Early Adopters and Online Learning
Online learning is growing rapidly in popularity, and while some may think that the field is firmly established, it actually is not quite yet. Today’s adopters of online learning are indeed early adopters, but online learning’s history goes back at least a decade.
The earliest adopters of online learning started to appear over a decade ago, and in most cases, they were not very successful due to slower Internet connections, lack of funding, and a generally pervasive belief that online learning and virtual environments “just wouldn’t work.” The brave pioneers of online learning include the University of Illinois, which began offering computerized calculus courses over the Internet in 1989 for high school students in rural Illinois. The University of Phoenix was the first private university to offer academic degrees completely online. The school grew slowly at first, and met with wide criticism from lots of skeptics – but today, it’s one of the most successful universities in the nation.
Flash forward to 2008, and online learning environments are rapidly gaining respect and popularity, and more and more students from all walks of life are choosing to go to school – or back to school – via virtual classrooms. Some sources report that, in 2008, 10% of college students will take at least one class completely online. Even so, there are many who resist the growth of online learning, and who continue to lament its “ineffectiveness” or the idea that online learning schools aren’t “real” schools, and that the degrees offered aren’t worth nearly as much as degrees offered at brick and mortar campuses.
These attitudes, however, are beginning to change rapidly. Studies show that many employers do, in fact, assign value to degrees earned online. As online learning becomes more “normal” and generally accepted, the criticisms will gradually go away, assuming online learning environments continue to be as effective as they have been. Of course, as with any new practice or technology, there are always speed bumps which some people take advantage of and use as an opportunity to criticize something new. Online learning programs are not all accredited, and some are better than others; but isn’t this also true of physical college campuses as well? Many online programs which are fully accredited are outstanding programs which easily offer students as good an education, if not better, than the one they could get at a physical campus. Add to the equation online learning’s attractive flexibility and environmental friendliness, and we have a new practice which will certainly to evolve and be successful for years to come.
The North American Council for Online Learning (http://www.nacol.org) has done a great job in the last couple of years collecting data that debunks the “myths” about online learning.
I recently had an online conversation with my colleagues in an online course about the effectiveness of an online education. There seemed to be a high level of concern about the social elements of online learning. I was surprised that my colleagues seemed to have forgotten that online learning mirrors modern business practices, where primary communication mode is email, chat, and telephone and collaboration is achieved through technology tools like Google Docs and “Track Changes”. Online high school programs, one could argue, do a better job preparing students for life and work in our recently flattened world.