When John Riggle arrived at a critical juncture in his education career and decided that a master’s degree would prove invaluable, he couldn’t find the programme he needed in his home country of the Virgin Islands. Mr Riggle, who had lived and worked in the country as a high school English and film teacher for 20 years, found himself with a dilemma many professionals face: he didn’t want to leave his job to pursue an advanced degree.
After investigating several online programmes, he settled on West Texas A&M’s long-distance degree programme in Instructional Design and Technology for education. This innovative programme allows him to keep his job, while also pursuing a degree in his spare time. He won’t graduate for several more months but his studies are already paying off. “I’ve been able to transfer the new knowledge and insight instantly to programmes to teach the kids,” he says.
The type of online programme Mr Riggle is undertaking isn’t new, but as online programmes play a larger role in the higher education landscape, these options are opening doors for a greater number of nontraditional students.
According to the US Department of Education, 33% of American college students in 2011 were 25-years-old or older, and many of those students had work or family responsibilities outside of school. In 2008, 32% were employed full-time, and nearly one-quarter were also parents, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy. In a recent study conducted jointly by The Learning House, Inc. and Aslanian Market Research entitled Online College Students 2012: Comprehensive Data on Demands and Preferences, students ranked balancing their multiple responsibilities and the ability to work “anytime, anywhere” as their strongest reasons for pursuing education online.
A number of traditional colleges and universities have responded to the need for greater flexibility by transforming traditional and specialised programmes into their online equivalents, making them physically and financially accessible to more students. In 2013, Berklee College of Music, in Boston, began offering music production and music-business degree programmes. Class size remains small, but while tuition for an undergraduate degree programme on campus is $37,800 per year, the online degree programme is far less: $14,490 per year for students planning to complete the 120-credit programme in four years. The University of Miami’s Frost School of Music offers a similar programme.
Fuelling the growth of online programmes is an increasing belief in their value. “Today, perception has completely changed,” says Richard Rose, assistant professor at West Texas A&M and director of Mr Riggle’s programme. “More and more, online learning is accepted as ‘as-good-as,’ or, in many cases, ‘better than’ sitting in the classroom and listening to an instructor.”
A number of recent research studies have also shown online and hybrid learning environments to be effective and scalable. Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities a 2012 study conducted by nonprofit research group Ithaka S+R, found that when comparing a traditional statistics course and a hybrid version that combined online with traditional teaching, “Pass” rates were nearly the same. It also found that the hybrid course required one-third of the classroom time and instructor resources as the traditional class.
New tools, new trends
The success of these initiatives has caused many schools to become “delivery agnostic”, offering technology-based educational
experiences in many innovative ways.
Mobile learning
More universities are now trying to offer education anytime and anywhere via familiar technology that already governs their students’ personal lives. In the last year or so, students have increased their use of smartphones and tablets over other devices for academic purposes, according to nonprofit education association EDUCAUSE’s ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2013. The study found that while students show a strong interest in using these tools, “they still look to their instructors for leadership and guidance.”
Hybrid learning/flipped classrooms
The aforementioned hybrid learning, combining the traditional and online classroom experience, is also proving increasingly popular with schools and students. Also known as ”flipped classrooms”, hybrid classroom students listen to lecture material outside of class, sometimes by completing an online course, and then spend class time working on projects or engaging in class discussion.
Seventy-nine percent of US-based undergraduates have taken a hybrid course—a 5% increase from 2012—according to EDUCAUSE’s 2013 technology report. Hybrid classes have been used to solve bottlenecks in courses and facilities, typically for large introductory courses. In addition, a majority of students surveyed reported they both preferred and learned best in this “blended” classroom environment.
Virginia Tech geography professor John Boyer, for example, educates as many as 3,000 students per class with the help of online elements, including YouTube, Skype and Ustream, an alternative video-streaming platform.
Mr Boyer developed his online teaching techniques as demand for his courses grew over the past 10-15 years. Beyond making it possible to teach extremely large classes, Mr Boyer says the benefits of using technology in a flipped classroom like his are much greater: he sees significantly more engagement with class material when he uses these tools and is able to engage in more dialogue with students, something he views as fundamental to effective education.
Mr Boyer’s office hours are one good example. “Five years ago no one would have come to my office hours,” he says. “Then I started putting them online—live—and, lo and behold, 500 people would show up.”
MOOCs as laboratory
Although massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have been well publicised, a relatively small number of schools have incorporated them into the fabric of their curricula. According to EDUCAUSE’s 2013 technology report, 74% of undergraduates in the US don’t really know what a MOOC is. Meanwhile, only 2.6% of administrators say their institution currently offers a MOOC, and just 9.4% have plans to begin one, according to Grade Change: Tracking Online Education in the United States, an annual online education report produced by the Sloan Consortium, an initiative of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Despite the challenges, MOOCs have become a fertile ground for educational research. “This is the first time there has been a very tight feedback loop between what the instructor is doing and what the student is doing,” said Richard DeMillo, director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “And that is purely enabled by technology.” He calls MOOCs the “world’s largest education laboratory”, as more and more organisations share data and feedback on these types of courses.
Redefining value
The success of these new models of delivery has raised the question of how to grant credentials – or proof of the knowledge or competency acquired – and how employers will judge their coursework.
In terms of perception, The Sloan Consortium’s Grade Change report shows that academic leaders increasingly rate learning outcomes in online higher education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face instruction. The percentage of that group that agreed with that statement grew to 74% in 2013 from 57% a decade ago. However, change has been slower with employers who still rate traditional or hybrid education as more credible than online education, according to a 2013 study published in the Global Education Journal. This may be why 75% of online students are pursuing the classic credentials for higher education—a degree, although this will likely shift along with employers’ perceptions as time goes on. Research from EDUCAUSE suggests that employers’ acceptance of online education may grow as the number of employers that have personal experience with online education themselves expands, and with
that a more favourable view of online education.
For a sense of where online credentials may be headed, look to the continuing education segment, which pioneered the online education and learning tools in use today. When the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) began certifying continuing education unit (CEU) providers in the 1990s, the IACET focused its requirements on the educational process and the ability to demonstrate learning - regardless of the delivery method. As a result, a broader swathe of organisations, including professional groups, schools and employers, are certified to provide CEU credit.
However, the true potential of digital education may lie in ‘microcredentialing’, or proof of learning in nontraditional settings such as seminars or noncredit courses, argues George Siemens, director of the Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge Research Lab, or LINK Lab, at the University of Texas at Arlington. “The way we grant degrees today is fairly clunky,” he says. “We’re using a machete when we need a scalpel.” Instead of demonstrating understanding through a full degree or even certificate, Mr. Siemens says learners may soon be able to demonstrate learning on a discrete task or concept through micro-credentialing.
By making it easier for students to demonstrate competency on a subject, micro-credentialing could dramatically open the options for learning. Siemens says Mozilla Foundation’s Open Badges programme is the largest micro-credentialing player thus far, although several other organisations have also begun to offer credentials for a variety of learning opportunities. Open Badges’’ free, open-source software initiative is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The resulting badge, its backers claim, provides users with “online representation of a skill you’ve earned”.
Other players are also tackling the field. Degreed, an education focused start-up, grants micro-credentials to users for online courses they’ve completed, books and news articles they’ve read and videos they’ve watched. In an effort to quantify or credential learning, many MOOC platforms now offer a badge or certificate upon completion of a course, often for a fee.
These micro-credentialing efforts are still very early, and their worth in the marketplace, as before, will largely be judged on the credibility of the institution that grants micro-credentials. “Other than a few projects – like Mozilla – it’s more hype than reality right now,” Mr. Siemens says, although he is optimistic that the field will continue to grow and gain legitimacy. “Ultimately, micro-credentialing will take off, if we trust the agencies giving the stamp of approval.”
A broader reach
From continuing education, to the new world of MOOCs, to traditional universities, online tools and classrooms are changing the higher education landscape. As technology extends the reach of a single teacher to many students, and frees learning from the physical classroom, education—and, ultimately, a greater variety of career paths—should become more accessible to a broader array of students across the world.
