Last week I attended the first part of the Institute for Emerging Leardership in Online Learning offered by Penn State and the Sloan Consortium. 33 faculty, administrators, and designers came together for an emersive (and intensive) three day workshop based on Sloan-C's Five Pillars of Quality Online Education (Access, Learning Effectiveness, Cost Effectiveness, Faculty Satisfaction and Student Satisfaction). It was a great opportunity to see how other institutions were developing or developed successful online programs as well as hear the challenegs they faced and lessons learned along the way. I thought I would share a few statistics from "Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008" by I. Elaine Allen, Ph.D. and Jeff Seaman, Ph.D.- Sloan-C
- Almost 4 million students took atleast one online class during the Fall 2007 semester. This is a 12% increase from the previous year.
- The 12.9% increase of online courses exceeds the 1.2% growth rate of the higher education student population.
- Online student distribution per course is very similar to those of traditional face to face courses.
- 20% of all higher education (U.S.) students took atleast one online course during the Fall 2007 semester.
- Based on the data provided in the report, enrollments are expected to increase with no signs of slowing.
- Seven of the eight major disciplines (Business, Liberal arts and sciences, general studies, humanities, Health professions and related sciences, Education, Computer and information sciences, Social sciences and history, and Psychology) each showed between a 25% - 35% penetration rate of online courses/programs.
- The top three motivators for faculty teaching online are; meet student needs for flexible access (62%); best way to reach particular students (56%); and presonal/professional growth (32%).
