From the issue dated June 13, 2003
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How to Succeed in Distance EducationBy going after the right audience, online programs build a viable industryBy DAN CARNEVALE and FLORENCE OLSEN Think of it as "the sweet spot." It's the segment of the American population
It's working professionals who want to advance their careers by taking courses part time. It's executives who travel frequently but want to earn graduate degrees. It's parents who want to finish their undergraduate work without missing their kids' Saturday soccer games. Tapping that sweet spot in the national demographic has helped many nonprofit and for-profit distance-education providers become big success stories in the past few years, filling online programs with hundreds of thousands of students. Many of them would not be in college if online learning were not an option. People who monitor the distance-learning market say it can expand for years without doing anything differently -- and that it could grow even faster if providers identified and pitched programs directly to employers and employees in specific industries who are eager for advancement. Strong Marketing Aiming for that sweet spot is one hallmark of a successful distance program, say distance-education experts. But a program that attracts and keeps students is also likely to rely on strong marketing and to remain close to the core mission of the institution behind it. And that institution, the experts add, has almost certainly invested in training its faculty to teach online and in a reliable technology infrastructure. When online education began garnering widespread attention in the 1990s, some pundits predicted that it would be short lived and never compete successfully with traditional face-to-face education. Others said students of the future would take all their courses online, interacting with their professors and classmates through home computers and watching Webcast lectures in their underwear. In the years since, however, rising enrollments have made distance education a viable industry for colleges and companies as administrators and faculty members have learned what works online and what doesn't, both in marketing and in teaching. At many institutions that paid attention to those lessons, distance enrollments have remained strong even after the dot-com implosion of 2000 and 2001 -- and after several high-profile experiments in distance education crashed and burned. Columbia University's Fathom and New York University's NYUonline, to name two, were multimillion-dollar experiments with course offerings that seem, in retrospect, to have been too eclectic and, in the case of Fathom, not career-oriented enough. Now both traditional colleges and new virtual institutions are enjoying success with distance-education programs. Virginia Tech enrolled 1,054 students in for-credit online courses in the fall of 1998, for example, but that number grew to 2,557 in 2002. Monroe Community College, in Rochester, N.Y., enrolled 277 students in distance education in 1998, and in 2002 it had 1,723. Capella University, a privately held company, has had three consecutive quarters of profitability and has seen its enrollment in its online-only degree programs nearly double, from 3,730 in 2001 to 6,578 in 2002. Many institutions, including these, have seen increases by providing online courses for the military's distance-education program, eArmyU, which enrolls more than 30,000 online students. Although online education has experienced the most dramatic growth, other types of distance learning have also expanded, including television-based programs. With the market of working adults as its prime target, distance education over the Internet has produced net gains for higher education, in terms of both student access and institutional enrollment, says Kenneth C. Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project, which tracks academic expenditures on information technology. Some analysts estimate that 70 million working adults have never earned a college degree, while 75 percent of Americans 25 and older lack a bachelor's degree. No current national data exist on the number of students taking courses online. If it weren't for distance programs, many students would not be able to pursue higher education, says A. Frank Mayadas, director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's grant program for online education. "There certainly is a new population there for which a need is being met," he says. For many professional, working adults, especially those with families, attending evening and weekend classes on a campus is simply not an option. They need the flexibility distance courses offer, says Andrew S. Rosen, president of Kaplan Inc., which operates Kaplan College and Kaplan College Online. That's why he calls the working-adult market "the sweet spot." Campus-based courses "still require people to set aside a specific set of hours to get across town, find a babysitter, and those things tend to be disqualifying for a lot of people," he says. Traditional students are also taking online courses in addition to their face-to-face courseloads. Sometimes they're avoiding an 8 a.m. course. Other times, the online version is the only section available of a course they need. In the fall of 2002, Virginia Tech had 1,556 students take both online and on-campus courses at the same time. That figure accounted for more than half of the university's 2,557 online students during that semester. Selling Convenience "The students take it for the same reason as the working engineer," says Tom Wilkinson, director for distance and distributed learning at Virginia Tech. "They have a full load, and they need the flexibility." Some of the most successful institutions -- such as the University of Phoenix, with 63,041 online students -- make no distinction between their online courses and their regular campus-based offerings. This arrangement makes it easier for students to enroll in online programs and helps to streamline administrative workloads. Online students account for 41 percent of Phoenix's enrollment. Whether they are for-profit or nonprofit, successful online colleges use sophisticated marketing techniques effectively to maintain their enrollment levels. Many of them solicit continuous feedback from their students on how to improve online programs. And many find that Web advertising and their own Web sites provide the most efficient means of marketing their online programs. Surveys conducted by American InterContinental University Online, for example, have shown that potential students typically go to three or four different colleges' Web sites when shopping for online-degree programs. "They really look at the details, the specs on whatever they're buying -- it could be a car, it could be education," says Nick Fluge, president of the online education group of Career Education Corporation, the parent company of American InterContinental and its online division. American InterContinental administrators say it is crucial to have a Web site that not only offers sample courses but also represents a virtual campus, with clearly visible links to information about accreditation, orientation, degree plans, academic advising, the library, tech support, and online payment. While virtual institutions have attracted many students to distance education by selling convenience, some traditional colleges have relied on name recognition and solid reputations to increase their online enrollment. "We weren't in this to make a quick buck. We weren't in this to create a new university," says Mark G. McNamee, Virginia Tech's provost and vice president for academic affairs. "We wanted to enhance the university's credibility." But even traditional institutions have marketed their distance-education programs to the nontraditional student -- typically personified as a single mother with a job and two kids who desperately wants to earn a degree and gain more marketable job skills, but who doesn't have the time to attend traditional courses. And the nontraditional student is exactly what colleges got. "You're getting the people they thought they were going after," the Sloan Foundation's Mr. Mayadas says. "So far what we've done is mine what we've known." If colleges begin marketing to employers and employees in specific industries, they would probably see further success, he says. Selling to Industries As a next step, Mr. Mayadas recommends that colleges try to sell distance programs to industries in whose disciplines the institutions have considerable expertise. Industries like telecommunications and electric utilities need employee training that could be handled well through online education, he says. Many institutions have already realized they should stick with what they know. For example, Virginia Tech developed its distance-education programs mostly around the technology programs it is known for. Mr. McNamee says that while some colleges looked at distance education as a profit-making scheme, Virginia Tech used online learning as an extension of what it was already doing. But if colleges are staying within disciplinary boundaries, they're ignoring traditional geographical borders in seeking students. Community colleges are now looking for students through the Internet beyond their counties, sometimes even their states. "It's absolutely going to change things, because community colleges have always been local things," Mr. Mayadas says. "That whole scheme is going to change the nature of community colleges." In many cases, distance-education programs are also changing the nature of teaching -- or at least how colleges think about teaching. Anthony J. Felicetti, associate vice president for academic services and enrollment management at Monroe Community College of the State University of New York, says the college went into distance education cautiously. Before any courses were taught online, the college built an infrastructure of technology and administrative support to help the faculty members teach at a distance. "There were a lot of schools that jumped on the bandwagon early on when the technology became available," Mr. Felicetti says. "Their faculty weren't ready to teach online." Although professors typically don't receive formal training before they are thrown into a traditional classroom, online educators often spend weeks learning how best to use technology to foster interaction among students. "If anyone were to ask me what's the secret of your success, I would say it's faculty development," says Chris Jorgenson, director of eEducation at Salt Lake Community College. "It's training that really begins with turning the computer on." But Mark Smith, director of government relations of the American Association of University Professors, says quality is often being sacrificed in the quest for online learning, and students' education suffers. "There are some distance-education programs that are great things, and there are some that aren't so great," Mr. Smith says. "Logging in on a Web site does not necessarily give the skills that a degree is certifying." The National Education Association, the teachers' organization, has learned through research that the most important and difficult aspect of teaching online is not using technology. Instead, it's creating a sense of belonging and community among the students taking the online course. "Otherwise, you're going to get student disengagement and higher dropout rates," says Rachel Hendrickson, the association's higher-education coordinator. In maintaining and increasing distance-education enrollment, top-notch information technology has also proved crucial. Falling computer prices and the spread of broadband Internet connections have helped tremendously. "The technology environment has been very favorable, and it's just gotten better and better," says Stephen G. Shank, chancellor of Capella University and chief executive officer of the Capella Education Company. 'Keep It Simple' While online colleges differ in how they use and support information technology, almost all of them profess a "keep it simple" philosophy. Despite the multimedia tools available to course developers today, many successful online colleges, including the University of Phoenix Online, mostly still use text-based course materials. That way, the colleges say, they reach the broadest possible number of students, both nationally and internationally, who may not have the fast computers and broadband-network connections that most multimedia software requires. But some multimedia components are feasible today for use in online courses. For example, the lectures that are part of online law courses at Concord Law School require students to download RealPlayer, a free Internet video player. "When we started in 1998, half of our students were on modems and the media player didn't work nearly as well," says Jack R. Goetz, the dean of Concord Law School, a for-profit, online-only institution. "Now the vast majority of our students are on broadband, one way or another, so the media player works great," Mr. Goetz says. But perhaps most important for the success of online colleges is an infrastructure of technology and technical support that students can rely on at all hours. "There's been a readjustment of the business model," says Mr. Green, of the Campus Computing Project. "The focus is on user support." In some cases, colleges are "branding" their online programs by standardizing not just the screen formats they use to deliver them but even the voices of the professors who deliver the lectures. Strayer University Online, for example, has hired professional readers to record faculty members' lecturers for audio playback. The aim is to guarantee that all online lectures meet the university's quality standards for clear delivery. Interactive Technology Even those online colleges that avoid fancy animations maintain that their degree programs are successful because they use technologies that let students interact one-on-one with faculty members and fellow classmates. With these technologies, even the most important academic relationships appear to be able to flourish over the Internet. John A. DiCicco, who earned a Ph.D. in 2001 from Capella University, says that, just as in traditional programs, the most important component of his online education was the relationship he developed online with his research and dissertation adviser, Robert L. Heichberger, "a wonderful gentleman with almost 50 years' experience in higher education." Mr. Heichberger is a professor emeritus of education at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Many distance educators believe that more teaching and learning often occurs when the instructional process is mediated by technology. "When I went to school," Mr. Fluge recalls, "one person got to go to the board. That was great for that one person, but the rest of us had to think about what that experience was like. "With online education, everyone goes to the board." But Janet K. Poley, president and chief executive of the American Distance Education Consortium, says that even though distance education has seen amazing successes and has become generally accepted by mainstream higher education, the programs are still at risk. With the weakened economy taking its toll on college revenue and state budgets, Ms. Poley says, distance education could meet the chopping block just because the programs are so new -- increasing enrollment notwithstanding. "My biggest concern has been really around the issue of institutional support," Ms. Poley says. "A lot of these programs are still relatively new." Although distance education is still lacking respect among some college officials, it is definitely making a positive change in higher education, says Mary Beth Almeda, chairwoman of the University of California at Berkeley Extension Online. "Early PR kinds of efforts said that online was going to take over the world and replace bricks and mortar," she says. "And I don't think we've seen that, and I don't think we ever will. Students at different stages of their lives have different learning styles. Online education presents another option." 6 TECHNIQUES FOR INCREASING ONLINE ENROLLMENT For-profit and nonprofit colleges have developed many techniques to increase their enrollment in online courses. Here is a sampling from officials at six organizations: Using an in-house index of "student enthusiasm" to analyze data collected by Sylvan's online-learning systems and help the company make better operational decisions. --Bryan Polivka, chief learning officer, online higher-education division of Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. Identifying 35 "barriers" students have to enrolling in distance education so that officials can draw more students to the programs. The barriers include a need for universitywide online financial-aid capabilities for nontraditional students and a need for online tutoring for distance students. --Tom Wilkinson, director of Virginia Tech's Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning Translating course material for 13 degree-program specializations into Spanish and working with Universidad Iberoamericana, a Jesuit university in Mexico City, to market those programs. --Pamela S. Pease, president of Jones International University Establishing nonexclusive agreements with major employers like AT&T to offer online-degree programs for employees and simplified, direct-billing plans for the employers. --Scott W. Steffey, chief operating officer for Strayer Education Inc. Using assessment technologies to tailor online-degree programs to students' individual needs. --Andrew S. Rosen, president of Kaplan Inc. Working on removing licensing barriers that prevent graduates from sitting for the bar exam in states other than California, the only state so far that recognizes Concord Law School's online law degree. --Jack R. Goetz, president and dean of Concord Law School
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 49, Issue 40, Page A31
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Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education