CCs use online classes as ‘cash cow’

Community colleges see online classes as a “cash cow,” charges Rob Jenkins, a professor at Georgia Perimeter College, on Chronicle of Higher Education. Community college leaders have embraced online education with religious fervor, he writes. Nobody argues that they’re consistently better in teaching students or that students are clamoring for them, though parents, full-time workers and military personnel find them convenient. “It’s because colleges can produce online courses much more cheaply while charging roughly the same tuition.”

Critics of the online rush will be branded as heretics, he writes.  Yet studies show lower success rates in online courses compared to face-to-face classes. Clearly, online learning has limitations.

Several years ago, his college tried to place an entire associate degree online. But what about public speaking?

Conventional wisdom back then dictated that you couldn’t really teach a speech course online. To whom would the students give their speeches? How would they collectively become engaged as audiences or learn to analyze the speeches of others, as they do in a traditional classroom? I sided with the establishment. Speech, I decided, was just one of those courses that students would have to come to campus to take.

That is, until one of the faculty members in my department took it upon herself to solve the problem, through a combination of strategies that required students to videotape themselves, give speeches in front of church, school, or civic organizations, and observe and evaluate similar speeches by others. Her online public-speaking course became the template not just for our college but for the entire state system.

An online speech course isn’t as good as a face-to-face class, Jenkins writes. But, done well, it’s almost as good — and that’s a godsend for students who can’t attend college in a traditional way.

But that doesn’t mean all students can succeed in online courses.

Teaching at another college some years ago, he proposed testing students to see if they can handle online courses, just as they’re tested to see if they’re ready for college-level math and writing. He was shot down. Online enrollment had to keep growing to balance the budget.

Online enrollments across the country are strong and growing, while success rates stay about the same: abysmal. I attended a session at the “Innovations 2011″ conference a couple of months ago, held in San Diego by the League for Innovation in the Community College, where I learned that some colleges were beginning to experiment with the kinds of controls I recommended. Software companies now market products designed to determine, up front, whether students can handle the workload, the pedagogical approach (heavy on reading), and the technical demands of the online environment, and some of those products have shown promise. That sort of approach just makes a world of sense.

But many colleges won’t do it, because they’re afraid of losing enrollment, Jenkins writes.

I’d like us to be more honest with students. . . . Online courses require a tremendous amount of self-discipline and no small amount of academic ability and technical competence. They’re probably not for everyone, and I think we need to acknowledge as much to students and to ourselves.

Soon, most courses will have an online component.  Hybrid courses, combining face-to-face and virtual elements, are the future, he writes. But not everything can be taught well online.

Online classes aren’t a cash cow, writes Community College Dean. Some 81 percent of community colleges cap online class enrollments so students can have contact with the instructor.

Hybrid classes engage students

Hybrid classes — a blend of online and face-to-face learning — can work well for community college students, writes Linda Thor in Community College Times. Thor draws on experiences at Rio Salado College, a virtual college in Arizona for working adults, and the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in California’s Silicon Valley, where she serves as chancellor.

A Center for Community College Student Engagement survey found that students who received blended instruction reported being more engaged than those who took all-online classes, Thor writes.

By shifting some attendance off campus, hybrid classes allow colleges to serve more students with the same facilities.

Students experience the benefits of online learning, including “convenience, flexibility, and increased opportunity for reflection and self-directed learning” without giving up on “face-to-face contact with an instructor and social interaction with other students.”

Faculty members report that well-structured hybrid courses can stimulate exciting levels of student engagement and participation in ways similar to fully online courses. Online, no one can sit silently in the back of the class. The online medium offers opportunities to engage students in innovative ways that are not as feasible or effective on campus.

A well-designed hybrid class can help instructors make the most of their classroom time by enabling electronic completion of such tasks as exchanging tests, papers, and other documents; dispensing information about grades; and critiquing student work. Students also can easily share their work with each other.

Mike Murphy, a Foothill computer science instructor, uses Web video- and audio-conferencing software applications for his Cisco networking class. Students can attend his class in person or virtually.  That enables working students to review material they missed or participate in class live while traveling.

Hybrid courses can increase demand on campus computer labs and the technology infrastructure. Faculty and students may need more tech support.

Teaching a hybrid course for the first time requires faculty to climb a steep learning curve for which they need adequate time, resources, and support. They need the computer equipment, software, course development time, training, and instructional design services necessary to develop, maintain, and manage the delivery of high-quality instruction.

Developing effective hybrid courses is just as difficult as developing fully online courses, Thor writes. Ultimately, the most important factor is the skill of the instructor.