Online College Course Forum

I've got a friend who has just applied for - and been accepted on - an online graduate program in Information Science. He said that the entry qualifications were tougher than those for the same program delivered by traditional methods, as the tutors were concerned about students being able to study and work at the same time, and being able to finish the program.

I was encouraged by this, as there is some critism that students start to study online programs, but are unable to finish them. A large drop-out rate of any program is a sign that there is something either wrong with the student selection procedures or the program itself. So to see this kind of rigor being applied to the selection procedure is notice that online programs are taken seriously in terms of academic standing and by the faculty that is delivering them.

Most subject areas have plenty of online programs offered by a number of institutions, so if you are wondering whether you can study a specific subject online as opposed to by traditional methods, the answer is most probably yes.

In 2004 there was a survey carried out by the Sloan Consortium, which recorded that 43% of tertiary institutions offered business online, 40% offered humanities, 35% offered IT and computing, 28% offered social sciences and history, 25% offered education, and 24% offered psychology. All other programs were offered by 36% of institutions. Most institutions that offer online programs have their core specialists teaching on these programs, giving the average online degree the same academic standing as a traditional degree.

I started to look up the statistics as to what kinds of courses are classified as online, and what is classified as other kinds of learning. The Sloan Consortium has arrived at a classification system of learning methods which has some acceptance in education. This is as follows:

% Online Delivery = 0 - Traditional course, content delivered in writing and orally.
% Online Delivery = 1 to 29, Web Facilitated, uses web for content posting, assignment posting etc.
% Online Delivery = 30 to 79, Blended/Hybrid, a combination of face-to-face and online course delivery.
% Online Delivery = 80+, Online course, mostly or all online with few or no face-to-face meetings.

Which delivery methods are used for what kinds of programs is a fascinating study, which I'll write more on later.

Degree programs in the US are changing rapidly. In the past, students decided whether they wanted to study in a traditional manner in the classroom, or by a method of distance learning such as online programs.

However, today this is changing. Many students want to choose how they study individual courses in their programs. They may decide that it is beneficial to study one course in the classroom because the classroom interaction helps them to absorb the knowledge more easily. Another course could be taken online, allowing students to study in their own space and to their own timetable. Colleges and universities are beginning to accommodate this change in pattern, and as they increasingly offer the same programs in a variety of learning modes, they can offer this degree of flexibility easily.