Online learning is higher education’s growth track

By Charlotte Hsu

Saturday, April 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Here in Las Vegas, we thrive on a frenetic pace of life.

Our prosperity hinges on our ability to get almost anything at any time. We work into the wee hours, hit the blackjack tables at 2 a.m., eat breakfast at the Korean barbecue joint.

So it might seem only natural that our valley’s public colleges are on the menu of 24-hour offerings, competing in what was once the domain of for-profit giants such as the University of Phoenix.

The College of Southern Nevada offers 20 degrees online in fields from accounting to dental hygiene. It even has a program in online teaching, six classes that can be completed — online of course — to become certified as an online teacher.

CSN’s array of Internet courses has doubled in the past four years. The growth of Web classes at UNLV has also been rapid.

One in five students at UNLV, one in four at CSN and one in two at Henderson’s five-year-old Nevada State College are taking at least one class on the Web.

Trends here track those across the country. Enrollment in Internet courses is rising much faster than overall enrollment in higher education. In fall 2006, an estimated 3.48 million college-going Americans were taking at least one Web class, according to “Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning,” an October 2007 report funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic organization.

Students say Web classes square with busy schedules and allow scholars to avoid the nightmare of campus parking lots. Eliminating the school commute is good for the Earth and the pocketbook.

But online classes also require a lot of independent study, and they lack face-to-face interaction with classmates and teachers. Dropout rates for online courses are often higher than for traditional ones.

And, though recruiters say employers are warming to degrees earned with online classes, research suggests credentials from classrooms still carry more weight. In studies published since 2004, researchers Jonathan Adams and Margaret DeFleur found employers prefer applicants with traditional degrees.

Online programs boost access to education, “so that’s certainly the positive side,” said DeFleur, associate dean for graduate studies and research at Louisiana State University’s mass communication school. “But there’s an assumption that everyone would see that in an equally positive light. When you get that degree in your hand and you go knocking on the door of some employer, how is that person going to see it?”

In separate studies, DeFleur and Adams asked health care employers, employers in general and colleges hiring faculty members about how they would react to job seekers who did coursework on the Web. In every case, at least 95 percent of employers favored applicants with traditional degrees over those with online degrees. Hiring personnel were also biased against candidates who did half their coursework on the Internet.

“Personal interaction between instructors and students presents a more real world approach to learning,” a respondent to one survey wrote. “There are no jobs in this organization that are completed over the Internet only.”

In another survey, the researchers found that just one in 10 graduate school admissions officers would enthusiastically recommend admitting a student with good grades, high test scores and a Web degree. Schools offering Internet degrees were actually more reluctant than others to accept E-degree holders.

Internet diploma mills and substandard Web programs have tainted the image of online education, Adams said.

Local staffing firm managers, however, say a degree from a properly accredited institution is positive no matter how you earn it. Robin Eitel, a senior recruiter for Resource Associates of Nevada, said though she thinks teamwork and people skills are best learned in the classroom, “I have not had an employer who has said, ‘We won’t look at someone who comes from an online degree (program).’”

Tom Haynie, chief financial officer for the recruitment firm Manpower of Southern Nevada, said prejudices against E-learning are fading fast as accredited universities expand digital offerings. Bosses who have studied online are more likely to look fondly upon cyber education, he said.

Employers also fret less about the lack of face-to-face interaction in online programs when applicants have workplace experience, DeFleur said. Roxanna Scaglione, 45, a senior quality assurance specialist for the Yucca Mountain Project, scored a raise after finishing her University of Phoenix bachelor’s degree online in September.

Still, Adams, an associate professor at Florida State University who is writing a book on distance education, believes traditionalists who shun online learning will always exist. People have knocked the quality of distance education since colleges began offering correspondence courses in the late 1800s, Adams said.

“If this has been going on for 120 years, 130 years, and all the perceptions back then are pretty much the same as they are now, I don’t think they’re going to change. ... We’re not going to get to a point in our society where everybody is going to accept courses taken online or at a distance,” he said.

But of course, with the Internet affording quick two-way communication, today’s digital classes can look radically different from those pioneering mail programs. Scholars in Yolanda Hernandez’s online Spanish classes at CSN watch videos, complete oral exercises and call or e-mail her when they need her. People too shy to ask questions in front of peers might find talking on the Web less intimidating, she said.

In Internet debates, students write long, thoughtful comments they might not make in class, said Gwen Sharp, who is teaching sociology online this semester for the first time at NSC.

Participation on the Internet may be easier than in a classroom, but the classes themselves are not easier, officials and faculty members at CSN, NSC and UNLV say. They say their online and campus-based courses are equally rigorous, covering the same material.

Fears about rampant cheating online are exaggerated, say E-learning gurus including Judith Osterman, director of distance education at UNLV. As in campus courses, faculty members “know a student’s ‘voice’ and work level” online, she said in an e-mail.

But many people just view the classroom as a superior learning environment. Despite all the technology available, many Web courses still rely on text-based methods of communication such as e-mail and message boards.

Without in-person contact with classmates and teachers, students can be more comfortable shirking duties. Members of online study groups often don’t fulfill their commitments, knowing they won’t have to look teammates in the eye later, Scaglione said.

Ralph Buechler, chairman of foreign languages at UNLV, believes “real learning and real teaching has to at least in part include this interaction between student and instructor and student and student in a real live situation.”

Face time is particularly vital in fields such as music and foreign language, where students learn by practicing frequently and getting instant feedback about mistakes, Buechler said.

Joe Tabios, a 29-year-old CSN student, said he would avoid an online-only program because not seeing peers and professors “kind of takes away from the college experience.”

But not everyone wants to attend football games, join a fraternity or gossip in the quad between classes. Many students view a degree as a path to a better job, period.

When Scaglione came to Las Vegas about a decade ago, a single mom with three young kids, college on the Web was the only college she could fit into her busy lifestyle.

“I really felt like I needed to advance in my career, and I thought the only way I was going to do that was to go back to school,” she said.

The growth of E-learning is being driven in part by the recognition that schools can do more to serve people who can’t afford to set aside other responsibilities to go to college, said Spencer Stewart, chairman of an NSC committee examining the institution’s online offerings.

Web programs also reach residents of rural towns, military men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Nevadans who want to take a class or two while interning out-of-state during summer.

As public colleges grow E-learning programs, they are exploring ways to help students do better online. Web classes at CSN, NSC and UNLV have slightly lower undergraduate retention rates than campus-based classes. Osterman attributes the difference at UNLV in large part to students underestimating how much discipline and work online courses require.

CSN plans to launch a Web orientation this fall that will include tutorials on how to submit assignments and take tests online. The goal is to help people decide whether Internet learning is right for them.

The number of students taking an E-course at CSN already is more than double the number the University of Phoenix enrolls in Clark County in campus-based and online programs.

At 88 percent of public colleges offering E-courses, officials expected to see Web enrollment rise, according to last year’s “Online Nation” report. Making college accessible to more people was the reason institutions cited most often for providing online programs.

The future, then, will require campuses to split resources between campus classrooms and online courses.

In a place where just one in five adults holds a bachelor’s degree, that should be good news.

After all, here in Las Vegas, we never liked last call. So to all those single parents and busy swing shift workers who thought they missed their shot at college: Maybe it isn’t too late to go back.