Students are taking more online classes at Ball State University and across the country because of increased convenience, flexibility and number of courses offered.
The number of students taking online classes is increasing because more people have access to the Internet, Jeff Seaman, chief information officer and survey director for The Sloan Consortium, said. His organization helps improve the quality and amount of online programs.
He said students taking online courses are older than the traditional 18 to 22 year olds and are more likely to have family or employment responsibilities.
Nationwide, the number of students enrolled in online courses has increased by almost 40 percent, according to a report released by The Sloan Consortium.
"The first survey was to set a benchmark, so we could then understand changes over time," Seaman said. "We set out to understand two things: how many persons were learning online and what did academic leaders think about online instruction."
The four-year trend shows enrollment in online courses continues to grow, Seaman said. He said when the first survey came out in Fall 2002, there were 1.6 million students taking at least one online course. The most recent figure showed about 3.18 million were enrolled online for Fall 2005.
Why students do it
Ball State University has offered online degree programs since at least 1996, Diane Watters, marketing manager for the School of Extended Education, said. Students can earn associate degrees of science in business administration-management, of arts in general arts and a bachelor's in general studies.
Staci Davis, director of on-site and independent learning programs, said students generally sign up for core curriculum courses or prerequisites.
Schools offer online courses because the programs provide learning opportunities for students who cannot attend face-to-face classes, Seaman said.
"Being able to get a degree in the 'any time, any where' mode of online is often the only option for them," he said.
Davis said students attend online courses for the flexibility of not having to attend classes at a certain time. Students can log into Blackboard on their own time and do the assignments at their own pace, although they have to complete the assignments by the end of the 10 weeks or nine months, depending on the program length, she said.
"If a student wanted to take Comm 210, for example, they would still have some materials they would have to mail," she said.
Students would tape-record their speeches or submit a video of them giving their speeches, Davis said. Students can also submit assignments online, she said.
Online Involvement At Ball State
The Ball State School of Extended Education offers a nine-month independent learning program and a ten-week fast track program, she said. The independent learning program has about half of its classes online and allows students to work at their own pace in a nine-month period. The fast track program has all of its classes online and students have to finish their work within the 10 weeks.
Davis said registration for the online independent learning programs is increasing. The online independent learning programs were started in 2005, she said, and offer the entire core curriculum. Students must also complete two minors that the school of extended education developed.
"We also offer summer courses, where the online enrollment has almost doubled," Davis said. "One of the goals was to help students who have to go home for the summer still work through independent learning."
By 2007, she hopes all of the independent learning courses will be offered online, she said.
While the report showed most online students were undergraduates, more graduate-level students are enrolled online than in traditional courses.
Online courses for the 2005-06 academic school year had 2,825 enrollees. That year, 167 online courses were offered with 2,239 students enrolled in them, Watters said.
Jim Flowers, professor and director of online education in the Department of Technology, said the department's two master's degree programs skyrocketed in enrollment numbers. He said offering online courses gave an advantage because of different perspectives from students around the country and world. Indiana does not require a master's degree for education, so Flowers said Ball State can service a greater population of students.
"I have graduate students with face-to-face interaction, but the graduate students who are online are students who have already done teaching with few directly out of college," he said. "These students have already established houses and families and are able to provide a different perspective to things."
Statewide
Dennis McElhoe, Purdue's director of continuing education and conferencing, said Purdue began offering online courses in the 1999-00 academic school year with two enrolled students. Now, more than 4,700 students are enrolled in the courses, he said.
"Most of the students take the courses because they want to graduate within a time frame and the courses they need to take might not be offered during a particular semester," he said. "We really see seniors who might only need one more class to fulfill their graduation requirements."
Indiana University had 40 graduate-level online courses in the school of education during the 2005-06 academic school year, Sara Gibson, coordinator of student and course support, said. The number of students enrolled were not counted, she said.
The university had 83 undergradate online courses and 44 high school online courses as well, Lisa Denlinger, executive director of marketing, said. Last year, 1,917 Indiana undergraduates were enrolled in the courses, compared to 1,734 the previous academic school year, she said.
"We offer high school courses and a diploma," Denlinger said. "We have kids in the country and world who take those courses to supplement the classes at their high schools. Students can also earn a high school diploma through us at a distance."
Denlinger attributed the increase in enrollment to students' growing sophistication of computers and the Internet.
What online courses mean for universities
The report also showed about 58.4 percent of all institutions agree online education is critical to universities' long-term strategies. Seaman said universities will have to provide more options for students who cannot attend a campus-based program. However, he said he did not see online courses replacing face-to-face interaction. The two would have to co-exist.
Davis said market demand shows online courses are beneficial. She said the demand is driving universities and courses to go online because if not, they will miss a huge student market.
"Students can access programs and get a lot of the information they would miss if they did not have that opportunity," she said. "Unless Ball State takes a huge turn in its mission and its goals to primarily focus on on-campus students, online courses should continue to be a supplemental program that captures students and markets that can't get to campus for whatever reason."
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