Study debunks online courses; local (FL) schools disagree

A study concludes that the predicted boom in online college study has fizzled — but local colleges report that the popularity of ‘e-learning’ is soaring.

The popularity and potential of online college courses — the so-called ”virtual college” — has fallen far short of lofty early predictions, according to a study released today by a University of Pennsylvania research group.

BY ROBERT L. STEINBACK

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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/8997248.htm

But the booming enrollment in online courses offered by South Florida colleges suggests reports of the failure of ”e-learning” are premature.

”What I understand is that for community colleges across Florida, it’s booming,” said Kristi Lozano, director of distance learning at Miami Dade College. “My program has almost doubled every year.”

Miami-Dade students took 7,612 online courses during the 2003 academic year, compared to 4,463 the previous year, according to school figures.

In May, Javier A. Gomez became the first Miami Dade College student to earn a degree without attending a class, earning his associate’s degree in education taking online courses and one independent study class.

More than 4,000 Broward Community College students enrolled in 90 course sections provided entirely online, said Russ Adkins, associate vice president for instructional technology. Almost as many additional students enrolled in ”blended” or ”hybrid” classes, which combine online study with some in-class work, Adkins said.

”We’ve been enormously successful, and that’s only in six years,” he said. “In 1998, we had absolutely no courses online.”

The Penn report, Thwarted Innovation: What Happened to E-learning and Why, paints a surprisingly dismal picture, arguing that the predicted boom in online course offerings has “gone bust.”

”The hard fact is that e-learning took off before people really knew how to use it,” authors Robert Zemsky, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and William F. Massy, professor emeritus from Stanford University, wrote.

‘The entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm produced too many new ventures pushing too many untested products — products that, in their initial form, turned out not to deliver as much value as promised.”

Local college educators offer a different view.

”I don’t think it’s gone bust at all,” said Wells Singleton, education provost and dean of the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University in Davie. “If they looked at traditional and certain big-name universities, yes, their analysis would be correct, because those universities jumped in with millions of dollars in investments and it didn’t go anywhere.”

But community colleges and nontraditional universities like Nova that have pioneered ”distance learning” — courses which don’t require students to physically attend a class on campus — have had better success integrating e-learning into their programs, Singleton said.

At Nova Southeastern, 4,600 students signed up for online courses during the last academic year, compared to 3,300 the year before, Singleton said. Many of NSU’s online courses are offered at the graduate level.

The early promise of e-learning, according to the Penn report, included a vision that learning would be ”customized, self-paced and problem-based.” Some predicted traditional professors might even be rendered obsolete, replaced by Web-based facilitators who needed only to ”guide” students.

”The reality never matched the promise — not by a long shot,” notes the report, available online at http://www.thelear ningalliance.info/.