E-Learning Mythbusters #2


Myth or reality? The "distance" in distance education means something?

Ummm, no, it doesn't! At least not for the vast majority of e-learners. The GIS map above shows the geographic distribution of 98% of the e-learners for LSC Online in the fall semester 2005. The other 2% (corrected 9/25/07) came from other places besides Minnesota and Wisconsin. About 50% of the students indicated on the map (probably more) could not have easily attended LSC by coming to campus since they are more than 30 miles away.

So, that makes it sound like there really is something to this distance thing, right? Wrong. When you ask these students (as we have) why they signed up for online courses they do not indicate distance as a leading reason. In fact, it comes out quite far from the top. We have seen this data collected using two different instruments. The Noel-Levitz PSOL includes ten "factors to enroll" for students to rank how important the factor was in their decision-making to enroll online. "Distance from Campus" comes in ninth out of ten factors, and a distant ninth at that.

We also ask students to submit surveys each year that allows us to keep abreast of changes in the demographics of our online learners at LSC. 61% indicate the number one reason for taking online courses is the need for time flexibility and busy schedules. Even "online courses are a better fit for my preferred learning style" (10.7%) is a more popular reason than distance from campus (6.7%). Even those who live more than 100 miles from LSC do not choose distance as an important factor - in other words, they'll find it somewhere else if not from us.

Apparently we need to come up with a more descriptive term than "distance ed."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ed2Go is NOT Higher Education

Image
For several years now I have railed against the use of ed2go courses when they are affiliated with a college or university. During my time on the Minnesota Online Council I was especially adamant against the listing of the ed2go courses at the MnOnline website as though they were endorsed courses from a member institution. There is no way that I think the brand should be diluted by including courses like this in our offerings. Why not? Glad you asked. NOTE: most of this post was written after I discovered that my own school had recently signed on with ed2go. This saddens me to no end since I spent the past five y ears railing against the use of ed2go in Minnesota Online and our colleges. Our VP in that division assures me that they will do what they can to not harm our reputation for quality online offerings - and I believe that, I'm just not sure how much of that we can actually control. I waited a couple of weeks before posting this to see whether my opinion would be changed by
Read more

Another Switch from Blackboard to Desire2Learn

Image
As many of you know, I am always interested in the comings and goings of the LMS wars. Who's leaving Blackboard and what are they going to? I rarely have to ask the opposite question - who's migrating to Blackboard from a non-Blackboard platform - because it almost NEVER happens. The latest one to catch my eye was the University of Surrey in the UK. Here's their press release about choosing D2L . Nowhere in the release do they mention what platform they've been on - but it doesn't take much effort to find this on their current website: So, yes, this is another school switching from Blackbeard to Desire2Learn. I find portions of their press release to be revealing about their previous experience with BlackCT Vista. "A new hi-tech system is being introduced at the University of Surrey to enable students to learn on computers and mobile devices via a more personalised platform ." "The new Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), replacing and vastly improving
Read more

Distance Education and Reauthorization

Image
The Committee on Education and Labor in the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "College Opportunity and Affordability Act" (H.R. 4137 ) on November 15, 2007. This means we are nearing the end of the long road leading to reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA). The House committee bill now joins the bill passed by the U.S. Senate (S.1642) in July 2007. House link: H.R. 4137 , go to part H, section 496-A Senate link: S. 1642 , go to part G, section 491 (formerly 496) At some point the language differences between the House and Senate will need to be hammered out. However, with regard to accreditation concerns for distance education, the House committee bill is identical to the Senate bill. The current language would allow college and university accrediting agencies to address the quality of a school’s distance education offerings without the need to create separate standards, procedures or policies related to distance education (for a while this looked to be the dire
Read more