Online-Course Enrollments Grow, but at a Slower Pace. Is a Plateau Approaching?

November 9, 2011, 3:00 am

Enrollment in online courses grew by more than 10 percent between fall 2009 and fall 2010, continuing a steady climb that dates back years, according to the Babson Survey Research Group’s annual survey of more than 2,500 higher-education institutions.

More than 6.1 million students took at least one online class during the fall 2010 semester, says the report, “Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States 2011,” formerly called the Sloan Survey of Online Learning. That’s an increase of 560,000 students over the previous year. An online course is now part of the college experience for 31 percent of all students.

Substantial as the recent growth has been—it far outpaced the 2-percent growth rate in higher education over all—this year’s enrollment rise paled beside the 21-percent surge reported in last year’s Sloan report.

“The slower rate of growth in the number of students taking at least one online course as compared to previous years may be the first sign that the upward rise in online enrollments is approaching a plateau,” the report speculates.

But Jeff Seaman, the report’s co-author, points out that last year’s numbers soared because of the poor economy “pushing up enrollments in general and online, in particular.”

This year’s survey also found:

At the program level, growth is uneven. A higher proportion of online programs at for-profit colleges report no growth than programs at public or private nonprofit institutions.
The disciplines of psychology and education “had a larger proportion of programs showing an enrollment decline over the 2010 to 2011 period than were reported last year,” according to the report. By contrast, engineering, which previously posted the highest proportion of programs with declining enrollments, “had a bit of a comeback this year, and it no longer leads in this dimension,” the report says.
An increasing number of programs in business and the social sciences are not experiencing enrollment rises.
Sixty-seven percent of academic leaders rated online education as the same or superior to face-to-face learning. That compares with 57 percent in the first report, published in 2003.
A steady minority—one-third of all academic leaders—continue to believe that online education is inferior to face-to-face education.
Fewer than one-third of chief academic officers feel their faculty “accept the value and legitimacy of online education. This percent has changed little over the last eight years.”

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cjones77

Although the ten percent growth of online students from 2009 to 2010 is almost half of the growth from the previous year, I believe that it is too early to say that online learning has reached a plateau. Online learning is still growing at a much faster rate than traditional classes. It will be interesting to see the entire Sloan report “Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States 2011.” From looking at the statistics you reported, the disciplines that were the most successful when online learning began have started to show some decline or leveling off. Other disciplines, such as sciences or engineering, that have been more difficult to put online are showing growth.

I believe that online learning will continue to grow, because online classes meet the needs of students that need more flexibility to complete their degree. There are many students that cannot attend face-to-face classes due to job or family obligations. However, at a certain point, the number of students taking online classes will probably level off. Just as there are students that thrive from online learning, there are still many other students that prefer the face-to-face instruction.
glorenzo

I totally agree with what cjones77 had to say, and I also think that there is a good number of working adults who are still unaware of what is available to them as prospective online learners (yes, I know that’s hard to believe, but just ask some friends who work outside of higher ed). Plus, many institutions that offer online degree programs are still not up to speed, or do not have the resources, to effectively promote what they offer, especially at the community college level. The other factor that I believe comes into play is the fact that many people today simply cannot afford to enroll in any course or program, regardless of the commonly applied notion that the poor-economy contributes to increased enrollments.
George Lorenzo
The SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends & Strategies
http://www.edpath.com/thesource.html
tgraham13

Are we going to ignore the relentless drumbeat of negativity from the Department of Education, the Senate, the Chronicle, the Times and virtually every newspaper in the country about distance education, which many conflate with proprietary education? Gee, I wonder why fewer students are enrolling?

It’s a momentary pause. Online works better than traditional. Hybrid works better than either. Resistance is futile, at least in the long run.
antiutopia

You know, people here should take seriously the fact that most of those who are actually teaching believe that online education is inferior to seated classes. Administrators are looking at money. Faculty are looking at the quality of teaching and how well the courses actually serve students. Nothing is inevitable. But I’ll repeat my previous points: we shouldn’t make claims about “online education” as a general phenomenon. We should talk about the different contexts for online education and discuss which are best and which are worst. Students who start out in a seated program and then move into hybrid and then fully online classes have a lot more chance of being successful online students than those who go straight into a fully online program right out of HS or after a number of years being outside the workforce. There are probably differences in the effectiveness across different disciplines too. I would like to see someone write about online education with these differences in mind, rather than lumping everything together.
http://twitter.com/JoceCavanaugh Joceyln Cavanaugh

My personal experiences teaching online support most of your conclusions. My discipline is highly visual, and I think the online versions of my courses are inevitably weaker as a result, despite access to some of the finest online course materials in the industry.
cjones77

antiutopia, I agree with you that we need to have a better understanding of which students are the most successful and the ones that struggle in online classes. Certain students are not going to do as well as others in online classes. Many of my online students take a mix of both online classes and face-to-face classes. I think that my students that are on campus and take both ts of classes typically to the best in online classes. However, I have a student that has taken two online classes from me, and she is currently living in South America. She is an excellent student, but I believe that she has had some previous college classes. I have also had some of my face-to-face students that struggle to come to class and turn in assginments on time take an online class with me. The one in particular that I am thinking of, didn’t complete the online class. He just did not have enough self-discipine to complete an online class.
antiutopia

cjones: Thank you for the reply. I’ve had some very good and some very poor online students. I was trying to describe a couple of specific student groups to limit my claims, though: students right out of high school and students returning to school after a number of years. Students who are able to read and follow detailed written instructions have the best chance of succeeding in an online program. But even a HS student with average skills will be below the skill and discipline level needed to be successful in an online program.
antiutopia

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cjones77

What is your opinion about the increasing trend of online classes for K-12 students? In my opinion, I do not feel that students below 9th grade should be taking a class entirely online. Younger students need interaction with the teacher and other students. I agree with you that most HS students do not have the discipline to handle an online class.
antiutopia

cjones:

I don’t have any experience in secondary ed. except by viewing their product. I’m skeptical like you, though. We’re not serving our students in seated HS classes. How are we doing to serve them in online classes when they haven’t developed reading skills?
theprez

So where’s the beef? What evidence is there that classroom-based, traditional pedagogy, in all its diversity and variety, is more effective than online education, in all of its manifestations. C’mon folks. There is no baseline from which to assume that our conventional classrooms are more effective. Perhaps they are, but there is a paucity of valid comparative research. Good teachers who know how to teach in either environment will produce results. Bad teachers will not. We’ve all sat through enough face-to-face courses to know that in some learning occurs despite the teacher.

To the degree that for-profit online enrollment has not increased as rapidly as in the past, could it have anything to do with the smear campaign directed at them? Why didn’t we see that as a possible explanation for the leveling off in their sector.
antiutopia

Dear theprez:

You’re thinking backwards. Resources have already been invested in traditional, seated education. It is what is in place now. There’s no burden of proof to prove that it’s effective, as its effectiveness and its faults are already apparent… everywhere. It is the model that has been followed since at least the School of Athens if not before — thousands of years. All human achievement and the education supporting it has been the product of “seated” education. Online education is an innovation never before seen, and the reasons for it are primarily economic. If you want us to accept online education -as a substitute for- seated classes, and motives for accepting that platform are primarily cost driven, then the burden of proof is on those supporting online education to demonstrate that online education is just as effective as seated education.

It’s simply not true that a good teacher in a seated classroom will be a good teacher in an online class. That’s frankly the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard about online education, and it’s clear to me that the person saying it has both little experience teaching in the classroom or online, or their experience was a long, long time ago. I have recent experience in both so can speak from that recent experience.

The teacher in a seated class depends upon their own physical presence in the classroom to communicate not only instructions but attitudes towards their students. Students with low reading ability understand -verbal- instructions much more easily than written instructions. The teacher of a seated classroom will usually provide both, so that his or her students have the benefit of both verbal and written instruction, the verbal instruction being accompanied by gestures and facial expressions that are all part of the act of communicating instructions. Furthermore, many instructions are given only verbally, some things off the cuff, and explanation is given beyond written instruction that aids understanding of the written instructions.

The online teach typically relies primarily on written instructions, with perhaps some supplement with verbal instructions and some with video. What’s rather stupid is that most LMS systems do not allow voice and video files to be uploaded to their servers, and I know of at least two online programs that don’t provide personal webspace for their instructors — so what are instructors supposed to do? Put your videos on YouTube and they become the property of YouTube. What happens is that most material is therefore in the form of PowerPoints or Word docs.

So the seated instructor needs to master presentation skills for a live audience, while the online instructor needs, essentially, to know how to master the presentation of a website. Furthermore, the online instructor needs to be able to consider -every detail- of all instructions so that students can rely primarily on these written instructions, which then have the danger of becoming overwhelming to students working at lower levels. So the online instructor needs to know how students will interact with the course website and feed them their material in bits and in steps.

This distinction between online and seated teaching returns us to my previous point, of course: there’s no point making general statements about “online education” without also talking about in what disciplines and at what levels these online classes are going to be taught.

Since the model for fully online degree programs is primarily adjunct instructors (over 90% perhaps) who are underpaid, overworked, and less qualified, and hired with little vetting and who teach with little oversight (ads I’ve seen for Program Chairs for online programs do not offer them course releases), then I think those who support online education are the only ones who need to answer the question, “where’s the beef?” The problem with this question is that, of course, the persons in a position to collect this data are financially motivated to skew the data, so there’s a problem with data collection to begin with. Thus we can only discuss this issue on the level of those with experience teaching in online environments and as observers of online programs. For the most part, fully online programs are run for the purpose of being cash cows for universities, many of them being run on a for-profit model.
212944

Actually, there is evidence by way of USDOE analysis to support theprez’s argument from last year:

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

This meta-analysis and review of online learning studies – about 1,000 in all – shows online learning to be effective as conventional classroom instruction (though hybrid is more effective than either).
212944

“Since the model for fully online degree programs is primarily adjunct instructors (over 90% perhaps) who are underpaid, overworked, and less qualified, and hired with little vetting and who teach with little oversight (ads I’ve seen for Program Chairs for online programs do not offer them course releases) …”

I’d be very interested in your sources for this, aside from “ads” you have seen.
antiutopia

As I said, theprez, I have experience in both seated and online programs, and job advertisements are legitimate ways of inferring how programs are run. When an ad for a program chair of an online degree program includes a 4/4 teaching load as part of the job responsibilities it’s pretty clear that online program has little oversight over the army of underpaid adjuncts upon which they rely to “deliver their product.”
antiutopia

From the study: “The most common subject matter was medicine or health care.”

Please. This study is useless, as it tells us what we already know: advanced students will do well in either online or seated settings. I’d like to see studies reviewing first and second year students, right out of high school with no prior seated, college-level instruction, and see how they do in fully online settings. Again, -who- is being taught -what subject- and -at what level- matters. Good students with two years of seated or hybrid instruction under their belts will be good students in fully online classes too. I’ve seen that myself. I’m very worried about lesser-abled students right out of high school, who do not do well.

This whole conversation is BS, however, as the real problem is that powerful interests in the US would rather spend middle class tax dollars on tax cuts for the rich and on overseas wars than on effective education provided by well-trained and decently-supported instructors. This argument is about money and nothing else, not about education. ”theprez” doesn’t care about delivering a good education: just about paying adjuncts with Master’s degrees $1800/class so he can continue to make $175,000/yr.