Online and there is no choice

In a recent consultant’s report, in a section where the discussion focused on online degree programs, the report noted that 34% of the master’s degrees in education are earned through online education. I’m not surprised and I fully expect that this number will exceed 50% within the next five years. What is surprising to me is that there is still so much resistance to this inevitable trend. More than a decade ago, I began regularly talking about the need for part-time graduate programs to move into a distance learning mode. There was not surprisingly substantial resistance. The key to this resistance is the legitimate fear that you lose the personal interaction so important to gaining the maximum educational benefit.

Fast forward to today and it is clear that there is a new legitimate fear, namely losing students from in-person programs to online programs. And if you don’t have the students, you also don’t have the ability to deliver a personal experience. The interim period of time has however demonstrated that the personal element is alive and well in online education. If you measure a personal experience by student faculty contact, there is more contact as well as more frequent contact in distance learning via distance learning. Students no longer come, in large numbers, to faculty open office hours. Even in the past these hours had their limitations: the hours were often scheduled (certainly not intentionally) during the times that students had other classes, or were off campus or were working. Now the ability to communicate through email or through a learning platform encourages on-going interaction and often at those times that are most helpful to students and their learning. I am not suggesting that emails sent to faculty in the middle of the night or at other inconvenient or inappropriate times, should be answered at those times. I am suggesting that if a student has a question on a Friday, there is no longer the need to wait until the following Tuesday to take advantage of available office hours.

For much of private higher education, there is the additional concern regarding the cost difference between online programs at public institutions and online programs at private institutions. Can private institutions compete when there are lower cost public alternatives? The answer is a clear yes in my opinion. We compete effectively with substantially smaller classes, more interaction with students, more support for students, and the use of faculty rather than teaching assistants. We stress an overall more personal experience. These same advantages carry over to online education and the same ability to compete is present even if the learning platform has changed.

In a world where our students—especially our graduate students—are carrying out multiple responsibilities and where time is a scarce commodity, it makes tremendous sense for these students to take advantage of the benefits of online learning. Leaving an office early, coming home late, and commuting are not irresistible nor are they part of the learning process. There are many more good learning options available than there were when many of us went to school. We should do all we can so that students can take advantage of them.

The End of Summer Sessions and the End of Summer Sessions

We are wrapping up the third summer session on campus.  We have three summer sessions and we also have a very active and heavily enrolled day camp which helps utilize our facilities during a time when there are fewer students on campus.  In addition to there being fewer students there are also fewer faculty, and summer classes which are typically held early in the day or in the evening tend to leave afternoons free of classes and also unfortunately free of faculty and students on campus.  Yes, there are certainly some faculty on campus in the afternoons and there are some students as well, but the environment lacks the intensity and dynamism present during the fall and spring semesters.  Most student clubs are dormant, few speakers visit the campus; governance slows down and a campus has a very different feel.  In the early weeks of the summer I welcome this tempo since it allows me to both catch up and also provides time to write personnel recommendations for tenure and promotion.  As the summer progresses, I more and more miss the faculty and the students.  I miss the collegiality and the collaboration and I am anxious for the fall semester to begin.  There is no life to a campus without the continuous presence of faculty and students.

The history of summer sessions going back to when I was an undergraduate always had classes clustered in the morning or in the evening.  Two reasons for this split scheduling.  Originally, when classrooms were not air-conditioned, holding classes either early or late helped assure that classes were not held when temperatures and  classrooms were at their hottest.  Second many students worked during the summer and others wanted to take advantage of the beach and other recreational activities.  Holding classes in the evening and the morning allowed students to combine work/recreation with furtherance of their education at off times.  But the winds of change are descending on summer sessions for just the reasons listed above—work and recreation – and these winds will remove more students and faculty from campuses during the summer.

There is no substitute for the fall and spring semesters educational experiences for our undergraduates.  Distance learning will always be a second best alternative during these time periods and the overwhelming majority of undergraduates and faculty will demonstrate with their presence the value and the popularity of this experience.  The summer, however, is very different.  I may be trying to accelerate my education or I may be trying to catch up but most likely I am doing this in addition to working or just relaxing and having a good time.  If I can take these credits via distance learning, it will be attractive – and more and more the norm – for me to do so.  I believe we are entering the twilight of summer sessions.  In not too many years, we will end a summer session and it will also be the end of summer sessions as we know them.  On some level this is progress—education will be a better fit with a student’s needs.  When this happens, a campus in June, July, and August will make today’s summertime campus look like a hotbed of activity by comparison.