Ball State's online educational program has gained national credibility through the U.S. and World Report's inaugural "2012 Top Online Education Program" ranking.
The program had four top-20 rankings in the categories of student services and technology for online bachelor's degree programs, faculty credentials and training for online graduate programs in business, admission selectivity for online graduate programs in nursing and student services and technology for online graduate programs in education.
Jennifer Bott, assistant provost for learning initiatives, said she was proud to see the program had ranked in all four categories of the U.S. and World Report's ranking.
"I think that's just a testament to the quality of our undergraduate and graduate programs," she said. "These rankings really help students, parents and faculty to determine which programs are high quality."
Technology and work with different departments has helped to make the online courses easier in some ways for students, Bott said.
"I really believe that in various cases, online courses are harder than their face-to-face counterparts, and in some cases they're identical," Bott said. "We have amazing technology that can help eliminate the barrier of distance now, so in many cases those programs are just as good in quality as their face to face counterparts."
Joel Whitesel, associate director of online and distance education programs, said Ball State has had an online program for more than 10 years, with graduate business programs extending to almost 20 years, and offers about 180 courses just for the undergraduate program. About 6,800 students, both graduate and undergraduates, enrolled in online courses last academic year.
Ball State recently made the undergraduate online courses the same prices as regular on-campus courses, Whitesel said, making it more accessible for students. The change of price was implemented this fall.
"If you are an on-campus student and you want to take an online class, you are now able to do that without having to treat it with a different pricing structure as it was before," he said.
In the past, online programs have helped students or faculty who don't have time for regular on-campus courses or are not close enough to campus, but there have been more on-campus students taking online classes in the last few years, Bott said.
"One of the big changes that we will see is that we are going to be continuing to serve that off-campus market and the new programs that we will create will meet the greater external market needs as well as the internal needs," she said.
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