U. of Illinois at Springfield Plans Ambitious Effort to ‘Mirror’ All Classroom Programs Online

University of Illinois at Springfield officials say they are working toward creating an online "mirror campus" that will offer all 39 of the degree programs that are available in the university’s classrooms. The plan is one of the most ambitious online projects undertaken by a mainstream institution.

By DAN CARNEVALE

http://chronicle.com/free/2004/04/2004040503n.htm

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation last week gave the university a $1.21-million grant to pay for converting courses into online formats and for hiring more faculty members to teach them. The university is also spending at least $400,000 on the current phase of the project.

By this fall, the Springfield campus will have eight degree programs online, made up of about 175 online courses. The grant money will pay for eight more online degrees, to be available in three years. Officials hope to have all 39 degrees available online in about 10 years.

The Springfield campus is not, however, becoming a virtual institution. All on-campus courses and degrees will remain available. The mirror campus is meant to give students the option of taking any course either by going to a classroom or by lounging on a futon with a laptop.

"The key word here is access," says Burks Oakley II, the university’s associate vice president for academic affairs. "One of the key things about this grant is keeping online in the mainstream."

While there are many virtual institutions in the United States, there appear to be no mainstream institutions that have attempted to put all of their degree programs online. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has pledged to put materials from all its courses online, but not the courses themselves.

The University of Illinois at Springfield is a mid-sized institution, with about 4,500 students. It has 20 undergraduate degree programs, 18 master’s programs, and a doctoral program. Comparatively few freshmen and sophomores attend the institution, as most students enroll for upper-division and graduate courses.

Officials say the demand for online courses is strong. This semester, one student in three is taking at least one online course, and one in six is taking online courses only. Mr. Oakley hopes to triple the online enrollment in four years.

"The institution has a vision of where it wants to be in 10 years — that it wants to move from being a regional campus," Mr. Oakley said. "It wants to have a national reputation."

Barring major technological advances in the future, Mr. Oakley said, some degree programs will probably always have required on-campus components, such as labs for chemistry or biology students, or performances for acting students.

After the initial cost of developing the online degrees, university officials expect the degrees to pay for themselves through tuition.

The university is in talks with other institutions that are also thinking about creating mirror campuses, says Ray Schroeder, director of technology-enhanced learning at the university. Eventually the university would like to create a coalition of about 10 such institutions.

"The goal," says Mr. Schroeder, "is that other institutions will follow this model."

A. Frank Mayadas, director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s grant program for online education, says he hopes to make grants to other institutions that want to do the same thing.

Large institutions, like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, would not be able to put all their courses online, Mr. Mayadas says. But mid-size institutions could expand their enrollments by offering all of their degrees through online learning as well as in the classroom.

"We want to make it a mainstream option for learning," Mr. Mayadas says. "By creating this mirror campus, students can have a choice."

Most major institutions are already creating hybrid courses that use Internet tools, such as online bulletin boards, to enhance traditional instruction. And students across the country are demanding more online courses. It’s only a matter of time before institutions have to put more and more of their degree programs online, says Mr. Mayadas.

"I think we’re heading in that direction," he says.