The Electronic Classroom

Printable Version

When Ginger Rosenkrans decided to earn her doctorate in information systems, she didn't want to quit her day job.

Rosenkrans, a communications professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., chose to attend Nova Southeastern University, an online university based in Florida.

Nova Southeastern was the first university in the United States to offer graduate programs in an online format, creating the electronic classroom.

“The Nova program has been fantastic,” said Rosenkrans. “Since I'm in a hybrid on-campus/online format, I've been able to meet with my colleagues and professors face-to-face during the program for one week at the beginning of each semester and then the rest of the work is done online.”

Rosenkrans is one of thousands of people across America taking courses and pursuing a degree through online education. In the past few years, the number of colleges and universities using online courses has increased from 22% in 1995 to 60% in 1998, according to statistics from USA Today.

Though the freedom and flexibility that online education promises is exciting, with these possibilities arise new concerns about education Ñ such as if these programs actually are successful, who is monitoring their quality and who earns money from class material posted online when swiping that information can be done with the click of a mouse?

In July, the American Federation of Teachers, which includes among its 1 million members about 110,000 college and university professors, approved a resolution calling for a set of quality standards for college-based online distance-education programs:

• Academic faculty must maintain control of shaping, approving and evaluating distance-education courses.
• Faculty should be compensated and given time, training and technical support to develop and conduct classes, and they should retain intellectual property rights over online materials.
• Students must be given advance information about course requirements, equipment needs, technical training and support throughout the course.
• Class size should be consistent with high student-teacher interactivity and should be determined through normal faculty procedures to ensure high educational quality.
• Full undergraduate degree programs should include classroom-based coursework.

AFT officials expect that these guidelines will be used as a standard in faculty contract negotiations with colleges and universities.

Other organizations are reaffirm these standards. An Online Pedagogy Report, issued in 1999 by the University of Illinois, found that online learning may not be appropriate for all classes or programs.

The report was conducted by a committee of 16 professors at the university of the course of a year. Professors met with experts in online education before drawing conclusions.

According to the report, though online classes may offer benefits — such as encouraging quieter students to speak up online — an exclusive load of online courses won't allow students the traditional give-and-take interaction of the classroom.

The report also determined online class sizes should be limited, possibly to as few as 20 or 30 students.

“The good news is that online teaching can be done with high quality. But the bad news is that it is inherently more idfficult to create and maintain the bond a professor needs ot haave with his or her class for good teaching to occur,” said Joe Regalbuto, chairman of the committee, to the New York Times.

The success rate of online universities also may be questionable. Over the past year, several universities have had to close their virtual doors.

Cal Virtual, a California system venture, has closed. Western Governors University, an online consortium of state schools in the West, spearheaded by Utah Governor Mike Leavitt and former Colorado governor Roy Romer, had expected

thousands of students to enroll. But it only shows about 300 students in degree programs.

Concord University School of Law, the world's first Internet law school, located in Los Angeles, has also faltered a bit. When it opened in 1998, the university hoped to improve significantly on the low pass rates achieved by correspondence students.

At Concord, students are required to take the First Year Law Students Exam, commonly known as the “baby bar,” before they can complete their final years in the program. In the university's first “baby bar,” in 1999, 20 students participated. Seven passed.

Despite these findings, traditional college classes are making the transition online.

Rosenkrans, who is in her third and final year of her doctoral program, is so impressed with online university teaching methods that she has begun using them in her traditional college classroom.

“I execute a three-week online component for my Philosophy and Effects of Mass Communication course,” she said.

Rosenkrans' students hold class discussions online and post comments and questions on an electronic bulletin board.

She has received positive feedback from her students about the online activities.

More than 90% of the students she assessed in two mass communication classes indicated they were satisfied with the quality of participation during the online component.

As one student wrote,“The postings were informative and helpful for my research. It was like a mini research technique that made writing my paper easier.”

Rosenkrans believes that online teaching is the way of the future for higher education.

“The Internet just has so much freedom and flexibility to offer students and teachers alike,” she said.

At the University of California, Berkeley, one undergraduate chemistry class has gone almost completely online. Students in Digital Chemistry 1A take quizzes, answer homework questions and watch live lectures over the Internet.

“Blackboards are old hat. The technology is out there to do cool stuff,” said chemistry professor Mark Kubinec. “I think this has the potential to be a pilot for how education might look in 10 years.”

The class is the brainchild of chemistry professors Kubinec and Alex Pines. The pair came up with the idea a couple of years ago and piloted the course this past summer.

Students can access archived lectures online if they need material repeated. Online quizzes are graded instantly by the computer, relieving teaching assistants of grading work and giving them more time to work with students.

The two professors are also bringing a digital component to the lecture hall. Currently students participate in “chem quizzes” during lectures. Professors pose a multiple choice question to students about an experiment, then ask them to vote on the answer.

“We want to digitize that. We would like to get interactive response devices and use them to make a visual graph out of the students' answers,” said Kubinec.

The chemistry professors, along with Norton Publishing, have designed a software program that interacts with solo students, watching lectures online from their homes.

“We want to create a totally portable Chemistry 1A,” said Kubinec.

A group of 300 students was selected this semester from the 1,500 students enrolled in Chemistry 1A to participate in the online class.

The course, funded by a $350,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Cost Effective Uses of Technology in Teaching program initiative, was developed as a part of the University of California's Higher Education in the Digital Age program.

Digital Chemistry 1A students' progress will be monitored by a committee with members from the Committee to Study Higher Education, the Berkeley Media Resource Center and the College of Chemistry to see how online students compare with those working in the traditional class.

Plans are underway to offer the digital course in the fall of 2001.

“The university expects a 20 percent increase in students over the next four years. I see this as a solution to the classroom crunch,” said Kubinec. “The quizzes, the reading, the pre-lab can all be done online. This makes the time spent in lab more effective. More people can use the same space.”

Return to top