said that I'd either have to move to go to university or I could look for a degree on-line. My husband and I own a house in our medium-sized city in Washington and we have two children, so moving wasn't an option. When I looked carefully at on-line universities I thought about University of Phoenix, but ultimately I was pulled in by the programs, pricing and story of WGU.

"WGU was founded by the governors of 19 U.S. states. At no other time in the history of higher education have the governors of several states joined together to create a university. WGU is also supported by over 20 major corporations and foundations who believe in WGU’s commitment to producing highly competent graduates." (WGU)

WGU fit with my life and budget, and I found that I benefited greatly from their model. Their model is self-paced, individualized instruction. Instead of many instructors, one for each class, each student is assigned one mentor who stays with the student until graduation. This person serves as the ultimate resource, helping the student find what they need at the university. There are instructors who oversee course content and chat groups and who are available for a question, but I have found that the resources for each course are so well-designed that I have rarely needed to contact one.

I have learned much from my studies at WGU. One of the things I've benefited from most was my new ability to be self-directed in my learning. I will not be fed information at a lecture I'm only moderately interested in, I must discover this information on my own.

WGU is unique in that they only offer degrees that are needed in the market place. You won't be able to get your B.A. in English from them. They have an education department, a business department, an I.T. department and a nursing department and that's it. There's no self-designed degrees or alternate plans of study. Probably having these select plans of study makes WGU more manageable and affordable. Whatever it is, it's working. They're growing at leaps and bounds, and it's cheap. Dirt cheap. I pay under 3,000 per 6 month semester.

A New Begining: New blog for the modern world of on line education

2010-02-19T14:45:00.001-08:00

My experience with college is not a unique one. I am married with a home and family and cannot move to attend University. Were I in a position or location to attend a traditional university I my time to sit in a classroom listening to lectures would be severely limited by my motherly and teaching responsibilities. So many of us need or want to finish school and are limited by our equally pressing needs to make a living or take care of our children. I'm glad that the on-line, we'll call it "e-schooling" revolution is conveniently taking place now when we can all make use of it.

Not only are on-line schools becoming more plentiful, they're also becoming more respectable. On-line education is able to offer a new model to it's students, both higher ed and k-12, the individualized education plan. One that is so popular with Montessori and homeschooling circles.

I propose that this blog be a place to post news and details about the e schooling movement. I detail my own eschooling journey from educated to educator here as well. I hope to provide information and interviews with educators and students as my time and research permit.

Telecommuting Education: A New Model for K-12 and Higher Ed

Online education expands for U.S. need, awaits innovation

U.S. Department of Education Study Finds That Good Teaching can be Enhanced With New Technology

Published By The U.S. Department of EducationPosted 2009

Western Governors University: Personal Experience

A New Begining: New blog for the modern world of on line education

Published By The U.S. Department of Education
Posted 2009